The Letter My Mom Wrote

My mom (Susan Perry) in 2009 with my daughter and nephew

Before my mom, whose blog this is, passed away in 2014, she asked me to keep the site going if I could. "Maybe just once a month or so, I know how busy you are," she said. At this point in her life, with the end clearly in sight, she focused on spending time with loved ones, and not much else. Yet she used some of those precious last months on earth advocating for adoptees, and on making sure that we (her family) knew this was important to her. It was not one of the things that no longer mattered. It mattered. It still does. This month, I'd like to share some of my mom's own words. This is the letter she wrote, in 2003, to her original mother. Several years before, she had been diagnosed with Stage 2 malignant melanoma and had thus begun the search for her biological family at the recommendation of my sister, a doctor. The adoption agency in Trenton, NJ that had placed her contacted her original mother for her. She was not allowed to contact her herself (something that she found deeply offensive). Her mother told the social worker that she wanted no contact. That was the end of the story, for a bit. Eventually, my mom found her mother through an "enlightened individual" and sent her this letter. Being able to do so was crucial in her own journey as an adoptee. As readers of this blog know, my mom eventually found so much more, perhaps miraculously (we thought so), but it shouldn't take a miracle to find those we are related to by blood. Here is her letter.

September 19th, 2003

Dear Mrs. ______________,

I am writing this letter in the hope that you will be able to share just a little health and personal information with me about my genetic past. I am the little girl, now a middle-aged woman, whom you gave up for adoption 53 years ago. I want to assure you right up front that I have no need to meet you face-to-face and that I will never call you or come knocking on your door. I try to live my life according to the maxim "Do no harm," and for that reason, I thought long and hard about locating you privately and delivering this letter. (The agency was true to their word and would not release any information or forward this contact to you). I am doing this because I have a great need for healing and closure in this area, and I need to communicate with you, just this once, in my own words.

Perhaps the communication from the social worker at the Children's Home Society may have shocked and scared you. In a way, their letters scared me because they were so bureaucratic and impersonal, and really, this is such a personal event, fraught with emotion. I know that I will feel a much more satisfactory sense of closure by delivering this message to you personally via this letter. Please understand that I have no desire to hurt you in any way. I am so grateful for my life, and I imagine that this chapter in your life was absolutely excruciating.

All through life, I was curious to know something about my genetic past (which I believe is a very natural inclination for all of us, however loving our adoptive families), but my desire to know more intensified six years ago when I had a very scary bout with malignant melanoma. This experience included a life-threatening diagnosis, surgery, and numerous follow-up exams. Of course, all the doctors wanted to know my medical history, and I had nothing to tell them. Also, my older daughter is a physician, and she too was eager to know my genetic medical history. So much of what doctors study today are genetic links to disease.

Because we know without a doubt today that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to who a person is, I feel a definite sense of loss not having any information at all about the people whose genes I carry. That's why I tried to initiate come contact through the Children's Home Society, because I felt in my mind that I was asking for so little. Perhaps for you, my life ended the day you signed the adoption papers. I, on the other hand, had a life-long fantasy that somewhere in the world was a woman who must have wondered, on my birthday and from time to time, where I was and how I was doing. The death of this fantasy hurt so much that I sobbed like a baby for a couple of days and went about my business with a knot in my stomach for weeks.

I have to believe that your decision to close off all contact was one of self-protection and that you certainly didn't mean to cause me so much pain. For this reason, I hope you will listen to my modest request with an open heart. If you can share some information, in just one letter, you would be giving me a gift beyond all measure, and perhaps we both can feel a sense of peace and closure about this long-ago chapter. Here's what I'm hoping you will be able to tell me.

