SHE LOVED ME MORE – PART 1

In honor of my birthday this week, I thought I would share the story of me. I was adopted.  I was only a week old when my parents adopted me.  They got a call the day I was born and was told I was theirs and a week later, I went home with them.

I don’t remember a time that I didn’t know I was adopted. My parents told me when I was young, before I started Kindergarten and then continued to talk about it openly throughout the years.  I was always curious and wondered what my “real” mom was like.  I had wonderful parents and siblings (although I didn’t always think so at different times when my brother stuck a dandelion in my mouth or when I fought with my sister or was grounded by my parents) in my adopted family, but that didn’t keep me from being curious about my biological mom.  That is just how people are.  I was the middle child in my adopted family and my older brother and younger sister were both biological to my parents, so I was the only one adopted, although most would have thought if one of us was adopted, it would have been my sister because she didn’t look as much like my mom, brother and I.  I, amazingly, resembled my family more than my own sister who was flesh and blood akin.

All I knew as I grew up was my birth name was Julie Ann Grover and that my parents were told that it was a “made-up” name just for the sake of legal documents.  For the first six months of a child’s life that is put up for adoption, they are technically only foster children and the adoptive parents are foster parents until after those six months.  My legal name was Julie Grover on all the paperwork.  After the six months, my parents legally adopted me and changed my name to Jennifer Lynn.  Other than that, the adoption attorney also mentioned that my adopted mom and my biological mom looked somewhat alike.  That was the only information my parents had concerning me and all I ever knew growing up.

Please know, being adopted did not make me angry at my biological mother.  In fact, I recognized early on that it was a sacrifice she made for me out of love.  I can’t imagine how difficult it was to carry a child for nine months and then give it to someone else to love and care for. I knew it was a tremendous sacrifice.

As I got older, my desire to know more about my medical history played a larger role than curiosity.  I got married when I was just 19 years old and a few months after my marriage, my mom’s younger sister passed from breast cancer.  She was just 36.  I began to think that maybe a self-breast exam was not a bad thing to start doing so I did and the very first time I did, I found a lump.  Let me tell you that will scare the dickens out of you!  I had just seen my aunt fight a horrendous battle and succumb to breast cancer 2 weeks before and now I am finding a lump in my breast.  I decided maybe it was only there because maybe it was a monthly ovulation cycle or something that was causing strange things in my body.  I kept an eye on it for a few weeks, all the while, not telling my new husband that I had found it and silently living in fear that I had breast cancer.  Finally, I told my husband and he made me call the doctor.  The doctor was 99% certain it was benign, but it would require surgery to remove it.  I underwent surgery for a lumpectomy in August 1990 and a biopsy confirmed it was benign.  THANK YOU, GOD!

After that scare, I wanted to know as much as I could about my biological medical history.  I was born at a local hospital and adopted through a state agency in the city I was born in and lived near my whole life.  I contacted the state agency to see what I needed to do to get answers.  Since I was under 21 years of age, my adopted parents would need to sign and have a document notarized giving their authority to search for my biological mother.  They did immediately and I received “non-identifying” information concerning my mother and her family. These papers were copies of papers filled out at the time of her decision to place me up for adoption.  They consisted of a questionnaire that had my biological mother’s first name, Sandra, and personal description such as hair color, eye color, height, weight, age, education level, marital status, and occupation.  The same information was listed for my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles.  For my biological father, there was very little listed, just this height, weight, occupation, and that he didn’t know of my birth.  There was, however, in all these papers, no medical history information.

For a few years, this seemed to satisfy my curiosity.

Later in 1990, due to some other female issues, unrelated to the lump in my breast, the doctor diagnosed me with a condition similar to endometriosis and was concerned that my chances for having children would be diminished over time.  So, my husband and I immediately began trying to have a baby.  I was pregnant by November 1990, but subsequently miscarried that pregnancy in January 1991.  We conceived again in September 1991 and our first daughter, Lakin, was born in May 1992.  My delivery was difficult and I ended up having a cesarean section after days of unproductive labor.  In February 1993, we conceived again and Mackenzie was born in October 1993, again with an unplanned cesarean section.

