Adoptee / Birth Father Speak at Adoption Knowledge Conference, Austin, Texas, 2012
10 Year Adoptee / Birth Father Reunion Anniversary: A Video Tribute
This is a video my daughter and I made in honor of our 10 year reunion with my birth father, who at 69 years old learned he had a daughter and grand daughter in this world. We all shared ten glorious years together, before his passing on Nov. 3, 2021. Though never given the opportunity […]
Our Alternate Universe: A Mother’s Day Letter to My Biological Step-Mother
From the moment we met, I knew you were not just my birth father’s wife, but that you’d somehow always been a mother I’d been missing. Nanny, the day I met you, I did not feel like you were going to become “like a mother to me,” I felt you already were. I immediately felt […]
A Memoir About an Adoption that Never Happened.
A memoir about an adoption that never happened. It is a black market baby’s story about the parents who held onto her as tightly as they did her secret, and the mother who let her go. It is about one woman’s walk home, a journey back to self, a healing of primal wounds, to claim her truth and correct her identity.
Seven Years’ Time
July 1 – I meet him standing at the top of a short dusty road, turned onto from a long hot highway that had stretched decades behind me. The journey to my paternal birth family had begun at my first breath, a trip that would last 40 odd years. Siri would have told me “I […]
Adoptees & Divorce
Adoptees & Divorce: Had I known my adoption reunion would lead to my divorce, would I have done it anyway? To quote Anne Sexton, I sit here “on the spike of truth,” and I say ‘Yes, I would have.’ I can confirm that yes, there are significant divorce risks in adoption reunions and many hurdles […]
Finding My Birth Father
A year ago today, thanks to my birth mother Lina’s search for the truth and the man connected to it (and her sharing that information with me), I learned my birth father’s name is Jerry Knight. I learned one year ago, on this day, that he was alive and very much wanted to meet me. Within a few days I wrote him a letter and took the second step on my adoption journey.
Adoption Reunions: Managing Expectations, Assimilating Birth and Adoptive Families
This past weekend was a big weekend. Jerry my birth father finally met my family. In the last seven months since our reunion, he had met his grand daughter Victoria, my husband and step son, a few of my closest girl friends, even Jack, Victoria’s father, but he had yet to meet a single solitary […]
The Ugly Goat: The Importance of Genetic Mirrors in the Adoptee’s World
What if I see things in that mirror that I don’t like? Where does that leave me? Those were my fears, steeped in a mixture of insecurity and the unknown, driving up that long driveway to meet my birth father.
Adoption Reunion: Why I Celebrate My Conception Day
Through my adoption reunion, I learned that my conception took place along the banks of the San Bernard River in Brazoria, Texas.