Rudy Owens took this photograph of his birth mother in 2009; what do you see and why are you looking at it now?
The entire time I have communicated about my history as an adoptee and the widespread denial of basic human and legal rights to all adoptees, I held a line.
That demarcation point, for me, represented a conscious act of power and an act of defiance.
Until today, April 27, 2024, I have never publicly published a photograph of my closest biological family relative that showed their face.
Here it is. Are you amused? Do you care?
On a few occasions I published very old pictures of my biological grandparents, on my maternal and paternal family sides. These are so buried in my archive, they are likely impossible to find. These photos are also old, and they are more like museum artifacts than documentation of blood lineage.
But now I have arrived at a new destination, because the Angel of Death arrived late this week.
In fact, I started writing this essay when my birth mother* was among the living, a day before her passing. Now she is among the dead, having died in a Michigan hospital this week after a long declining trajectory to death’s final clutches.
This week, I thought more deeply about mythology and finding magic. I realized both will be topics in a book I have decided I need to publish about an amazing year of exploration, discovery, and finding “my home” in one of my ancestral countries, Finland. All told, I’ve published nearly 20 essays since early 2023 on my connections to this Nordic country, as well as hundreds of photographs.
In my essay I wrote this past week about what I learned during this time, I reflected on the role of myth in my life and this latest, happy chapter. I described how knowing the power of myth gave me a power to overcome the nation’s discriminatory legal system that denied me my legal rights to know my identity and kin.
“In fact, understanding myth and my adoption story gave me what I consider to be a tactical advantage compared to other adoptees who start their journeys for self-awareness far later in life. I was in a totally different place because I already had deep knowledge of myth’s meaning to the human experience because I read countless books on myths as a young person and learned the stories of the Bible in church every Sunday.”
I had a lot of great conversations with some friends, and I came up with a working title for now of this new book: “When the Sirens Call: Finding ‘my Home’ in Finland.” I wanted to make a public statement, by video, to keep the fire under my feet to honor this promise. I also quote the great thinker and author of a book exploring myth, Joseph Campbell, who also talks about “finding one’s bliss.” It’s has nothing to do with cheap, New Age gimmicks from guru hucksters. It’s akin to wisdom shared by other wise thinkers, like Viktor Frankl.
Campbell noted: “If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you’re living somehow. And when you can see it, you begin to deal with people who are in your field of your bliss, and they open doors to you.”
This was perfectly true for me on my journey “home” to Finland. More will be coming later. Remember, when you hear the sirens, you must listen and you must respond. That is life calling you!
On Jan. 15, 2024, I sent a “letter to the editor” to a national publication called The Nation’s Health, a public health newsletter published by the American Public Health Association (APHA). My letter was about 300 words and focused on clearly documented public health practices promoted by the country’s national public health organization.
In my letter, I noted, “Today, most health and public health experts, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), encourage all Americans to know their family health history to share with their medical providers to promote better health.”
I read the entire letter in my video here.
I pointed out in my letter that “no medical health group or public health groups have publicly supported changing state adoption laws that deny birth records and family medical history to millions of U.S.-born adoptees.”
I ended my letter with a call to action, for what the public health field commonly calls evidence-based, upstream public health interventions. That is precisely what adoptee rights advocates have been calling for, for more than 50 years, asking for reforms to state laws to unseal original birth records that would provide millions of people better health by allowing them to better know their health history.
I ended my letter noting: “This year, public health practitioners can join with adoptees in legislative advocacy to improve the health of millions by changing these laws.” My note even highlighted my own family’s story about being a Finnish-American and having lost a close birth relative to heart disease very tragically on Dec. 29, 2023.
Even with the death of a close family member and the clearly documented evidence regarding what all health and public health experts say is a best practice, to know one’s family health history, I never heard back from the editorial staff of The Nation’s Health.
I respectfully resubmitted my letter three more times, a total of four times, since Jan. 15, 2024. I have never received confirmation if my letter would be accepted or if it was rejected.
I am assuming now that the letter has been rejected. I believe my letter was not accepted because of the tension such a letter raises.
In my view this tension may even cause internal denial and reveal professional and national patterns of cognitive dissonance by a field that proclaims to promote public health but has embraced national practices on millions of adoptees that harm their health and the nation’s public health.
In my 2018 book examining adoption from a public health perspective and on my website, I’ve long called upon health and public health groups to support adoptees.
“Both have a moral obligation to advocate for the well-being of all adopted Americans as a population,” I write. “Both also have a responsibility to correct their past historic roles creating a system that denies adoptees rights and also health information that could potentially be life-saving for some.”
