Paying It Forward: My Dream to Offer an Adoption Writing Residency in the Vintage Trailer Where I was Conceived

Patricia Knight Meyer

Having Been Gifted the Space to Start My Adoptee Memoir; I Plan to Pay it Forward by Creating an Adoption Writing Residency in the Texas Hill Country

The idea for an adoption writing residency came to me after reflecting on the support and assistance I was given to help my dream of writing my memoir come to fruition. I started writing my memoir about being a black market baby, and my journey to find my family, shortly after meeting my birth mother and my birth father. A family friend of my birth father gave me two weeks in a cabin she owned in the Texas Hill Country. There I could do nothing but sit and write, cry, and commune with nature.

Time at this cabin meant I could set aside all the daily distractions of life and go the deep emotional places I needed to go, without the worry of dinner bells, school pick up, or work deadlines. Since this hideaway was just a few miles down the road from my birth father’s home, he would come over in the evenings and we would take walks, or sit on the porch, trying to catch up on 40 years we had missed together. Sometimes I processed with him the things that had come up for me in my writing that day. Sometimes I sent him home with a draft chapter.

Today, memoir complete and seeking an agent, I have a new adoption project. I am in the process of renovating the 1952 Spartanette trailer I was conceived in. My goal is to grant it as a free writing residency, located in the Texas Hill Country, to anyone in the adoption constellation working on an adoption-themed project (book/film/research/podcast) designed to bring awareness to adoption education and reform.

Adoptees, natural parents, adoptive parents, or researchers working on writing projects related to adoption truth and transparency, can get away at no cost to pursue their creative projects.

The trailer was given to me by my birth father, who, at 69, learned of my existence. The day I met him, he told me the trailer was still exactly where it was the night I was conceived. That night, he had taken my birth mother to his family camp, and they spent the evening in his family’s 1952 Spartanette (as shown in the image below).

Forty-odd years later, he would take me there to see it. A year before his death, we put 15k into the start of a renovation. Today, I am working hard to save and raise the money needed to finish the renovation in his memory, and to support other adoptees and constellation members like me with a story to tell. I will name her “Somebody’s Baby” and she will offer free writers’ residencies for those writing on adoption topics.

Then Came the Fire

A year after I met my birth father, before we started on the trailer, he renovated an older cabin on his property, so I would have a place to continue to work on the memoir. But only a few months after I moved in, that cabin caught fire, and all my belongings and years of writing were lost.

The fire did not stop me or break our relationship, it only strengthened my determination. I told Pop I would one day sign my memoir from the very trailer I was conceived in, and I plan to make that happen. I also told him I would find a way to make it all count — and to pay it forward for all he, and his friend who provided me a writing space, did for me; not to mention all the help and support I have received from the adult adoptee community. I did not know how I would do that then, but I do now.

Where Will the Trailer Be and Where is She Now?

The trailer will be placed where my writing cabin once stood, in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, near Garner State Park and within walking distance of the Frio River. She is currently being renovated by an expert woodworker / adoptive father in Kerrville, TX, who has agreed to take the project on. Pop and I had already put 15K into new windows, new electrical, new plumbing, and a new AC/Heater. What remains is the interior woodwork/bathroom renovation/flooring/appliances and furniture. See the update on her progress here. The property is ready but needs landscaping, a shelter for the trailer, and possibly a deck, an outside shower, and a fire pit.

Here is a mock-up of what I envision:

A really bad mock-up of what I envision regarding placement on slab and cover.

But most importantly, my vision is to make the trailer available at least 15 weeks a year as a writing residence, to any adoptee, birthparent, donor-conceived, late discovery, not parent-expected NPE, or adoption researcher working on a book/film or creative project about their experience. I also plan to write there myself, as I have several more books on adoption percolating.

I would appreciate any contribution from anyone touched by adoption to help me achieve this dream.

Pop passed Nov. 3, 2021, before we could complete the project. But I like to believe he knew I would find a way.

To learn more about the Renovation Project and help support my dream to renovate for a future adoption-focused writing residency, please visit my GoFundMe page here.