1. Although I have a fine life outwardly (had loving adoptive parents; have an extremely kind husband and two daughters who have been and are incredible blessings; have interesting work as a writer and teacher), I have struggled since I was very young with intermittent bouts of depression. No one in my adoptive family did, and it took me a long time to figure out that my sad thoughts weren't part of some horrible personality flaw, just a physiological condition that can be controlled very well with mild antidepressants. I have been told that this condition could be a direct result of the closed adoption system itself, the result of a genetic predisposition, or a combination of the two things. Can you tell me - Is there any history of depression in my genetic past, either in you or in other birth relatives? Also, would you kindly fill out the enclosed medical form? Both my daughters and I would really like to have this information so that we can practice preventive medicine, and I've included a self-addressed envelope for your convenience.
2. Are you able to tell me anything at all about my birth father? I know that he is deceased, but I am interested in knowing who he was and what he was like, if it is not too painful for you to describe him. 
3.  For me, the greatest gift you could give me if a photo of yourself -- as a young girl, and as a young or middle-aged woman. It is a very odd thing to go through life having no physical similarities to all the people around you. I have a strong desire to know whether I look like you or other birth relatives. Again, I'm not looking to hurt anyone -- it's just that I feel my genetic make-up is an integral part of who I am, and I need some information to fill in the empty places. 
4. Is your daughter, born in 1945, still living, and does she know that I exist? You may be aware that after your death, I do have the right to contact her through the Children's Home Society. I do not want to hurt you, so it would be helpful for me to know whether or not she knows I exist. 

I know that back in the days of my adoption, social workers counseled you that secrecy was best. Now, the thinking among adoption professionals has changed, and I am sure this is very frustrating for you. But we know so much more today about genetic links to disease and behavior, and without more complete background information, adult adoptees like me are stumbling in the dark in some ways. Again, I do promise that I will never come knocking at your door. I bear you no ill will. I am a good and sensitive person, a person of integrity. Perhaps I'm hoping to hear that you could have loved me had I been born in a different time -- a time in which out-of-wedlock pregnancies weren't so impossible and when society's rules were not so oppressive. You may be unable to do this, but please -- please don't refuse my request for background information just because I represent a painful episode in your life. Like so many adult adoptees, I simply have a need for some health information and for some knowledge about how I came to be. I know intellectually that my birth and your situation at the time must have been impossible for you, and I need you to know that your choice to give me life has been good for me, even though I feel I missed something, not knowing you.

There are other people in my life whom I love dearly and who love me too. I am not looking for a new family, just the information that I've requested. I pray that God will open your heart and that you are capable of giving me this one gift. I don't know you, but I believe that I can feel your pain and I am sorry for being the cause of that. I hope you can overcome it for the space of just one brief letter. Thank you for reading this letter, thank you for my life, and may God bless you for the rest of your days.

                                                                                        With hope and peace,

                                                                                         Susan Perry


P.S. I pray that you are able to share just a little in one letter and that you will. My address is ... Woodland Ave., Haddonfield, NJ 08033.  If you can do nothing else, I would so appreciate the updated medical information and photographs. I believe, if I had to, I could secure comprehensive medical records through legal action, but I don't want to take that route. You are not my enemy, and I do not wish to intrude on your life any further.

Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice

Estela de Carlotto, president of Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo

Today, March 24th, is Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justica (Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice) in Argentina. On this day, Argentinians remember the 1976 coup d'etat that toppled President Isabel Perón's government and lead to the seven year repression known as the "Dirty War." During those seven years, some 30,000 people were disappeared, never to be seen again. One mother whose daughter was "disappeared" is Estela de Carlotto. Her daughter was pregnant at the time of her disappearance, and Ms. Carlotto searched for years to find out what happened to that baby. Other women like her also searched, and protested, and they came to be know as the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo, all of them searching for the babies that were taken from their children (who were presumably killed) and given in adoption to other families to be raised. It is estimated that 500 such "lost children" exist. 115 have been found and reunited with their families. In the spring of 2013, Ms. Carlotto personally delivered a request to Pope Francis that the Vatican open its records for the period between 1976 and 1983,  for they may contain information about the whereabouts of these children, and any information could help. After all, time is running out for the abuelas, many of whom are in their 80s. "You can count on me. You can count on us," the pope, who was a priest in Argentina during the Dirty War, reportedly told Ms. Carlotto.