This field has long supported U.S. adoption practices, particularly in the erasure of millions of U.S-born adoptees’ identities and by creating new and “not truthful” amended birth certificates bearing names of adoptive parents as the legal parents of adopted children and the sealing of original birth records (vital records) in most states, as part of the system’s wide expansion by the 1950s. (This is documented in many books, which I provide links to on my website.)
If you work in public health and want to support adoptee rights in legislative policy debates, I welcome your support. Contact me, and I can help guide your involvement where and when it can count.
Finally, in the time since I first reached out to APHA’s publication, adoptee rights bills in 2024 have stalled in Michigan and Georgia, delaying health and justice to countless tens of thousands of adoptees who needed “experts” to advocate on their behalf. These outcomes could have been different had health and public health experts provided supportive testimony.
Adoptees are, to date, collateral damage to outdated public health practices and laws that no longer serve any purpose when commercial DNA testing has virtually eliminated absurd notions of “secrecy.”
It’s time to fix this where it counts—in policy debates to change state laws and restore rights to adoptees by law.
As a Finnish-American by birth, with one quarter of my ancestry rooted in the Nordic nation of Finland, I am by birthright personally and biologically attached to this country. Today, this is cause for celebration, as suddenly all things Finnish, in the eyes of the world and social media, are wildly cool—or as the Finns say, “Siistia!”
In March 2024, it was named, for the seventh year in a row, the world’s “happiest country,” according to a United Nations report examining major areas of individual and societal wellbeing. But that is not the reason I have taken a strong and later-in-life interest in my core Finnishness and my biological family history that can be traced to Finland’s farming belt.
I am a long lost “son” of Suomi because of my origins being separated from my kin through adoption. Naturally, my Finnish “sisu” prevailed. I found my kin and my heritage, against improbable odds. This also became part my book I published in 2018 called: You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Not only did I find my U.S. kin, I connected in 2023 and 2024 with my wonderful and long-lost Finnish relatives in a nation that is suddenly popping up in health research, documentaries, wonky policy research, and on countless social media streams.
All told, I’ve written 15 articles and some long-form stories (one is 9,000 words!) about Finland and my ties to it since March 2023. I’ve had my writing published the Genealogical Society of Finland (a 4,000 word story is available to its members) and I’ve been interviewed on the Michigan Radio news magazine “Stateside,” to discuss my story connecting with my Finnish kin. I’ve put all of my writing and my in-depth Finnish photo essays on my page that I’ve branded: “Celebrating all things Finnish—Kaikkea suomalaista juhlitaan.” Let me know what you think. We can learn a lot from the Finnish people, especially how they care their people.
(Note: I’ll be updating this page later with more photo essays and an essay about what I learned taking saunas in Finland, including the “sauna capital of the world,” beautiful Tampere.)
Rudy Owens and his newly found Finnish relatives from September 2023
I want to thank Michigan Radio, “Stateside” host April Baer, producer Mercedes Mejia, and all of the Michigan Radio crew who help inform Michiganders about important issues.
I am especially appreciative of their news reporting and also generous consideration to host two interviews this past week on: adoptee rights legislative proposals in the Michigan Legislature, and another with me, as an author and advocate for adoptee rights as a Michigan-born adoptee.
As always, patience and professional persistence opened these doors (I started in November 2023), along with the timing of the legislative debates on this important policy issue for thousands of Michigan-born adoptees.
My March 20, 2024 interview with “Stateside” host April Baer broadly explored my recent two visits to Finland in September 2023 and in February 2024, to meet my biological family I only recently connected with last summer. I shared why such a visit to an ancestral home country, to meet long-lost biological kin, matters for adoptees, who are denied rights to their original birth certificates and family information like ethnicity by state law. (If you want to quickly find my interview segment, jump to the last 20 minutes of the podcast–you can get there quickly by dragging the mouse on the podcast recording player.)
“Stateside’s” March 19, 2024 interview on adoptee rights legislation before lawmakers included three members of the Michigan coalition that has been working to pass legislative reform in Michigan to restore rights to tens of thousands of Michigan-born adoptees. That interview featured Michigan Adoptee Rights Coalition members Valerie Lemieux, Erica Curry Van Ee, and Greg Luce. All are adoptees. The interview can heard found here.
Not every radio news magazine would provide more than 15 minutes of valuable airtime for each interview to discuss issues of adoption secrecy in Michigan, legislative reform efforts that were launched last fall, and the importance to all of us to know who we are and where we come from, all secured for all persons by law. But “Stateside” decided this issue merited time for a meaningful dialogue that examined many aspects of this human rights issue, including discussing arguments used by adoptee rights opponents.
Thank you, “Stateside”/Kiitos, “Stateside”!
See my stories about my visits to Finland to meet with my biological kin and what these stories mean to those denied our ancestry and birth records by law:
