Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of Adoptee Stories

Melanie Green is an infant adoptee from a private domestic adoption in the 1980s. Her adoption was facilitated by a lawyer known for high-dollar adoptions of babies with blonde hair and blue eyes, and for putting financial pressures on birth parents so they wouldn't be able to change their minds. Estranged from much of her adoptive family, she was hesitant to find her birth family.  After facing s...

Born in 1976, Andrea is a same-race, domestic adoptee with international roots. Andrea's birth mother was from Greece and traveled to Sacramento, California, where she gave birth to and relinquished Andrea before promptly leaving the U.S. Raised as an only child in her adoptive family, Andrea spent most of her life understanding her adoption story as a single narrative about how a couple who could...

"Just a quick note - this episode contains language some listeners might find offensive -- regarding experiences involving racism." In 1963, Shawn was placed for adoption because his white mother's family didn't want a biracial grandson. As an infant, he passed for white, and he was adopted by a racist, rural Indiana family who didn't realize that he was black. Ashamed of his ethnicity, his mother...

Lisa was born in 1958 and grew up in Franklin, Indiana. She was the youngest of two, both of whom were adopted.  As far back as she can remember, she always knew she was “chosen.” With no real information to go on, after submitting her DNA and no close family hits, her husband put together a family tree in which they were able to identify her biological father. They think they have her biological...

In 1983, Matt’s mother delivered him in a metro Detroit hospital. Within a week he was relinquished to Catholic Social Services, and moved into foster care to spend the first three months of his life. A married couple, unable to have a natural child themselves, adopted and raised him lovingly as their first child. While growing up, Matt always knew he was adopted, but besides this knowledge, his f...

Jennifer is an adoptee born in Orange County, California, in 1963. The first six weeks of her life remain a mystery. Although she was adopted by a loving family, her journey has not been easy. As part of the Baby Scoop Era, she was relinquished at birth and spent her early weeks in foster care. Her adoptive family, led by the daughter of a well-known artist and former model, provided a stable home...

Adam was adopted from Huentitán el Alto, in Jalisco, Mexico. Ron and Wendy had already adopted a son so they planned on adopting a girl as their second child to be named Amy but she suddenly passed away and out of distraught they told the lawyer to give them the next baby available, me. They changed names from Amy to Adam. Adam always felt different, like from another world. He exhibited signs of...

Melissa was adopted at birth in 1965 in Little Rock, AR. Her adoptive parents were able to take her home at five days old straight from the hospital since it was a private adoption facilitated by the doctors and lawyer. Understanding the signs of the times as she grew, she never felt rejected by her birth mother. Her life has been full and blessed from the beginning. For most of her life, she decl...

Michelle Rice-Gauvreau is a native Mohawk woman born in 1969 in Canada and raised in Connecticut via an illegal adoption, which was commonplace for many Indian babies throughout many years across North America.  She is the author of Who Am I? Native American Child Taken From A Reservation And Raised In White America . Michelle is a compassionate advocate for all adoptees looking for their own trut...

Rebecca is an adoptee, mother, teacher, historian, and award-winning author of the recently published ‘ Who Is a Worthy Mother '? An Intimate History of Adoption.’ Rebecca was driven to write a history of adoption in the United States from the perspective of an adoptee and to honor the memory of her older sister and the truth of brave women everywhere. Rebecca teaches in the School of Education at...

Ann Fessler is an author, filmmaker, and installation artist. Her work addresses the gap between the authoritative history one learns in history books, and that same history as understood by those who lived it. She has spent more than thirty years bringing stories of ordinary people, and the first-person narratives of adoption, into the public sphere through her visual works and Writing. Fessler t...

Julie Brumley is a trauma-informed adoptee coach who has been coaching men and women for more than 15 years to overcome addictive behaviors and heal the primal trauma of abandonment. She is also the CEO of Coming Home to Self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal. After her own birth mother tried to abort her twice, she found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades unt...

