The Hunt For Answers of a Closed Adoption

Growing up, it was not uncommon knowledge in the family that my mother was adopted. Her adoptive parents decided it was best that she and her sister both knew the truth and would not be made to feel as if they were living a lie. That they should know they were adopted out of love. Now my aunt and mother were, and still are, polar opposites. My aunt is the book smart, goody two shoes who has always done everything by the book and deemed the golden child. And my mother.....well, that's a less pleasant explanation. My mother got into drugs early, dropped out of college, got knocked up, and settled for a shotgun wedding. She has, very truthfully, always been the family disappointment who could have been something great. Having 4 kids and running through 2 marriages did not slow her drug abuse or abuse of those around her, but rather accelerated it and damaged everything and everyone in her life. At some point, my aunt found her biological mother. This created a massive tension in the family. My mother was enraged and jealous. Saying she was pissed would put it very lightly. It further advanced the distaste my mother had for my aunt as she wanted to find her biological parents more than my aunt did. She wanted answers and had never felt complete. She had never felt like she fit in, which was her own fault.

Through the years, my mother had ceaselessly hunted for her biological parents, but seeing as she was adopted in a closed adoption, information was not readily available. Closed adoptions have no contact between biological and adoptive parents and little information is provided about the biological parents, if at all. The only information her adoptive parents claimed to have collected or found through the years was that her mother was polish, very young, and likely returned to Poland shortly after the birth. The father was supposedly named along the lines of Dylan Ferguson, had dark curly hair, and that his father owned an auto shop somewhere in the state. Little of which panned out in the long run. The story of a run-in with her mother days after her birth has been echoed through the family for decades. Her adoptive parents talk about how a few days after her birth, they were leaving the hospital and ran into a strange woman on the street. She resembled my mother, appeared Polish, and was young. While never confirmed, it was believed to be her as the stranger seemed very emotionally invested in my mother. Or at least more than she should have been. Many did not believe it to be true and often thought it was just a story stirred up to try and satisfy my mother's hunger for information.

Admittedly, I had spent many years unconcerned with it all. Truthfully, they may be biological, but would never be my family. I had enough family and was content with who I was surrounded with and the family I had built.

A few years ago, my mother took a DNA test and came in to contact with her biological cousin. Who in turn said she may know who her biological mother is. One thing led to another and my mother was connected to M. M was a sweet, blonde haired, mildly attractive woman of European descent, although born and raised in the states. She admitted that she was very young at the time and got pregnant around fourteen. And, unfortunately, was also involved in drug and alcohol use then. Which eventually spiraled into long term addiction and alcoholism, that she later recovered from. She did not know anything about the biological father's side, or truly who he even was. She gave up my mother to make sure she lived a good life and was taken care of. I met M a few times and have chatted with her passively through the years since. She was unable to have any more kids after my mother, so she was excited to make the connection and build relationships with all of us. I try not to discuss my mother with her, but I still fear that she values her relationship with my mother more than her sobriety or sanity, as my mother has caused her to relapse at least once. I let it go and moved on about my business. The last thing I wanted to do was try and tell a grown adult how to live her life or to try and warn someone who probably was not going to listen anyways. Not giving much of a second thought to it all.

When I got pregnant in mid 2020, one of my standard visits to the doctor was to discuss my family medical history and how my child could potentially be affected. I was dumbfounded by my own inability to answer their questions in regards to my genetics. I truly did not know my own family's medical history. My father's side consisted of hearty farmers, truckers, and mechanics who do not believe in going to visit doctors. Get up at the crack of dawn, eat a hearty breakfast, and work your hands to the bone. The simple belief of your time will come when it's time. So I only knew about the endings, like heart disease and heart attacks. And, frankly, nothing on my mother's side. My mother has a colorful array of claimed health issues, but is also an addict and pathological liar with Munchhausen's. So I realistically had nothing to work off of. So I started my own hunt and opted to do a DNA test for myself.

I received my results in March of 2021 and was surprised to say the least. For starters, I had pings on my biological grandfather's side. Which gave me the instant realization that this information had been found prior by my mother, just not shared. Which was an immediate red flag, but unsure for which party. The pings were some second cousins, but it was a start and I was curious. So I took the risk and reached out to them. Sent a message stating who I was and how I was looking for just information. No response. Nothing. I reached back out to my mother and pushed the topic, asking for information and asking why it was withheld in the first place. I got nothing, except for a vague response explaining she did not think it was relevant to me and what her biological father's name was. Which, given how generic his name was, was not even a starting point. Yet again, I was relatively stonewalled for information.

So I dug on the family members I could find through the DNA test. Finding everything from social media accounts to legal documents. Started connecting the dots and finding the facts. Wasn't long before I had a whole tree laid out. Come to find out, my mother was the dirty family secret that went untold and unspoken of. Quite literally went with him to the grave since he passed away before she could find him. Most had no idea she existed, seeing as she was almost 10 years older than his next child. On top of the of him being 20 when my mother was born, creating a scandal as M was a minor at the time. And it was frowned upon even in the late 70's. But an experience that was fueled and blurred by addiction and lust. A blur that would have further stained his family's reputation. It eventually came to light that his death was caused by the long term affects of his drug use over the years, despite walking the clean and narrow for many years prior to his passing. He seemed genuine though and loved his family through the good and bad. A man who had made mistakes and did his best to recover from them. I had been left to wonder how much he knew about my mother and if he ever tried to find her later on in life. In the process of it all, I discovered I had two biological uncles (J and C) and at least one biological cousin (LC). One uncle, J, had passed years prior due to some kind of cancer, leaving behind at least on child, LC. The other uncle, C, was alive and well. Not exactly what I would have imagined. He was my age and had even graduated high school the same year as me. Although a short age gap like this is not unfamiliar to me in my family, it still felt shocking and unexpected. He did not know about my mother until a day or two prior to receiving my friend request on Facebook. His stepbrother, R, who was raised by his father as his own, had broken the news to him. R and my mother had developed a close friendship and discussed many details together as she progressively connected with her biological father's family. He answered the questions for which answers had been buried and hidden. Such as her biological father's cause of death and how to get in touch with her biological grandmother.

While it seems relatively uneventful finding them all, it was not what I expected. Honestly, I did not know what to even expect when I started. But I did not think that I would find out that my mother was the result of a drug fueled haze of an adult and a minor. And that she had statistically, despite the continuous attempt to intervene, fallen victim to the nature side of nature vs nurture to addiction. Or that the "truths" that everyone had been told were far from the truth at all.

While it has been some time since I have found them, I have not reached out to my biological grandfather's side of the family. While I have nothing against them, it feels awkward and like any attempt may not be met warmly. The voice in the back of my head does wish I would warm them though. Give them some kind of heads up that my mother is not who she has painted herself to be and to proceed with caution. But that is a bridge I will test with fire when I come to it, if I ever choose to.