Tag Archives: Adoptive Kin

In the end, too many adoptees will leave this world alone

Rudy Owens self-portrait with the latest health challenge on full view

My current health situation, that has only started and won’t get better for a long time, reminds me of my years intervening to support my adoptive mom (who I call “mom”) and my adoptive sister. Mom died in February 2020 after a long bout with Alzheimer’s, and my adoptive sister, who is in a nursing home, is not well.

Maybe I could have done more to help both of them. I still do what I can to help my adoptive sister. My stepdad did more than seven years of heroic caregiving for my mom, and I appreciate what he did. Now that I find myself with serious health challenges, it’s sobering to realize how no one should go through life without someone to watch their back, particularly at the end of life.

In my case, there is no one in my adoptive family or stepfamily of 41 years who would step in to help me, even if we lived in the same community. Right now, I’m sure my three stepsisters know I’m injured by talking to my stepdad, and yet none have even sent an email. We live scattered, far from each other. This is the reality for all of these relations. If I am injured worse than I am now, I am entirely on my own. I continue to plan my life and the next chapter of my life with this as a daily priority to address.

I also think about being adopted and what compassion and care mean for the millions denied their biological relations by this oppressive system rooted in law, religious bias, politics, economics, social practices that have exploited many groups and single moms, racist practices that remove children of color from their kin networks, and corruption that has brought hundreds of thousands of persons to the United States to meet a “market demand.”

We adoptees are robbed of our many, many kin—parents, siblings, half-siblings, cousins, second cousins, aunts, uncles, second aunts, second uncles, third cousins, third aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, and countless more. All of these relations are also those who naturally and logically would be there to help us through life’s challenges. This is because the nature of our biological kinship, the root to our survival as a species from a socio-evolutionary perspective that is documented clearly in scientific research.

Rudy Owens and his recently found bio-kin in Finland, photographed in September 2024–we are family at the most elemental level and especially by blood kinship.

In my case, I am entirely on my own. No one is there to “watch my back.” It is a situation I have to deal with.

The one positive note from this sobering reality is I at least know I have biological kin in Finland—found in 2023—who genuinely care about me because we are kin. We are not all aligned politically. We are connected by biology, blood kinship, and genetics. At least I have this reservoir of knowledge to draw upon understanding how kinship works at a biological level in how we treat each other.

My blood kin in the United States, many who have died, live far from me. For those on my biological mother’s family, I am not connected with many. Some never even knew about me until recently, and our close “proximity” to each other as blood kin also creates tension that they cannot accept. The real barrier is my status as the bastard—the dark and dirty secret who had to be abandoned to this system of adoption to preserve society’s needs and to remove the dark stigma that illegitimacy has always represented globally to society all the way down to the individuals in families.

I cannot change anyone, and I cannot make anyone want to know me. What I can do now is make a plan to be ready for this final chapter.

I accept what adoption has done to my natural biologically-rooted safety net—because that is reality. Finland is very much on my mind as place to consider my last chapters. At least there, it is a society that cares for everyone, unlike our country that is unable to achieve lasting change for the better of us all.

An adoptee may never be family in kin networks

This shot was taken during a visit with some of my adoptive relatives. With some, it was the last time I ever saw them, and this image is nearly four decades old.

When I wrote my memoir on the U.S. adoption experience and my family story, I knew that I would have few fans among my adoptive and biological family members.

In fact, I wrote this in the introduction to my memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: “Some families may feel aggrieved by an adoptee sharing family tales. Some may feel deep anger. Adoptees risk harming those relations by helping others know about this experience that touches nearly all Americans through their personal, work, and community relations. Adoptees know they could disrupt their family ties forever.”

A year after I self-published my book, I learned that more people in my family network had read my book than I had thought. Some did not tell me they had until I learned by accident in unrelated communications. Of those who read it, none have genuinely reached out to me to discuss it, except two cousins, on either side of my adoptive families. I am happy for these conversations.

One likely barrier is my history with my extended adopted family. Some of us never really communicated for decades. In my book I explain how not being biologically related as distal kin is a major factor why there is this undeniable communications gap. My book makes this point, and none have reached out to explore this with me.

My adoptive father’s many failures, as a father and more, is another complicating factor. He was an alcoholic, and I only briefly touch on how that addiction forever shaped my family’s history and my life in ways I still think about on those dark, cloudy days. His very existence represents a shameful family secret, not to mention what he did as a husband and father.

From those who read my book, I did not receive any words of support about issues I addressed, such as the immorality of state laws and adoption systems that hide people’s identity. It is as if the issues I made clear at the individual and societal level did not matter, even when they had this true-life story connected to them personally. I never heard one communication that showed empathy.

By contrast, I have received many thoughtful comments from readers, who are strangers and who I have known throughout my life. Their words have been reassuring that the story I wrote touched on themes that are universal to the human experience.

In the end, the mostly cold shrug I received from my adoptive and even my biological family networks has made me all the more happy I wrote my book. And maybe my story will really only will connect with adoptees and just those who see them as equal persons in the eyes of the law. 

(Author note: My memoir does not mention any family member by first or last name, nor do I provide any clues that might reveal their identities.)