Estela de Carlotto with Lionel Messi, who supports the Abuelas

I believe him. This pope, who will come to my home city of Philadelphia next September for the World Celebration of the Family, has been more willing, it seems, than any pope before him, to confront some of the egregious sins of the church. In the case of Argentina, that may include knowingly hiding the origins of babies given for adoption to "good" families. In the case of my country, the United States, that definitely includes convincing young women who were pregnant and unmarried that they were unfit to be mothers and had to give their babies away, and then convincing the public that these same mothers never wanted to be found and needed laws to protect them (and in some cases -- less than 2% -- causing so much shame in those mothers that they actually never did want to be found). I know this to be true because I have met such mothers. They break my heart. One mother I met, well into her 70s, eventually searched for the daughter she had given up for adoption because she couldn't go on living otherwise, but she still feels such shame that she introduces her daughter in public as her niece, and she still hasn't told the father -- a man she loved, and who she planned to marry -- that they have a child together (she went to a Catholic home for unwed mothers once she learned she was pregnant and simply disappeared from his life).

In Argentina, they have a saying for today: Nunca más. Never again. For those adoptees still fighting for laws that allow them the dignity of knowing the full truth of their identity, and for those biological mothers who were shamed and treated horribly, and continue to be used to justify laws that have no benefit for them whatsoever, I say it also. ¡Nunca más! 

Today in Argentina is about Memoria, Justicia, y Verdad: Memory, Truth, and Justice. We could use a bit of that here as well. So many are working for it.

Estela de Carlotto and her grandson

As my mom's story shows, sometimes, despite a lack of truth and justice in the system, people are lucky. She was. She met her sisters, my aunts, who are wonderful, and who brought her an understanding "deeper than I ever thought possible in this lifetime" before she died. Estela de Carlotto, the president of the Abuelas de Mayo who met with the pope two years ago, was also lucky. Often, those who were adopted as babies in Argentina and raised by other families don't want to know the truth. It is too difficult. They love the parents who raised them (and who oftentimes knew nothing about the origins of the baby they adopted). They will never search. But this summer, Estela de Carlotto's grandson - now a grown man - found her. Alegría tremenda, tremendous happiness, is what she felt. Not all those who search will be so lucky, but all should have the right to try. Don't you agree?

Lifetime Secrets and Their Effect on the Adoptee

As an  older adopted person, I've come to terms with the fact that there are many things about my background I'll probably never know.  While I've had a sweet, but brief conversation with my first mother by phone, I've never laid eyes on her, and she did not wish to meet face to face.  I don't know the name of my original father, although social workers at the agency that placed me in 1950 do.  My first mother said that she couldn't tell me anything about him "because he was a married man."  As  a woman in her eighties, this was still her thinking, I suppose, that she did something terribly wrong by becoming entangled in an improper relationship.

My understanding from my "non-identifying information" is that my first father was a family friend from Denmark -- both my original parents are Danish -- who was separated from his wife at the time of his relationship with my first mother.  My original mother, I am told, hoped for a long-term commitment; my original father, quite a bit older at the time of my conception -- age 53 -- was apparently unwilling to commit.

There was some talk, I'm told by an agency social worker, of me going to live with my first father's son and wife before I was placed for adoption.  I still have no idea where I was during the first three months of my life, or who cared for me during that time.  I realize that I know a lot more than some adopted people do.  I know my ancestry, I know my first father lived into his eighties, and that my first mother is still alive at the age of 89.  I know I have a half-sister five years older than I am, and at some point, I'll probably contact her.

I believe that I have all the information about my first mother that I am going to get from her -- she made it clear that she did not wish to talk again.  She was able to tell me in that brief phone conversation that "she loved me in her heart," but she has lived her entire life not acknowledging my existence to anyone else except for her own mother.

It irritates me no end that I can't learn more about my first father, as he sounds very interesting.  He was raised in Denmark, trained as a pilot, and loved the outdoor life, just as I always have.  He is long deceased, as is his son, so just what risk there would be in the agency releasing his name to me is hard to understand.  And that is the injustice and the ludicrous nature of sealed record laws -- in this case, they afford more rights to the dead than they do to the living, and they bind the adopted person to a lifetime restraining order in which he or she had no voice.

Although the sealed record system encourages denial as a standard coping mechanism, I think both my first mother and my adoptive mother were just starting to understand the complexities and the hidden nature of adoption as they both approached their old age.  My first mother picked up the phone and called me after we had exchanged letters and medical information, I believe, because she came to realize that in protecting her own secret and rejecting my offer to meet, she was hurting me at a core and primal level.  She wasn't able to open up completely, but she was able to say "I love you," and I appreciate the fact that she was at least able to reach out a little.  She relinquished, after all, in a very different era from the open society in which we now live.