Ann Haralambie is an award-winning author and a trial and appellate attorney (a Certified Family Law Specialist and a Certified Child Welfare Law Specialist). She has a BA in Creative Writing, an MA in English Literature, and a JD in law. Her first book was a poetry chapbook published in 1976 by Desert First Works while she was in law school. Her three-volume Thomson Reuters legal treatise, "Handl...

Lena Rosenbloom is a domestic, closed-adopted person from New Jersey. She was adopted in the 80s and raised as an only child in an adoptive family that could not have children. She entered reunion in 2002 with her paternal biological family. Lena discovered her biological family through the adoption.com website and message boards in 2002. She has three half-siblings on her paternal side. Lena has...

Stephen Grochol is a Financial Planner in San Mateo, CA. He and his wife just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary and they have two daughters. He is a post-Baby Scoop and post-Roe v. Wade adoptee. Born in Oakland, CA in 1974 he is the oldest of three. One brother was adopted and the youngest was not. Stephen’s adoptive parents went through a private doctor for this process. He was relinquish...

Jennifer Dyan Ghoston is a same-race domestic foster alum and adoptee in reunion with both sides of her biological family. After a 27-year career in law enforcement with the Chicago Police Department, she retired in 2014 as a police detective. In 2015, she self-published her memoir, "The Truth So Far...a detective's journey to reunite with her birth family". She credits her spiritual journey that...

Kelly was born in 1970 and grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her parents divorced before she could remember and she had no contact with her dad. Second oldest of five children, she blended in well enough but noticed some differences. She had reason to believe she was adopted and asked when she was a teenager. Her mother continually said she was not adopted. The physical differences were dismissed as tra...

Dr. Liz DeBetta, creator of Migrating Toward Wholeness© is an adoptee and independent scholar-artist-activist committed to changing systems and helping people navigate trauma through creative processes. She believes that stories are powerful change agents and when we write them and share them we connect and heal. Liz is a proud member of Actor's Equity, SAG-AFTRA, Affiliate Faculty at the Institut...

Born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village on Nov. 11, 1954,  Michael was adopted five weeks later by John and Eleanor Coffey, a corrections officer and an RN,  respectively.  The adoption was handled by the New York Foundling Hospital. John and Eleanor had been unable to have children. He was raised as an only child in a small town in the Adirondacks. By the time his parents told him ove...

Lea is an adoptee born at the end of the Baby Scoop era, 1970. She was born and raised in the city where she currently lives with her family.  She knew from a young age that she was an adopted, a "chosen baby".  She was always proud to say she was adopted and would challenge classmates when asked about her "real parents".  Lea believes that she was raised by her  "real" parents and does not refer...

Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal-obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance. Then fate, and...

Kathleen was born in 1968 in Northern California. Her birth mother relinquished her for adoption immediately upon birth, and Kathleen was then adopted by a loving family who already had a 3-year-old adopted son.  When Kathleen was 22 years old she found her birth mother. Thirty years later she learned that her birth father was an enforcer for the Hells Angels and was shot and killed when Kathleen...

Gaynor was born in a mother-and-baby home and spent the first six weeks of life there before being adopted in the same town of birth. Despite a challenging childhood with an adoptive mother who exhibited narcissistic tendencies, Gaynor persevered through an unhappy adoption experience. At the age of 31, after becoming a parent, Gaynor reconnected with their birth family. This reunion, spanning ove...

Adopted at birth, Ajé loved sharing her adoption story throughout her childhood. She always had a feeling that she had been wanted by her birth parents, and was a tad obsessed with discovering where, and who, she came from. Around age 9, good, old-fashioned snooping led her to a document with clues about her birth parents and the person she would have been if they had kept her. She had no way of k...

Angela was born in Nebraska in 1979 and adopted at 3 days old. She grew up in a family that came with many complexities and issues, and she struggled to feel content with not knowing and being with her first family. At 16, she was able to reunite with her birth mother and half-siblings in person and has been in reunion ever since. Throughout the years, she's met more of her first family and has go...