I don’t remember when my parents first told me I was adopted. I’ve always known. As a little kid, there were certain fundamental truths: My name was Greg, Santa Claus was real and I was adopted. I must have asked a lot of questions because in the third grade, my mom placed me in a special program at school for adopted children. I attended for a session or two and then refused to go back. At that age, who wants to be different?
A few years later, an older boy in the neighborhood who had a nasty streak told me, “Your real mother didn’t love you, and that’s why she gave you away.” Bullies have a special talent for identifying your insecurities and exploiting them. I think his words wounded me because, deep down, I believed them to be true. The one person who is supposed to love you more than anyone else—your mother—abandoned you.
As I got older, I didn’t think about being adopted as often. But it was always there, a quiet voice whispering negative thoughts in my ear, undermining my self-confidence and self-worth. People occasionally asked if I was interested in finding my birth parents, and I casually brushed them off. In hindsight, the fear of what I might find and the potential for rejection was overwhelming. I also worried a search would be perceived as disloyalty to my mom and dad, the parents who raised me and have always been there for me.
When I was 35, two major events changed my perspective on my adoption and kickstarted my desire to seek information about my biological family history. First, I was separated from my job after eight years of success and positions of increasing responsibility. I was simply the casualty of a leadership change, but the blow to my ego was devastating. I decided to see a therapist to help me understand why I felt so worthless.
My therapist tied my feelings back to my adoption and explained that adoption is a traumatic event. Many adoptees suffer from mental health challenges stemming from feelings of loss, disenfranchised grief, rejection and a lack of identity. What I felt was apparently “normal” for an individual with my background. He shared that, compared to a lot of adoptees who struggle in school, their careers and their relationships, I had adapted quite well. In other words, I had “succeeded” despite the psychological disadvantages inherent in being adopted. I sure didn’t feel like a success at the time, but it was nice to be validated.
My therapist lent me a book called The Girls Who Went Away, which documents the experiences of dozens of women who relinquished their babies in the 1950s and 1960s. The themes were typically the same. The women were young and unmarried. The pregnancies were unexpected and unwanted. The women were often conflicted about giving their babies away, and some fought hard to keep them. The authority figures in their lives—parents, clergy, the administrators at the homes where they were sent—encouraged and even coerced them into placing their children for adoption.
I think the hardest I’ve ever cried was while I read that book. The stories were heart-wrenching, and yet they also helped me understand that my birth mother may not have had a choice in the matter. They suggested that maybe she had loved me after all.
The second event that changed my thinking was the birth of our first child, Caroline. Here’s why: My wife, Maureen, knows a lot about her family history. She knows the villages in Ireland and Italy that her ancestors hail from. She has a big family—her parents, three siblings, 12 aunts and uncles, and 27 first cousins. They’re proud of their traditions and heritage.
When Caroline was a baby, everyone on my wife’s side had strong opinions about who she looked like. They gushed: “She’s a Creadon [my wife’s maiden name]! She looks just like Mae [my father-in-law’s mother] with her porcelain skin and rosy cheeks. And those eyelashes. She got them from you, Aunt Kathleen.”
I loved how excited they were, but it was like my own daughter didn’t have a connection to me. I didn’t know my countries of origin. I didn’t know my birth family’s history. I didn’t even know where I was born. I just knew my birthday. That’s it.
So, I decided I wanted information. I wanted to find my birth mother. (For some reason, I wasn’t motivated to find my birth father. I think reading The Girls Who Went Away made me feel empathetic toward her and even a little guilty about the trauma she endured. He, on the other hand, probably got off scot-free.) The fear of what I might find and the possibility of being rejected again was outweighed by a deep longing for answers. Although I feared the search might hurt my parents’ feelings, I felt I had to move forward to feel whole. It turns out my parents weren’t surprised or offended. They figured I’d conduct a search at some point.