By this time, I was beginning to give a lot of thought to my medical history again because now it wasn’t just me I was concerned about, but also, I had two daughters with the same genetic make-up.  What would they ultimately need to know about their medical history?  I decided to start looking for “identifying” information concerning my biological family.  I contacted the state agency again.  They gave me a lot of run around for a long, long time and finally told me that they had to find her first to determine if she wanted to be found and then I could contact her.  They looked her name up in a local phone book and said when they didn’t find it, they had reached a “dead end”.  It was disappointing.

I thought that I could do a little better than that myself, so I started going through local phone books looking for my uncle and grandfather’s names.  I had three uncles and a grandfather that I suspected were still living and since I knew I was born locally, perhaps they were still living in the area.  I scoured over all the local phone books and then moved on to one for a large city nearby.  That larger book did me in. I couldn’t look at any more pages after months of going through name after name, while my girls napped and after they went to bed at night, looking for my uncle/grandfather’s names.  You have to remember, this was in 1993 – 1994 and EVERYONE had a landline back then. I thought I would go cross-eyed if I didn’t quit.

Besides being a “stay-at-home” mom to two little girls, I was also in college full-time and serving in a local community club as recording secretary.  In that community club, there was a young mom who had once given a baby up for adoption.

This young mom also worked at the local newspaper in the town I was born in.  She thought that since I had so much information concerning my biological mother’s family, someone might know them and could help me put the pieces together.  She knew she, as the biological mother, would want her child to hopefully find her someday.  She suggested I write a “Letter to the Editor” giving the information I know and my contact information.  I did just that. I went home and wrote it immediately, proofed it, but didn’t print it and send it just then.  This was in August 1994.

I listed my name, birth date, and age. I gave the hospital I was born in, gave all the names I had received from the state agency, and then went on to explain that because of my biological mother’s sacrifice, I had lived a wonderful life with two parents, two siblings, lots of loving family, and was now happily married (this was BEFORE my divorce) and mother to two children.  I gave my contact information and wrapped it up with a heartfelt note to my mother.

A few months went by and it was January 1995. Again I had not printed the letter and sent it to the paper, only written it.  I stopped at our local grocery store and ran into the young mom from my community club.  She asked me if I had ever written the “Letter to the Editor” because she had not seen it.  I told her I hadn’t, but that I really didn’t know why I hadn’t.  She told me to go home and do it right away.  She was excited for me to see if this would lead to me finding her or at least someone that might know something about it.

I took my groceries home and immediately printed the letter and mailed it.  A couple of days later, the paper called and said they had received it and would be publishing it on Thursday of that week.  They wished me luck and hung up. I kind of pushed the whole thing out of my mind.  I was studying for a college test on Thursday when a friend called to say she had seen it in the paper and she was excited for me.  I asked her to save me a copy of the paper, because I wasn’t sure I would get one.  Again, I really was not wrapping my mind around it because I had been searching myself for a couple of years and I guess I didn’t want to get my hopes up.  I continued to study and left for my class when my husband got home from work. No one had called other than the one friend at that point. That night, after the test, I was going to the community club meeting that I was a part of as well.  My husband was taking our girls to his parents to visit that evening and then would be home.

As I drove from school to the meeting, I realized that I had left the minutes for the meeting at home (remember I was recording secretary) so I had to go home before going to the meeting.  I ran into the house to grab the book and then turned to run back out while calling to my husband to say it was just me and that I was only grabbing the book.  He had our girls in the bath and before I could get back out the door, he called me back in.  He said that there were several messages on the answering machine (again it was 1995) and that he had written all of them down but one because he didn’t catch what she said her number was with the girls giggling in the house.  He explained that the ones he wrote down were just wishing me luck or offering other suggestions on how to find my mother.

I decided to listen to the machine to get the one that he hadn’t written down and to quickly call it back before heading to the meeting.  I called the number and the voice that had matched the one on the machine answered.  I explained that I had received the message they had left concerning the letter in the paper.  She said, “Yes, I believe I am your mother.”

Watch for Part 2

~ Jennifer