Jeffrey Leventhal was born in 1970 in Miami, FL, and didn’t learn until age 12 that he was adopted. He was told that he had a twin, which was just one of several lies that persisted throughout his childhood. Having never felt like he fit in and being rebuffed by his adoptive family whenever he…

Jenni Alpert (aka birth name Cami) is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist born in Los Angeles, CA. Jenni spent four years in foster care prior to being adopted into the Alpert family. She started to sing and play piano while in various foster homes and then with the support of her adoptive family, she…

I was born in Utah in 1985 and adopted as an infant at just 3 days old. It was a closed adoption and I remember being told that my birth mother was very young, but that is all I knew. I grew up in a small family, with one older adopted brother. I often wondered…

Hi, I’m Jill or Baby Girl Norman. Born in 1964, Baby Scoop Era, closed file adoptee to same-race parents. I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve since day one, or maybe pre-day one, in the womb. In my defense, writing was a coping mechanism for unrealized trauma. “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” ~ Ernest Hemingway I…

I was born in the “baby scoop era” in the early 60’s and was given up for adoption at birth. I had been in the foster care system for 6 months before being adopted. Throughout my childhood we never spoke about my adoption, and they would tell me they got me at the supermarket. Between…

I always knew. We were told before we understood what adoption meant. My brother and I have different skin tones from our parents so it’s fairly obvious but they were truth-tellers anyway. What a difference the truth makes. Growing up in a family that had no blood ties but who were bound, instead, by love…

I wasn’t adopted at birth. Before I was 7 weeks old, I had four different caregivers— after surviving two abortion attempts. I arrived into the world as a disruption. Unwanted. Unexpected. And already deeply imprinted by chaos I couldn’t yet name. So I became the good girl. The chameleon. The one who didn’t ask too…

Julie was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1968 at a Salvation Army home and was adopted 5 days later by a lovely family. She always knew she was adopted but it was not really talked about much other than to say she was “chosen” and very much wanted. The parents had a child of their…

One thing that I would say is as a transracial adoptee, Adoption does not offer you a better life but rather a different life. Adoption legally removes children from our biological rights and medical history. If you truly want to help a kid like me offer them external care like kinship or guardianship to protect their rights. Always Shine…

Catholicism, the lack of support for single moms, a deadbeat father. All of these factors contributed to my 23 yr old mother relinquishing me for adoption in the early 1980s, placed into foster care at 3 days old. While in care, I was rejected by the couple that my birth mother selected for me before…

Kelly was born in 1970 and grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her parents divorced before she could remember, and she had no contact with her dad. Second oldest of five kids, she blended in ok but noticed differences. She had reason to believe she was adopted and asked when she was a teenager. Her mother…

Ken DeStefano is an attorney living in New York with his wife and two adult children. He is a domestic adoptee that was born in the late 1960’s. He was raised in a caring and loving home by his mother and father, and was raised with two older siblings that were biological to his parents…

Krista was born January 26, 1974 and adopted out of Children’s Home Society in Oakland, CA. by Robert and Patricia Meinbress. They had one biological son, Eric, but because of Patricia’s type one diabetes, she was advised not to birth another child. Krista had a beautiful childhood on a small farm in Lafayette, CA., with…

Being adopted is a unique existence and has profoundly shaped my life in ways I am still discovering. It has meant different things to me at different times throughout my life. I was adopted as an infant by a family that fiercely loved me and called me their own yet I never truly felt like…

My identity began with being given a fictitious name by my birth mother who did the same. Relinquished after nine days, I spent the next formative three months in foster care with other babies in the same precarious situation. Being curious and observant, I believe I watched and longed for my mother’s return. She did…

Dr. Liz DeBetta: Storyteller, Healer, Guide. Scholar, Artist, Adoptee Activist. I am an adoptee who didn’t know the impact the trauma of maternal separation had on me until I hit a wall and realized something needed to shift if I was ever going to move forward, have healthy relationships (with myself and others), and feel…

