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

Terrie Novak was adopted as an infant in 1967. She and her adopted brother, Gene, grew up in the security of a loving family and in awareness of their adoption. When Terrie was 18, thanks to the heroic efforts of her first mother, she received her bio family's contact information. Today Terrie is privileged to a rare abundance of love shared with her first mother, biological siblings, as well as h...

Mike Berman was conceived in Bay City, Michigan in November 1944 and was born on August 8, 1945 in Nashville, Tennessee to an 18 year old woman who surrendered him for adoption to the Tennessee Childrenʼs Home Society the day after his birth. Mike was adopted by a Jewish couple living in New York City and he was raised there. In February 1950 his Mom gave birth to her only natural child, Mikeʼs yo...

Mireille Landry  is an interracial adoptee who, alongside her identical twin sister, was adopted at 3 months old and raised in a predominantly white area by white adoptive parents. Originally intended to be a closed adoption, at the age of 12, the twins coincidentally met their birth mother at the mall while traveling to a nearby city for a soccer game. This unexpected encounter marked the beginni...

Faith Brady was born on 22 June 1969 and adopted one month later when the US landed on the moon. She has always known she was adopted and had a great relationship with her adoptive parents. Her parents then adopted another child, a brother, 3 1/2 years later.  In 2015 she had to have open heart surgery and it was then that she became very interested in her medical history.  Ancestry found a 1st co...

Chris Stearns is Navajo and was adopted in the mid-1960s before the Indian Child Welfare Act existed. His mom was part of the federal Indian Relocation program which moved Native Americans away from reservations to large cities as part of a national assimilation policy. Chris began his life in the Los Angeles County foster care system and was adopted when he was 2 years old by a loving white famil...

Nancy Davis was born in Florida in 1949 and adopted by a family from New York. The adoption was private and no documents were available to investigate her origins. An Ancestry test 6 years ago revealed that Nancy had 5 siblings in North Carolina from her birth parents, 3 brothers, and 2 sisters. It has been an amazing journey for her and has helped fill many of the “unknowns” of her heritage. She...

An unofficial adoption. David Enker was born in Amsterdam in 1970, following the Summer of Love of 1969. Relinquished a few months after birth to another family in The Hague, his birth mother, a university student at the time, had hoped to retrieve him after her studies. Although never officially adopted, things turned topsy-turvy when his new family refused to let him go. A bumpy reunion unravels...

I’m Annie O. O stands for my last name. O is round. It’s a hole I still live in, that I’m not allowed to escape. Why the fuck is that how it has to be? Adoption has a long history, with a narrative built around it being a celebrated act of love, of charity and saviorism. I rejoice for those who experienced the best of that narrative. However, there is a growing number of investigations and reports...

Mariela Andersen is the author of "Home Sweet Casa: A Journey to The Universal Heart". Her book is the story of her reunion with her biological family in Colombia after being separated from them at birth. Mariela’s book takes the reader along with her as she discovers more about her past than she could have ever imagined and dives deep into the multifaceted layers of what makes her who she is. Ado...

Paige Strickland is an Ohio “Baby-Scoop Era” adoptee, teacher, mom of two and grandmother of three. She is the author of two memoir books, Akin To The Truth and After The Truth. She is currently working on a YA (young adult) book-in-verse version of her books. Paige also teaches Zumba (tm) Fitness, enjoys working in her garden, loves the beach, reading and spending time with her family. Also in th...

Sarah and Louise join their season three authors, A.M. Homes, Damon Davis, and Megan Culhane Galbraith in an intimate roundtable discussion about living as adult adoptees and learning to navigate early childhood wounds. "The Mistress's Daughter" by A.M. Homes "Who am I Really: An Adoptee Memoir" by Damon Davis "The Guild of the Infant Saviour" by Megan Culhane Galbraith Thank you to our sponsor S1...

Rudy Owens is a Detroit native, born in the mid-1960s at Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, one of the country’s largest maternity hospitals dedicated to supporting and promoting adoption. He was relinquished to his adoptive family shortly after his birth from his single mother and placed with another family after spending nearly five weeks in foster family care. His adoption story typifies m...

