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by Debbie Swarts
Email: dswarts@hotmail.com
I was adopted when I was 30 days old. The people who adopted me, whom I call my Parents, had waited 20 years to have children. My philosophy on adoption is that I don't believe that some people actually put a long range plan into action when they want to adopt. I believe that some people want a baby so bad, that at the time, the only thing they can think of is the baby. Not realizing that this baby is going to someday become an adult and have a mind of it's own and also genetically be different. I also believe that some people will tell the birth mother ANYTHING to just get their hands on the baby they want so bad. At least that seems to be the case in my particular adoption.
I was adopted into a family that had no other children and I was the only grandchild on my Mother's side of the family. In other words, I was pretty spoiled.The farthest back I can remember, which is about 4 years old, everything seemed very normal and typical in our life. I didn't really feel anyway other than a happy child and went about my life feeling secure in that. It wasn't until I started elementary school that I started to question where it was I came from. In about the second grade, I met a couple of kids who told me they were adopted. I found this to be very shocking and scary. But they also told me that their parents had told them they were and why and that everything was okay with it. Somehow I felt sorry for them because they didn't know who their real parents were. It didn't change how I felt about them but it certainly sparked curiosity as to whether or not I was adopted.
In the second grade I suppose that everyone wonders if they are adopted or not. When I got home from school I told my Mom how a couple of friends of mine were adopted and asked her if I was. Her answer was no. That was pretty much the end of the discussion. I let it go after that with one exception, my relatives. I always had a sense of feeling very different from them. It didn't really keep us from playing or anything like that. I just felt that I was treated different than everyone else; especially by the adults. Also, there wasn't a great deal of affection displayed by my parents towards me. That certainly didn't help with the feelings I was having. I would see how other families functioned and thought how funny it was that we weren't like that. However, my Mom told me that I wasn't adopted so it had to be true.
As I got into Junior High and first year of High School, I really started to sense that something was very different about me in relation to my family. I started to realize that the only baby pictures there were of me were from 30 days on, there were no pictures of my Mom pregnant with me, I couldn't physically identify with anyone in my family, I seemed to have a different genetic make-up and outlook than my parents(completely different) and my relatives really started to seem distant in more ways than one. Again, I just struck it up as paranoia and tried to quit thinking about it. It wasn't until about my junior year in high school that things really escalated. During that year, I got into what some would say was the "wrong crowd". I never looked at it that way because those people were my friends and a few still are to this very day. We became self indulgent in the drug/drinking scene with little thought about what we were actually going to do when we graduated. I think that we were pretty typical teenagers to a certain extent. Then in some ways, we were pretty way out there for our time. I believe now that it was the sense of belonging to something, being liked by someone that kept me from doing better in school. My parents and I were fighting all the time and all I cared about was belonging to something or someone. I didn't have that secure feeling with my parents and so I looked for it in other places.
My mother had the hardest time with me. We bucked horns at every single intersection of our lives. There was nothing I could do that was good enough or righteous enough for her. So, I decided that I would do whatever I had to no matter what she thought. Of course, this decision caused a lot of problems between us.
I finally made it through high school, just barely, and I had not a clue what I was going to do with my life. I decided to get into retail for awhile and ended up being successful at it but got bored. I even got married but that didn't last long because of my insecurities about myself. I just felt so different that I found myself going in and out of relationships, jobs, situations, looking for something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. In the back of my mind, I felt like there was a big part of me missing somewhere.
And then it finally happened. I was staying with some relatives of mine and my cousin and I were out walking one night and he said to me, "Did you know that you are not our REAL cousin?" I suppose that I should have been shocked with what he was telling me, but I matter of factly replied, "what do you mean?" He proceeded to tell me how I was adopted and how the whole family had been sworn to secrecy not to ever tell me.
"YOU ARE NOT WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE" was the next sentence that came out of his mouth. What a relief I thought. I knew all my life that I was different and now the pieces were coming together. WHO AM I? Now all I wanted to know was how I was going to find my biological parents. I became very obsessed about this and went as far as getting into my adoptive parents personal file that was locked away in their bedroom. I knew some of the answers could possibly be hidden there. I could have never prepared myself for what I found in those files.
Not only did I find the adoption records, I also found an original birth certificate with a different name!! My name had been changed after I was adopted! I was overwhelmed with a myriad of emotions. The first thought that came into my mind was how I had been lied to all my life. Even after I ask for the truth. I studied all the documents until I had everything memorized. I was even more determined to find the truth out. First I had to confront my adopted parents. That was going to be a difficult thing to do because they had raised me, gave me nearly everything I ever wanted materially and here I was going to open a can of worms that could possibly change how we all felt. However, I had to know why they lied. It took a lot of courage to talk to them about it, but I did. They were very uncomfortable about it and I could tell they really didn't want to discuss this issue. They told me they lied to me because someone else in our family was adopted and when they told her, she ran away and they didn't want that to happen with me. That still was no excuse to lie about it to me. Especially after I had asked them about it when I was younger. I really couldn't get much information out of them, and my Mom was very upset about it so for at least that time, I didn't discuss it with them again.
I then went to work at the International Airport in our city and loved being around all the people. I worked with someone that really stunned me because she looked so much like me. I sort of felt for the first time in my life I looked like someone! We worked together for quite a while and then one day the guy that I was dating was reading the newspaper and gave it to me. For some strange reason that I will never know, I turned to the obituaries. There I found a picture of someone who looked like me. I started to read his obituary and all the of names that I had memorized from the adoption records were in this article! I couldn't believe it. It was a brother of mine! And in the article was where some of my brothers were from and it also had my birth Mother's name in it. I immediately went back to work and was telling this girl that looked like me about it she replied, "I am related to those people also". I was so stunned and happy at the same time because I knew I was so close to finding my birth parents. I immediately looked up some of the names in the phone book and found them. I wanted to call so bad, but since my brother had just passed away, I decided to wait a while. I didn't want to seem tacky calling at a time like that. I waited for a week, and made my first phone call. BINGO!! It was one of my brothers. From there he put me in contact with another brother and a sister and I found out that they were really my half brothers and sister. Their Father died and then my Mom met my Father and I was the only child between them. I was the only one adopted, the rest of them were in foster homes most of their lives. They put me in contact with an aunt that actually lived in the same town as I did and she called my birth mother! The next thing I knew I was driving down to my aunt's house to meet my birth parents! After 23 years I was going to get to see my birth Mom and Dad. I was so excited, but at the same time I was extremely nervous about the whole thing. What was I going to find out? What if they didn't like me? Every single "what if" went through my mind.
I wish that we could have had a video camera the first time we met. I pulled up at my aunt's house and walked around the house and out came my Mom and Dad. We hugged and cried and I felt an instant bond with them. They told me that the girl I worked with at the airport was my Dad's sister's daughter! No one could believe how we ended up at the same place. My Mother told me her side of the story as to what happened and why I was adopted. She told me how she never wanted to give me up but had to and the only thing she could ever do for me was name me and that even got taken away. She also told me another startling fact, I was a twin but she died at birth.
For many years, I resented my adopted parents because of how they lied to her, me and told their family to. I could have cared less if I had anything to do with them. But then it just so happened that I became pregnant and had a son. The first years of his life, naturally, not a word was breathed to him about any of this. But as he has gotten older, his Dad did tell him I was and we sat down to discuss it one day and I suddently realized that this little boy was not only my adopted parents only grandson, but my birth parents only blood grandson and what a shame it was that they couldn't see him. I showed him pictures of them and I also realized that he was the lucky one in all of this. He had many people in his family and they all loved him, even if my birth parents never had seen him.
I changed my entire opinion about both sets of parents from that little talk we had. HE made me realize how lucky I AM to know them both and be loved by them both. Today I can honestly say I love all of them just the same. I have built a wonderful relationship with my birth parents and have such a better one with my adopted parents. One day I hope that my son can meet my birth parents, but the timing is just not right yet.
Even though there are a lot of terrible things that happened not only in my birth mother's life, but also between my two sets of parents at the time of the adoption, I have had to let go of all the old feelings I had in order to be able to move forward. I was stuck in such horrible feelings about it and myself for so many years and did so much self-inflicted abuse to myself over it. I constantly blamed everyone else about it and that is why I had turned out to be not quite the person I could have been.
After years, I am talking over 10, of this mental torture and physical abuse to myself, running in and out of relationships, jobs, people's lives, I have quit running and started over. I am no longer on medication for depression, and my mind is at ease and I am able to accept myself for who I am...Debbie Swarts and Trena Dilbeck. We are the same person today.
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