Being an adoptee is an identity that I have always known and have always carried. It is an identity that will likely outlive me. I was born in 1968 at Florence Crittenton’s Home for Unwed Mothers in Kansas City, Missouri. My birthmother was 19 years old when she was placed there by her family. I remained in Crittenton for 5 weeks, after my birth, before I was adopted. My adoptive parents were biologically unable to have children and at some point, a decision was made to adopt. Over the years I learned that the girls and women who were sent to Crittenton were given jobs or tasks to do while they waited to give birth to the child that they would eventually place. In the case of my birth mother, she was given the job of taking care of another baby waiting to be adopted out. One of the many stories she shared with me, while we were in reunion, was how, when she left Crittenton after giving birth to me, she missed the girl she had been taking care of and felt little connection to me. I’ve often wondered if this practice was intentional, on the part of Crittenton, to keep the young birth mothers from getting attached to the child inside them. One of the first acts of love that my adoptive mother likes to share with me is how when they brought me home, she had to apply medication and dressings to my knees because of how scabbed they were from me being on my belly and kicking my legs. I still, at 56, have faint scars a couple of inches above my knees from these scabs. As a child, my earliest memory was when my adoptive parents and I went to the social workers office to pick up my adoptive sister. I was about two and a half.

I first met my birth mother when I was 21. I’m not quite sure how she located me, but when I was 13 she sent my adoptive parents a letter. My adoptive mother politely wrote back, sending photos and saying that now was not a good time because I was going through teenage things. When I turned 20 my adoptive mother gave me the letter. I used the address on it to obtain my birth mother’s phone number and called. Within a month I was on a train heading to Connecticut for our first visit.

In some ways, many ways, I am luckier than most adoptees that I have met in that my birth mother was a member of C.U.B. She wrote letters and marched on Washington for adoptees rights. It seemed that she knew the right steps that I needed to take. The reality was that there was no way for her to have known the depth of damage she had suffered, as a birth mother, nor the extent that my being adopted had damaged me. During that first visit she took me to a C.U.B. meeting and I recall hearing the other birth mothers whispering to her how much I looked like her. It’s true. I do. But mentally and emotionally I was not ready for that. It was too heavy, and I did not have the tools to process those emotions. In the end, my trauma took hold and drove my life from the shadows for years. Lots of drug use, no boundaries, people pleasing, struggles maintaining a job. Healthy relationships?……Ha!! You name it, I took it, did it, dropped it, ran from it, avoided it, experience it not fully aware of what “it” was. But I had clues and suspicions. As hard as it all was I eventually and slowly was able to come out of the fog. It took time and work. A lot of work. Honestly, it wasn’t until after the birth of my first son, and the end of the marriage to his mom and the end of my drug use, that I was finally able to see a lot of the puzzle pieces and was able to fit some of them together. I needed that biological tether to my son to find my way. Purpose.

Not long after the birth of my son I met my second wife. Who happens to be a birth mother. A few years after dating my second wife I ended my reunion with my birth mother. At the time she had become mean, accusatory, no longer loving and I didn’t understand why. So, unceremonially, I ended things. The rejection was more than I could take, and I didn’t understand where it came from. My second wife and I ended up having two children. I now have three kids: two sons and a daughter. The birth of both of my younger kids was hard on their mother. She suffers from depression and has since she was in Junior High School. She went through pretty rough post-partum depression with both.

She also suffered for about a month every year around the birth of her first son. Adoption trauma was a base, a foundation, of our relationship. It was a core to our world, and we were open to the world with it.

In my early 40’s I returned to college, one of the many things I tried and dropped out of in my 20’s. This time I didn’t drop out. I finished my undergrad, when on to get a Master’s degree and three graduate certifications. For the last 15, or so years, I have worked in my dream job. I am an archaeologist. It’s a sexy sounding job. I think most people think of Indiana Jones when they hear it. The reality of my job is that I identify, document, and record the material things that humans leave behind. Also, how humans manipulate and change things. In many ways, I felt that I had found success. I had a great wife, kids, a degree, an amazing job. I felt worthy. After much thought and late-night chats with my wife, I decided to reach out to my birth mother to see if a reunion was possible for a second time. It was. For a short bit it was good. When we reconnected, I found out that she had suffered a brain injury. Because of that injury she had seizures. One of the medical things attempted to help control the seizures was to surgically remove a portion of her brain. It didn’t work. She was no longer the person that I had met when I was 21. She and my wife ended up becoming close. They bonded over their shared trauma as birth mothers. At one point my birth mother told me that I was no longer needed since she had a relationship with my wife. Rejection again. I discussed my pain with my wife. She couldn’t understand. Rejection from my spouse (a birth mother). Eventually we ended the second reunion. Not because of the relationship that my birth mother was having with my wife, but because my birth mother was losing most of her short-term memory and her long-term memories were locked into her trauma with my birth. I was, in all ways possible, the physical manifestation of her trauma.                   Prior to the pandemic I had become overweight. Was unhealthy. Tired. Needed personal change.

I needed to finish coming out of the fog and learn how to recognize and manage my trauma better. First, I made dramatic changes to my diet. Then I added exercise. Lastly, I found a therapist who specialized in adoption trauma. I ended up losing over 50 lbs. Physically, I felt great. I started making great strides with my mental health as well. Then, one day, my wife came to me and stated that she did not know my son (my oldest whose life she has been a part of since before he was one, who had lived with us since he was 16). I was given an ultimatum of him leaving or she would. Those spaces between a rock and a hard place suck. Like, really suck. I got us into therapy. After a few sessions she stated that she was “suffering pandemic fatigue” and that everything was ok. A month after that she picked me up at the airport and drove me home. Once home she told me she was done. She had a divorce team set up for us within a week. Was moved out within a month. Was divorced within 5 months. That kind of untethering is brutal. It was brutal for me because I knew that I was no longer going to see my kids every day. In the end there were a lot of reasons the marriage ended. I think one of the biggest reasons was that I was getting healthy, and she couldn’t do that yet. That was over two years ago.

A lot of positive things came from that marriage. One was to see firsthand what a birth mother goes through. One the flip side, she saw what an adoptee goes through, and I think that she applied that knowledge to her birth son and how her decision may affect him. A lot of positive came from the divorce. It allowed me to find myself in ways I likely would never had had that not happened. It showed me how to self-care, how to set boundaries, and to not fold out of fear of being alone.

As anyone who is an adoptee knows, we were not given a choice. The reality will always be that there are no “what ifs.” We were dealt cards to a game with no instructions and told to plan. It’s a game of survival of the fittest with ourselves. Every relationship that I have had, no matter how strong, short, or long, or fleeting, is affected by my being adopted.

Every school grade, break up, person cutting me off and honking their horn is a rejection that I had to learn how to process. A lifetime of figuring out the rules of the game and how to play and how to dream of winning, knowing that the game never actually ends. I wonder, as a parent, how much of this game my kids have to play because their dad is an adoptee, and their mom is a birth mother. What cycle has been created. I do not want to come across negative. I know no other life other than being an adoptee and this life that I have had there are parts that I have loved. I manage to find joy every day. I will until there are no more days for me.

A final weird side note. Before the pandemic I received my original birth certificate. Though I had been in and out of reunion for years, my birth mother had never shared that she had named me. For five weeks of my life, I was David Allen Walkling. All of my life, whenever a person calls me by the wrong name it has always been Dave or David. A name, that I have a biological connection to, but no history with.