Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience
© 2017 Rudy Owens. All rights reserved.
You’re not my son . . . Get off my property.
—Rudy Owens’s Birth Father
The two months after I found my birth mother opened new doors and relationships that would evolve in the years to come. They also revealed bitter truths about my status as an illegitimately born child that I naively ignored until I confronted them head on. In less than eight weeks I met both sides of my biological families who had been unknown to me my entire life. Those encounters left crisp and painful memories, as if they happened yesterday.
Events unfolded quickly. During these months, I would receive family visitors and embark on another flight, to another city, where my kin called home. When I arrived at the doorstep of one of two people who brought me into this world, my birth father, I did not hesitate to knock. To an observer even familiar with my story, my actions might have appeared naïve or foolhardy. To me, they represented the only logical outcome and right thing to do. To this day, I have no regrets about my decisions made in the spring of 1989.
Return to Chapter 10: Flying to Detroit
Read More: Chapter 12: After the Discovery: Figuring out a New Identity