Unfortunately, the process wasn’t going to be easy. Pennsylvania, where I was born and raised, was a closed adoption state at the time, which made biological parent-child reunions difficult. For the next eight years, I chased down every lead I could think of—calling hospitals in Philadelphia where I may have been born, trying to find the administrators at the home where my birth mother had stayed (my mom remembered that detail, but nothing more), contacting various adoption agencies, and signing up for reunion registries. I did the work in fits and starts. Every attempt hit a dead end. I considered hiring a private investigator, but it was expensive with no guarantee of success.
In 2011, my mom suggested I mail letters to the four county courthouses in and around Philadelphia in the hope that one of them had my adoption records. I received a positive response from the Delaware County courthouse. They had my records. The next step was to petition the court for non-identifying information. I filled out a form, sent the required $100 check and waited.
Weeks later, a letter arrived from the Orphans’ Court of Delaware County. I remember reading “orphans’ court” and rolling my eyes at what struck me as an antiquated and insensitive word. But the letter contained fascinating and tantalizing information.
My birth mother’s name was Jeanne; she was from Ohio; she graduated from college and studied in France; and she was 23 when I was born. The judge who penned the letter seemed sympathetic to my plight and apologized that he couldn’t provide more details. The letter also included my birth length and weight, and that I was born at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. (I like to joke that’s the closest I will ever get to the Ivy League.) Although it was wonderful to receive the letter and it filled in some gaps for me, I realized there wasn’t a clear next step.
Fast-forward to 2017 and Pennsylvania changed its adoption laws. Adoptees could now petition for their birth certificates, although birth parents had the right to redact their names. I didn’t learn about the change until the fall of 2018. But when I did, I looked up the steps, mailed the forms and again waited. I received a letter weeks later confirming receipt of my documents.
On Valentine’s Day 2019, I received a second letter. Like the previous correspondence, it included my adoption number and the Orphans’ Court letterhead. But this one was different. It revealed my given name at birth. I’d thought about being adopted thousands of times, but it never occurred to me that my birth mother had given me a name. I learned that my first name had been Sean, and my middle name had been Michael. I also learned my last name—which presumably was my birth mother’s maiden name and most likely the final clue to finding her.
I sat in my office chair, stunned, and re-read the name a dozen times. I slowly got up, walked over to Maureen, handed her the letter, and (as a sanity check) asked what she thought it meant. She smiled and said, “This was your name when you were a baby.”
We went to her laptop and, armed with my birth mother’s first name, maiden name, and other clues from the 2011 letter, we found her in about five minutes.
Maureen suggested we check Facebook to see if she had a profile. When Jeanne’s photo popped up, Maureen looked at me and said, “That’s your mother.” Then she said, “Katherine [our middle daughter] looks just like her.” We hugged.
Fortunately for us, Jeanne’s Facebook page had a public setting, and we didn’t need to be “friends” to view it. We opened a bottle of wine and looked through her photos and posts. We learned about her life and that I have two half-sisters. We also discovered she was married and raised her family about 30 minutes away in Fairfax County. It was a weird, wonderful trip down a memory lane of sorts.
The next day, I wrote Jeanne a letter. I had written it in my mind over the years, and it took less than 10 minutes to complete. I included my email address and mailed it that day. Jeanne contacted me soon after and we spoke on the phone for about 90 minutes. What had been a massive void in my life was quickly filled.
Over the next few months, I learned everything about her and her decision to give me away. I learned about her husband, daughters, grandkids and extended family. I learned about my birth father. No question was off limits. She has been incredibly open and honest with me, and I’m forever grateful.
Jeanne and I have formed a wonderful friendship, and my wife and daughters have been blessed to get to know her family. As reunions go, ours couldn’t be more gratifying and fulfilling. I was looking for information and found so much more. I realize how lucky I am. And the lingering feelings of loss, sadness, rejection and inauthenticity have largely dissipated.
Greg Hamilton is the owner and publisher of Arlington Magazine. This essay first appeared in Sacred Spaces: Subtle Shifts for Mind, Body, and Home Transformation Volume 3, an anthology of transformative stories compiled by McLean-based author and life coach Colleen Avis.