Kate Betancourt was born in 1978 in Bogotá Colombia. She spent three months in the hospital after her Mother left, after her birth. Kate was transferred to an orphanage where she stayed until her adoption by an American couple at six months old.  Kate grew up in Michigan with one younger sibling biological to her adoptive parents. Growing up a Transracial adoptee in a mostly white area had its iss...

Jeffrey Leventhal was born In 1970 in Miami, FL, and didn’t learn until age 12 that he was adopted. He was told that he had a twin, which was just one of several lies that persisted throughout his childhood. Having never felt like he fit in and being rebuffed by his adoptive family whenever he requested more information, when Jeff was in his 20s, he decided to dive deep into his adoption only to f...

A conversation with fellow adoptee Anne Heffron. Anne Heffron, author of You Don’t Look Adopted, Truth and Agency Writing Ideas for Adopted People, Writing and Pooping, and the movie Phantom Halo, can be found on Instagram at anne-heffron, Facebook, and her website https://www.anneheffron.com . Also in this episode, Sarah and Louise discuss Megan Culhane Galbraith’s “The Guild of The Infant Saviou...

Everyone learns to accept life’s twists and turns as they live out the daily rituals of their lives.  But what happens when an event completely alters one’s understanding of everything about the world in which they live, including who they are?  Fred Nicora brings the audience into his innermost thoughts as he sees his foundation swept away with a simple slip of the tongue at the age of forty-one,...

Katie is an ESL teacher from Pennsylvania and was adopted in 1966 at the age of six weeks.  She grew up always knowing she was adopted, but became the people pleaser in a huge Irish Catholic family always feeling like she was "on the outside looking in".  After having her first child in 1995, she contacted the adoption agency to obtain her medical history and was warned, "These reunions don't alwa...

Jay Blotcher was adopted in June of 1961 at the age of one year by a couple in Randolph, MA, a Boston suburb. His dark complexion prompted countless questions about his lineage during childhood.  In March of 1988, Jay was contacted by his birth mother, Valerie Paul, and learned he was the product of a one-night-stand between this young girl and a pitcher from the Baltimore Orioles of Puerto Rican...

Julie was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1968 at a Salvation Army home and was adopted 5 days later by a lovely family. She always knew she was adopted but it was not really talked about much other than to say she was "chosen" and very much wanted. Julie was born a very sensitive little girl. The parents had a child of their own 8 years prior with special needs. They tried to get pregnant again but we...

When he was ten years old, Paul Fronczak was snooping around for Christmas presents in a crawl space in his family’s Chicago home. There, he found hundreds of old newspaper clippings about the kidnapping of a one-day-old infant in a hospital in 1964. He also learned that, two years later, the boy was found and returned to his family—and that the boy was him. Nearly fifty years later, Paul, acting...

Kay was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1973 and immediately placed for adoption.  After a stay in foster care, she was adopted into a small close-knit family.  Adoption was not discussed a great deal, but it was not hidden either.  Despite being loved and spoiled, Kay was never quite comfortable in her own skin. She received her original birth certificate in 2015 and was able to locate her maternal bi...

Cormac was born into a mother-and-baby home in Ireland, which was known to be exceptionally cruel to both mother and child. He was adopted at five months old. He's always known he was adopted but it was never spoken about. Ever. He did not look for his biological family until his adoptive parents died. He re-connected with his birth mother just before his fiftieth birthday. Sadly that didn't work...

Shari was adopted at the age of four. She spent the first year in a hospital. Then went to several foster homes after that. When she met her adopted family, there was always an open conversation about her beginnings. She always knew her story from her past, so she never had many questions. Later on in life, she began a spiritual quest to heal from journey, as a young girl. This brought her to meet...

Greg was born California in 1969 and placed in a closed adoption as an infant after spending 6 weeks in foster care, which was a common practice with Baby Scoop Era adoptions. Growing up, he sensed a certain ill-fit with his family, and found out about his adoption when he was 10. In 2006, at age 37, he finally discovered and made contact with his biological maternal side, and has experienced all...

Charity Elliott was born in 1969 and after spending 3.5 months in foster care was placed for adoption with the State of California.  Growing up in Missouri, Charity was a happy adoptee and found great comfort in her faith and in the sport of basketball.  After a collegiate career that ended with her team making it to the Final Four, Charity entered the college coaching ranks where she has spent th...