Everything is fine with Finland, my ancestral home

Rudy Owens in Helsinki, Finland, February 2024

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.)

Enjoy/ Nauttia!

‘Stateside’ interviews focus on Finland, adoptee rights, and our right to know our origins

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:

What I learned about happiness in Finland, my ancestral homeland

Some photos from a family meal capture the warmth of connecting with family, a joy almost like summer, in Kurikka, Finland (February 2024).

Today I published a new story examining my ties to one of my ancestral home countries, Finland, and why it consistently scores at the top of the charts for social wellbeing.

I think the Finnish people must be tiring by now of the many articles that latch on to the country’s consistent ranking, six years in a row, as the world’s “happiest country.” That’s the analysis provided annually in a big and well-researched report on individual and national wellbeing generated by the United Nations.

As a Finnish-American who only last year found his biological kin/family in Finland, I have a strong interest in “cracking the code” to what has made this Nordic nation of about 5.6 million rise to such lofty heights. It is certainly not the weather. On my last fabulous trip there, in February 2024, I had a mix of rain and snow, and mostly clouds.

Mostly I feel lucky to be Suomalainen (Finnish), at least one-quarter by birth, and to have had a chance to learn more about Finland from people who call it home.

On my last trip, to Helsinki, Tampere, Seinäjoki, and Kurikka, I visited my newly found “distal” kin/family and stayed in their homes. Naturally, we shared the joy of taking saunas. That gave me great perspectives that have warmed me even more to the Finnish people and their country. Thanks for the great memories, Finland/ Kiitos upeista muistoista, Suomi!

Letter supporting restoration of legal and human rights to all Michigan-born adoptees

Senator Stephanie Chang, Michigan Legislature, shown making closing remarks during a hearing on February 29, 2024, on two adoptee rights bills.

I submitted a letter on February 28, 2024, in support of two bills in the Michigan Legislature that would restore basic legal and human rights to tens of thousands of Michigan-born adoptees like myself and my adoptive sister. 

You can read a good summary of those bills on this page published by the Michigan Adoptee Rights Coalition, which has worked with lawmakers to advance the much needed and overdue reform.

None of the seven senators on the Civil Rights, Judiciary, and Public Safety Committee of the Michigan State Senate acknowledged they received my supportive letter and evidence on adoptee rights issues in Michigan. Nor did the committee staff during a hearing on February 29, 2024, in the committee on HB 5148 and HB 5149, say my letter was received, even though other individual persons writing for themselves were mentioned by name.

I made clear in my letter I was an author and issue expert on the history of adoption in Michigan, especially Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, one of the largest adoption hubs ever to operate in the United States.

The hearing itself was a lopsided affair, tilted to favor foes of adoptee rights: The Michigan Catholic Conference, an advocacy group affiliated with the Catholic Church, a historic promoter of massive family separation efforts at its Catholic Charity-run maternity homes;  and Right to Life Michigan. Adoptees and their allies were not given agency in a meaningful way. There were just two voices allowed to present in support of measures. No clear adoptee voice from someone who has endured decades of discriminatory treatment by the state and its health bureaucracy, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), was provided any platform to state facts how thousands of adoptees are treated continually by state bureaucrats who consider them to be second-place persons.

Here are some of my take aways from today’s legislative kabuki:

  • The horrific harm adoptees have suffered from this state, especially by its public health bureaucrats at MDHHS, was never raised. We’re dirt to them.
  • In this mostly fact-free session largely turned over to adoption promoters failed to let any adoptees share basic facts on the the shocking history of adoption in the state. In fact, this issue has not come up yet by any presenter in any hearing in the Capitol. No facts on decades of harm and lies to adoptees have been allowed to be shared publicly in this tightly scripted political theater.
  • To lawmakers running this process, it appears that adoptees, who number in the tens of thousands, are still just scary bastards to kick around.

I’m still waiting to see if the legislative statement I provided (see below) will be officially entered into the legislative record. At this point I do not have confidence that the chair of this committee, Sen. Stephanie Chang, views adoptees as human and even worthy of basic equality. You can view it here. Scroll to the end to see and hear for yourself. For me, I got this message: If you’re adopted, you don’t count.

What I don’t know is if the format for today’s hearing was at the whim of the chair or a shared consensus among members of the committee and other parties who negotiated outside of this setting. No lawmaker voiced strong support for adoptee rights today. That is a clear fact.

Letter is as follows: 

Dear Esteemed Senators: 

I’m a very proud Finnish-American Michigander and equally proud Detroit native.

