Focused on supporting those in or preparing for adoption reunion, I share with you a collection of posts about my adopted life. I am not exactly an adoptee, as I was never adopted, but rather, I am a black market baby, sold with no paperwork, judge or agency involved. I write about my life as an “adopted” child, adoption trauma, abandonment and healing, my search, and my experience navigating the always moving waters of my adoption reunion, and the impact it all has had on both myself and my biological and adoptive families.
I can’t remember a time I did not write. My mother would have told you that before I could shape a letter, I wrote on the walls, on my body, on windows, and in the sand. Always the first in class to finish the essay and wonder what was taking everyone else so long, I was also the child who cried over my times tables and later had full-blown meltdowns inspired by algebra equations. Not surprisingly, I always wanted to grow up to write, and even better “be a writer.”
Returning to my passion for creative writing, after two decades of working in digital marketing, I feel my writer’s journey coming full circle. In the last few years, I have encircled myself again with a community of writers, joined local writer’s groups, attended writing retreats in Costa Rica, and taken online workshops run by a talented author (as well as my book editor) Julie Hartley. As she and I put the final touches on my adoption memoir manuscript, I am now seeking an agent and publisher for my memoir.
Without my tribe of adoptees, I can’t imagine how I would have found my way through my adoption journey. These include all sides of the triad, adoptees. birth parents and adoptive parents, many of whom I met more than a decade ago at The Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, and others I have formed bonds with online via my own Adoption Reunion Support Group on Facebook, my Adoptee page on Facebook, the Birth Father’s page I admin since my birth father’s passing, my Twitter and Instagram communities @myadoptedlife, as well as the many Adoptee Groups on Facebook who also welcomed me into their circles. I encourage any member of the triad looking for support to seek out your tribe on social. Whether you are searching for birth parents, advocating for adoptee rights, or managing reunion, you will surely find a supporting community waiting.
What one would call a black-market baby, my outside-the-system “adoption,” meant my “adoptive” parents never received my birth certificate, an adoption never took place, and the name I used never existed on any legal document. Thus, I grew up with no legal name, date of birth, or legal document to prove my existence. I was entered into private schools that didn’t ask for records, and when I got my first job offer at 13, my adoptive father obtained a false birth certificate so I could acquire the social security card required.
Thus, despite one predatory black market attorney’s best-laid plans to erase any record of me, at 18 I set out to unravel the mystery of me. It was not just curiosity that drove me. I knew I had to solve the mystery or navigate my life with no legal documentation, no way to legally possess a social security card, a driver’s license, or a passport — no way to prove I even existed. Since no adoption happened, no sealed record did either, meaning I had no shred of info to go on. No birthmother name, no given name, not even a date of birth. Thus, my against-all-odds quest to tie my name to a true birth record would be just that, especially since my search began before electronic records or DNA databases existed. Still, two decades later, in 2010, my research and patience with the progress of technology paid off.
My adoptive mother’s passing reignited my desire to search, and that is when I learned the Texas Birth Record Index had finally become digitized. I scoured it using the only info I knew about myself, my sex, county, and possible years and months of birth. I found my birth mother in less than a month. Eventually, she divulged the true details of my conception story and led me to my birth father, who stood before a judge and helped me finally obtain a legal birth certificate after 47 years. A video of the day I met him has more than 280,000 views on YouTube.
I am seeking to publish my memoir, [REDACTED]. It is about the psychological impact of being a black-market baby and the crippling consequences that befell a family living with the fear that any day someone could return to take back their baby.
From the beginning of my search, I joined the Adoption Knowledge Affiliates of Texas, and later spoke and participated at their conferences. I have been interviewed about Adoption on the Huffington Post and WHIV and started this blog and a Facebook Group dedicated to helping adoptees along their reunion journey. Today, I am part of a huge community of friends and advocates in all corners of the adoption triad.
On this journey, I have learned how life as an adoptee shapes my view of the world and my perception of myself and others. Through the opportunity to heal that comes with reunion, I see my childhood and adoptive parents through more informed eyes. Reunion is not easy, it’s scary as hell, but it’s liberating beyond belief. I am honored to share my journey with you as an adoptee in reunion. As I continue to journey through life’s looking glass. I invite you to come along.
My writing education began with a degree in magazine journalism from UT, and employment at the Writer’s League of Texas, where I helped manage writing contests, retreats, book festivals, and conferences and got to hang out with mega-talented inspiring writers. My first job out of college found me editing the Texas Highway Patrol Magazine, and curating content for the Texas Highway Patrol Museum.
I dabbled in freelancing for national and local magazines and published in the Galveston Daily News, the Austin American Statesman, and an Anthology of Galveston, Texas writers. Looking back today, I can see I was on the right track. I wish I had stayed there. Yet, life as a single mom and full-time caregiver to my mother led me into the dot-com boom world of digital marketing and communications. Highlights from this time in my life include the role of senior communications writer at Blockbuster Corporate, followed by a chief editor position helping build and launch HappyNews.com the world’s first positive news website.
At HappyNews, entrepreneur, author, and futurist, Byron Reese, hired me and soon became a mentor and close colleague. In our decades of work together, I have helped edit and place his articles, managed his social media, secured his speaking events, and promoted all four of his books. Thanks to Byron, I am confident I have the marketing chops necessary for my own solid book launch.
Today I bounce between the Texas Hill Country and New Orleans, and am a mom to a beautiful and inspiring 30-something daughter and two ridiculously unique and entertaining grandsons, with whom I give every ounce of my extra GiGi energy.
To learn more about my work, visit my portfolio.
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
