The Story of My Life: The Girl Who Went Away

It is now Wednesday, July 30th, 2014.  It had been exactly one week since I had found my birth siblings and began contact with my birth mother. It had been an emotional ride as I had been having such a wonderful time getting to know my siblings through texts and messages but also struggling with the various different reactions I was having as a result of the things my birth mother was saying to me. When she told me that she had been drugged and I was the result of that, I wasn't sure what to think. Then the adoption agency told me that there was no mention of a trauma anywhere in my file. I wasn't sure what to believe from her anymore.  You can read more about that here.

I packed up that Wednesday morning and headed to the beach for a few days with some ladies from church.  We hadn't been attending this church very long, so I was excited to get to know a few more women and make some friends.  I rode in the car with my friend, Shannon, and excitedly told her everything that had been going on in the last week.  Steve had asked her before I left to keep an eye on me and to make sure that I did not allow myself to get drawn into anything too emotional with Carol while I was at the beach. I needed the time to relax and get away, and he wanted to make sure that I would do just that. Shannon assured him that she would take good care of me. 

We got to the beach and sadly, it rained most of the weekend, so there wasn't too much time spend in the sun and sand.  We savored the few moments we did get out there and then spent a lot of time inside, just sitting around and talking. I had brought along the book, "The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler and had the chance to check it out during this time.  The lady from the adoption agency had suggested I read it.  It is stories of women from the 50's through the 70's who gave their children up for adoption. It talked about what they went through at home, with their peers and at the mother's homes that many of them were sent to.  It tells the stories that many parents told about their daughters to be saved from the embarrassment of having a pregnant child.  It talked about birth mothers who searched for their children and vice versa along with the struggles that came with finding them and the reunions.

At different times during the book, I felt my heart breaking for Carol. I could not imagine what it must have been like to have to give up a child that you had carried to full term.  I asked Carol if I could ask her some questions that the book had brought up in my mind.  She said to send them to her and she would answer if she could. I asked her a lot and she didn't answer even half of the questions, which was okay with me.  I didn't really expect her to. I was just hoping that she would see that I was trying to make an effort to understand where she was coming from. What she did answer, though, gave me a better glimpse into what it must have been like for her during that time. I knew that she had been sent away to stay at an unwed mother's home.   She did say that the people at the home were very nice to her and treated her well. I was glad to hear that since some of the stories in the book told of very terrible experiences in some of those places.  Her parents never came to visit her during the time that she was there. She told me that no one was there with her when she gave birth to me. Maybe the lady from the home where she had been staying, but that was it. She was never even allowed to hold me. And by the time my parents adopted me when I was six days old, she was back in Ohio.  It all made me feel very sad for her.

I had decided already to take a break from trying to get information from her about how I had come to be and who my birth father was. I figured at this point that she wouldn't tell me the truth even if she did know. In my heart, I had a feeling that I would know one day, so I set out to try to solve the mystery on my own.  I felt like maybe if I could figure it out, once she realized that I knew, she could be free from the bondage of her own secrets. Because it was raining so much and I had some time on my hands, I got to searching on the internet.  I used whatever information I knew from the adoption agency along with anything that Carol had told me already (which really wasn't much) to see if I could learn anything knew. I enlisted the help of some of my newly acquainted friends and we all went to work trying to solve the mystery.  I tried to look up family businesses in the Findlay, Ohio, are since I knew that was where Carol was from and that my birth father had been working in his dad's business at the time I was conceived. I wondered if he could possibly have been the son of the man that her mom had worked for at the milling company.  I would search pictures of families to see if there was any resemblance with them, always checking their eye color and whether they wore glasses to see if they would match the description of my birth father. I googled every name or place that she had ever mentioned to try to see if was somehow related. 

Of course, I figured out nothing.  How could I? Did you know there can be an awful lot of family owned businesses in a town? And how would I ever know if I had the right one? I would have to figure out a better way to get this search going.

I headed home, relaxed and thankful for a fun weekend with my new friends.  It had rained a lot, but we still had a great time full of laughs, shopping, and McDoubles and sweet tea.

When I got home, I contacted Carol to ask her if she had been involved in the process of picking my parents. I had been told that at some point she thought they were doctors, so I was curious to see if she had been allowed to give any input when they were making the decision of who would be my parents.  She was not very agreeable to my questions and said some things that let me know that. She said that she did not know anything about me after I was adopted. That she was not allowed to know anything about me or my parents and that what they did was not a matter of interest to her.  I apologized for upsetting her,  and told her I would not going to ask any more, but she continued.  She wondered what information my parents had about her and I told her that it was just the little bit of information that was given to them by the adoption agency and if I had been asking her questions of things I already knew just to see if she would give me the same answer.  I could tell she was getting really upset, so I tried again to apologize to her. I told her I was sorry and that I never wanted to hurt her or interrupt her life.  She vented a little bit and then said, "I am done and thru with this whole ordeal and ending conversations reference to all this. I am a human being with feeling and now I have to go on living with the fact that what was to be private is now known due to one person thinking she had to know. I AM DONE AND OVER ALL OF THIS..."

All I could say was, "I understand."

I decided for the time being that I was not going to contact her any more unless she contacted me first. I was not looking to force myself upon her or make her have a relationship with me.  That would be something that would have to be a mutual agreement between both of us. And it sure seemed at the moment that it was not something she was interested in at all.