I also am a Michigan adoptee still denied equal treatment by law because of the state’s inequitable laws denying Michigan adoptees the same treatment, by law, as non-adoptees in the state. This ongoing treatment remains in violation of the state’s constitution.

My humble request is this: VOTE YES/DUE PASS FOR HB 5148 and HB 5149. 

I was born at one of country’s largest adoption-promotion facilities, Detroit’s Crittenton General Hospital, in 1965. (It was torn down in 1975.)

I have written a public health examination of that facility: You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. The book came out in 2018, and I alerted every lawmaker in Michigan about the book then.

My book documents the history of Michigan’s adoption system that allowed for likely tens of thousands of family separations through adoption. I also examine how the state’s health system, the MDHHS, has promoted inequitable treatment of Michigan-born adoptees for decades. That treatment continues daily, especially to aging adoptees born between 1945-1980, the boom years of adoption when the state had the greatest number of families severed by this system. 

In my case, I was denied my original birth record for years by the state. Despite the poor treatment by the state’s vital records keepers, I found my biological kin in 1989. This happened in the face of nearly impossible odds and repeated efforts to hide information from me by my adoption agency and state vital records keepers.

It took another 27 years until I received an original copy of my birth certificate in 2016, through a court order, even after I had found my birth kin on my father and mother’s sides of the family back in 1989. Even having known my birth families, MDHHS denied me a copy of my birth certificate. It took countless demands and finally a court order to force the state to surrender my own records. 

This is one example of the ongoing discrimination and harm done by the state’s adoption laws and its state health system to thousands of adoptees like me and my adopted sister (born in Saginaw, born in 1963).

We now have a chance to restore decades of wrong to thousands of people with legislation before you. Many adoptees are now aging, and many have already lost birth family members they may never know because of decades of failures to restore legal rights to adoptees to be treated equally by law.

I’ve worked for years, engaging lawmakers directly, contacting the media, and publishing articles on harm that denies basic legal rights to Michiganders–all in violation of the state constitution.

I can speak to you, your staff, and members of your legislative policy team on my expertise on this issue and the research I have documented in my published work. 

Lastly, I also have published a long form story about my trip to Finland in September 2023 meeting distant Finnish relatives I never knew I had. My story explores the importance of family kinship and how Michigan’s current adoption secrecy laws sever such kin connections, when families separated by time and even oceans have a natural desire to connect. When I was in Finland in 2023, my relatives gave me a stack of letters my great grandmother sent to Finland during World War II, and even pictures after the war that include photos of my birth mother and other Finnish American relatives in my family. The Michigan/Finnish connections were very strong. I just visited my Finnish family members in Finland, again, in February 2024, and they treated me as family because we are family.

Resources to support restoration of basic legal rights to Michigan-born adoptees; please share with colleagues as needed:

Thoughts on John le Carré and my life as an adoptee

The author David Cornwall, more famously known by his pen name, John le Carré. Photo is being shared for the purposes of illustration only and will be removed if requested by the owner of the original photo; this site operates as a nonprofit clearinghouse for information on policy issues related to adoption and adoptee rights.

The great British novelist David Cornwall, known to world by the pen name John le Carré, died of complications from pneumonia on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 89.

Throughout my entire adult life, le Carré has been a frequent visitor to my thoughts as I have reflected upon my life as an adoptee.

I thought about him again this week, when my former work colleague told me they were an adoptee. This took me like a storm, because this former work associate never betrayed any signs of that status during our two years of closely working together during the pandemic.

This revelation struck me that they were, in my view, like me—part actor, part “mole.” Le Carré popularized that term to describe those who burrow deeply into another country’s intelligence services to serve another master.

I again realized that my former coworker, like me, was an accomplished master at hiding this most important aspect of their identity as we navigated our public worlds much the ways spies do, with hidden realities and public faces that never betray our true allegiances and actual identities.

Why le Carré matters to my adoptee persona
Foremost I remain a lifelong fan of le Carré because of his great skills as a writer.

I also admire him because we share a few core things in common and because of his ability to give shape to places of ambiguity that so perfectly matches my own worldview.  

… My affection for le Carré’s writing stems from being born into a world that oddly matches the spaces he painted with words for decades.

In my case, I am an adoptee, recruited to the service of adoption as an infant, with a fake birth certificate and new name and new family. (See my guide comparing le Carré’s spy craft jargon with my own adoption jargon for a quick comparison.)

SEE COMPLETE ESSAY ON THIS WEBPAGE.