“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws which, otherwise, would have been hidden from us forever.” Goethe    Nature vs. Nurture is my reality.  I’m an artist, born in 1968,  adopted into a loving midwestern family in 1969.  I am a secret to some, with non-identifying paperwork, yet it’s how I identify myself today. …

Lora was born, adopted and raised in Indiana. Her mother was already parenting her 3-year-old brother who has Down Syndrome. She made the difficult decision to relinquish Lora for adoption due to not having enough support from either father and managing the difficult task of caring for a special needs child in the 70’s. Lora…

Upon my delivery into this world, my mother relinquished me. She was told I would be better off with strangers that were married. It was the Baby Scoop Era and unwed mothers were shamed for having sex before marriage and getting pregnant. When I found my biological father, he told me they dated in college…

Louise Browne is adopted. A Baby Scoop Era baby, she was born Tiffany Lyn in 1968. She spent a few days with her biological mother (age 19), before being relinquished. Louise was adopted into a loving home outside Denver, Colorado and has one older brother who was not adopted. (Louise and her brother are very…

Born in Manhattan, Magda Rivera was sent to Puerto Rico to be adopted by a Puerto Rican couple. It was considered an international adoption. Her birth mother had requested she be sent to Puerto Rico where she thought her biracial baby would “blend in.” At 27 prompted by heart condition and living in Los Angeles,…

I was always an outsider – both inside of my home and outside in the world. Raised in the Bay Area suburbs, we were among the first Chinese Families to move into the small suburb of Moraga in the early 70’s. We treaded carefully as we navigated the 97% white community. At about age 6…

Sunshine and Rainbows. That’s what growing up as an adoptee in the 1970’s San Francisco Bay Area felt like. I always knew I was adopted, as was my older sister. We were very close to our parents who were open minded, loving and supportive. But as a child of the Baby Scoop era, knowing you…

+ Racism. The shame I carried for most of my years was the undeserving shame others bestowed upon me, intentional or not. Racism denied me my identity, my family and my sense of self worth. Born in 1971 to a 19 year old affluent white mother and 20 year old black father in Kentucky was…

Michael was born in 1954, surrendered on Armistice Day by his birth mother at New York’s St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village into the care of the venerable New York Foundling Hospital, a Catholic adoption agency. His adoptive parents collected him five weeks later and drove to their home in upstate New York, where they…

Mindy Stern was born in 1968 in New York City and adopted through the infamous Louise Wise Agency (Three Identical Strangers). The agency told her adoptive parents that Mindy’s first mother kept her for 3 months before realizing she couldn’t handle single motherhood. In 1992, Mindy began to search for her first parents, but due…

 We spend our lives relentlessly searching, through every waking moment, and every scattered dream. Unable to breath deeply until I find all the buried secrets, and connect with genetic matches, and see myself looking back in deep reflection, and feel family closeness – in my maternal sisters, though the gap years always exist. You love the…

Monica is an adoptee, birthmother, survivor, and the author of Practically Still a Virgin. Adopted from an Edmonton foster home at just four months old during Canada’s 60s Scoop—a period when Indigenous babies were placed into non-Indigenous homes—she was raised by white parents in Anchorage, Alaska. Growing up during the wild oil boom era in…

Nicole “Nic” Rademacher is a transcultural (Caucasian American/Mexican) adoptee, artist, and art therapist. She was adopted into the Rademacher family at 2 months and 13 days. When she was 25, she started the search for her biological family. Just 2 months later (and after she turned 26), she found out that her birth parents had…

I am an adoptee, a mother, a teacher, a historian and a writer. I was adopted at birth through a closed adoption in the state of California.  I spent large parts of my early childhood carefully building fantasies of what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been adopted. In these fantasies there were castles and ponies and gardens and silk gowns. But what there wasn’t, ever, in these fantasies was…