Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience
© 2017 Rudy Owens. All rights reserved.
Did you really believe those stories you were told?
—Rudy Owens’s Question to his Paternal Aunt and Cousin, 2007
In her 1968 book on the adoption experience, adoptee-rights pioneer Jean Paton provided one of the best descriptions that adult adoptees confront once they have completed their search. They are transformed, in ways that others are not: “The Reunion of adopted people with their kindred is not equivalent to other human reunions because of the experience within it, the loss of stigma, which other reunions do not include. Other actual reunions are not linked to concepts of personal change and personal reformation, except for reunion with God when that is experienced or believed possible. Therefore the special curative element in the adoption reunion seems to most people to be an unlikely thing. Examples are, of course, known to many privately, whether or not the full potentials of the situations have been achieved.”
Once an adoptee finds they have a whole new family, it takes time to sort out the patterns of family events, holiday rituals, and vacations. Did I send birthday cards? Yes, to my birth mother and birth grandparents, while both were still alive. How about Mother’s Day cards? Yes, both mothers each got one, every year. Where did I go for holidays? In my case, I always spent time, when I could afford to travel from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, to the St. Louis area. That is where my adoptive family called home. My adoptive mother was still mom. My adoptive sister was still my sister. My stepdad was still only my stepdad, and never anything more.
Return to Chapter 11: Out of the Darkness: A Son Emerges from the Shadows
Read More: Chapter 13: Battling Michigan for Records