And while my adoptive mother didn't like to think about the fact that I had an original family, she did say to me as she grew older, "If you ever want to know more, the files are right there in that drawer." She herself knew nothing about sealed records, and my adoption decree included my original birth name.  My mother only knew that  adoption had worked extremely well for her -- it had given her the family she so badly wanted -- but she felt deep inside, I think, that there was an underlying, hidden aspect.  She just didn't want to go there.

One thing I do know for sure is that my adoptive parents truly did love me, and that love and support has helped to make me the person I am today.  My genes have helped to make me that person as well, of course, and it is only natural from my perspective that I should want to know more about the people who passed them on to me.  I am motivated to write about adoption issues because I believe strongly that sealed records are unjust, and that they are truly damaging to many, many people.  They encourage unhealthy thinking, repression, and denial as the means for coping with life.

Sealed records were the reason in my case, I think, that it took me too long to grow up and assume total responsibility for my own life.  In a way, sealed records imprisoned me, because I didn't feel free to express my innermost feelings about adoption.  Although I seemed to be successful in my personal and professional life -- I did well in school, earned graduate degrees, married happily, had children, and worked as a teacher and public relations professional -- I did not feel empowered to take charge of my own story until I was well into my forties.

Every adopted person's journey is unique, of course, but I know that my story is not atypical.  I just cannot understand why, as a culture, we would continue to shackle adopted people to an institution that is governed by such archaic and repressive laws, when the data tells us clearly that most first mothers are open to contact.  Those who are not, like my original mother, can simply say no.  This is an emotional subject for sure, but all of us affected are adults now-- we do not need outside agents supervising our own, very personal business.

The repressive laws set the tone for the either-or thinking we often see in on-line responses to adoption articles.  The kind of thinking that assumes those adoptees who search are expressing disloyalty to their adoptive parents, or that the adoptee should just "be grateful" and move on.  These attitudes are really very hurtful and dismissive of many adopted people's experiences, when the reality, obviously, is that an adoptee does have two sets of parents, and like every other human being, is a unique mix of her DNA and her upbringing.

Telling adoptees that they are not entitled by law to access their own original birth certificates is belittling and unfair, when every other American citizen can apply for and secure hers for a nominal fee.  It is institutional discrimination, and it exists for no good reason, as we have plenty of evidence to show that adoptee rights bills work for the benefit of the greatest number of people.

I do not know whether these essays I post are making a difference or not, but I feel compelled to share my experience.  If I don't, as an older adopted person, who will?   It is probably too late for me to learn much more about my personal history, but it's not too late for many others.  I write in the hopes that my voice, along with so many others, can play some small part in advancing the cause of adoptee rights, so that other human beings affected by the sealed record era will not be made to feel guilty just for attempting to discover the truth about their own lives.


You might also like:

Adoptee Rights, DNA, and the Opposition

An Open Letter to Adoptive Parents

Sealed Records are Wrong.  Period

Why does America lag behind on adoptee rights?

Wise Words from the Lost Daughters Adoption Blog

There's a lot of perceptive writing going on this month over at the Lost Daughters adoption blog.  Contributors there and on their own blogs have been responding to daily adoption "prompts" to commemorate National Adoption Awareness Month.

Originally a state-based initiative intended to raise awareness about the needs of foster-care children who need permanent homes, National Adoption Awareness Month has strayed far from its intentions in recent years.

Now it is more often used by adoption agencies to market their services than it is to spotlight the needs of foster-care kids.  Unfortunately, the agencies and adoption attorneys in their eagerness to find babies for perspective adoptive couples often reinforce stereotypes about adoption, and the complexities of adoption and the voices of adoptees themselves are almost always overshadowed.

The writers at Lost Daughters, all grown adoptees, would like to change that dynamic.  They are working hard to put the focus back on the adoptee herself, and they are correcting much of the misinformation about adoption that is often spread during the month of November.

All of the posts are informative and perceptive, but three of them have especially resonated with me:  Deanna Shrodes' "Blogging Adoption and Everyday Life," and the posts by WP and Rebecca Hawkes responding to a prompt about the adoption stories they were told by their adoptive parents as children.

Shrodes is a writer, speaker and pastor who has just recently begun to write about adoption.  As she explains in her article, she remained quiet for years for fear of offending certain members of her family and the conservative religious groups in which she was involved.

But like many adoptees, Shrodes paid a price for her silence.  "I played along with a script given to me," she writes, but "staying quiet about my true feelings ... fostered a 45-year-old emotional wound." She was blind-sided by the grief she came to feel about losing her original family.

Eventually, says Shrodes, she came to realize that "silence was a horrible antidote to pain" and that silence was not an acceptable option for her either "as a human being or as a Christian."  As slow as progress has been in the adoption reform movement, I am encouraged about the future of adoption every time another voice like Deanna's joins the growing adoptee chorus.  These voices simply cannot be ignored forever.

Now a passionate supporter of adult adoptee rights, Shrodes has come to realize that Christianity in its more fundamental forms is "unfortunately one of the biggest if not the biggest obstacles to equal rights for adoptees."  Like many of us, Shrodes is working to correct the stereotype that abortion rates are adversely affected by more transparency in adoption.  As she explains, "I am pro-life.  I'm just not pro-secrets."

The corrosive power of lifetime secrets in adoption is a common theme among adoptee voices.  So is the concept of "playing along with the script given to us."  As WP explains in her article responding to a prompt about childhood adoption narratives, "To a large extent, my adoption was presented (to me) within the framework of my parents' desires."  Like WP, many of us were told, as agencies advised, that "your parents were unable to provide a stable home for you" and that "we wanted you very badly."
We were expected by the powers-that-be to be content with such limited information.

As WP so eloquently says, "I'm angry that those in charge thought I should be given so very little" when the real point should be: "It's a hard story, but it's your story and you have a right to know it."

This thought is echoed in Rebecca Hawkes' post about the stories our adoptive parents told us.  "My childhood adoption narrative wasn't so much false," she writes, "as it was incomplete."  Her adoptive parents were (and are) loving and conscientious people, she says, and they believed, because they were told it was so, that she would grow up feeling "as if born to" her adoptive family.

Hawkes, like many of us grown adoptees, had been told very little about her original parents.  They were young and unable to care for her, and she should always understand how very much "she was wanted" and loved by her adoptive parents.

Hawkes' story is very much like my own.  I grew up knowing virtually nothing about my original parents, and it was just assumed that I would have no need for such information.  My parents did just what the agency told them to do -- they provided a loving, stable environment, and the idea was that the original parents just shouldn't matter.

The problem is that they did matter to me, even though I loved my adoptive parents deeply.  My original parents are, after all, a part of me.  For many years, I drove my feelings underground in order to meet cultural expectations and to spare the feelings of my adoptive family, but eventually I felt what I would call a spiritual need to connect with my original mother.  Mine was not a Norman-Rockwell type of reunion.  But it was an exchange that did provide me with a much-needed emotional closure.

As Hawkes so wisely writes in her recent post, "My true adoption narrative was one I needed to write myself."  And that's the point.  All adoptees as adults should have the freedom to come to terms with their own adoption narratives.  No one else should be writing the script for them about their own lives and histories.  Certainly no state or agency should ever be in the business of locking away for life the adoptee's own legal certificate of birth.

What is truly disheartening today is that many agencies and adoption attorneys continue to act as if original parents just shouldn't matter, and as if equal rights for adult adoptees just aren't important.  Such sentiments may be what perspective adoptive parents want to hear, but they are not shared by most adult adoptees.

Secrecy and lies corrode the soul.  Hosts of adoptees and original parents can attest to that truth.  We can only hope that sites like Lost Daughters will continue to attract more and more readers, and that writers like Deanna Shrodes will continue to challenge the conservative church's misguided approach to the practice of adoption.


You might also like:

Maybe "Angry Adoptees" Are Just Well Informed

Adoption and Magical Thinking

Shading the Truth to Ease the Fears of Adoptive Parents

Adoptive Parents and Pro-lifers who Cannot or Will Not See the Realities of Adoption