31 Rebekah: I'm an Only Child and I Have Six Siblings
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/31
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season Two, Episode 9: Rebekah. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Rebekah Henson shares her story with us of growing up as an only child, then discovering she was one of seven biological siblings. If this sounds at all familiar, I actually interviewed Rebekah’s older sister, Mary Anna King, on Season One, Episode 7.
Rebekah is incredibly open with me about the challenges of such a complex reunion. We also dish on all the awkward and completely inappropriate things people have said to us about being adopted. As always, we wrap up with some recommended resources. And links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome Rebekah Henson to Adoptees On. And thank you so much for joining us, Rebekah.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to chat, talk. I was trying to say talk and chat at the same time.
Haley Radke: Well, I'm excited to chat and talk with you, also. I would love it if you would just start by telling us a little bit about your adoption story.
Rebekah Henson: I was adopted as an infant. Neither of my parents were able to have kids and they actually tried going through an adoption agency. It was actually their second marriage for both of them. And they were, I think, in their early to mid thirties when they first started pursuing adoption. And this was in like the early to mid 1980s.
And the adoption agency they were trying to work with told them they were too old (at the age of 35) to try to adopt. So, they really wanted to have kids—that was like both of their life dreams. My mom came from a really huge Irish Catholic family. She’s the youngest of eight. My dad had a really small family, but he always loved kids and kind of imagined himself having a bigger family.
So they were trying to look for other avenues and they talked to everyone they knew. And they were at a church meeting, it was a prayer meeting at their church. And they were asking for prayer for, you know, kind of this adoption journey they were trying to go on. And one of the people at that meeting actually knew my birth mother and ended up connecting them. She was actually my biological mother's foster mother, who actually facilitated the connection between my biological mother and my adoptive parents.
My mother originally wanted to keep me. She actually didn't make the decision to place me with my adoptive parents until…I think about, like an hour or so after I was born. And my parents got this surprise phone call. It was… I was born on a Tuesday. And Easter was early that year, it was in March that year. So I was born the Tuesday before Easter.
And my parents got this surprise phone call from my biological mother's foster mother, asking if they wanted a baby, like right now, because they had one who needed a home. That was when my biological mother made the decision to place me. And my parents kind of like– took a minute and thought about it and said, you know, “Yeah, we really…”
They felt like it was the answer to their prayers. And they brought me home from the hospital the next day and my adoption was finalized, I think, the following January. So I grew up as an only child, but I'm also one of six siblings who were all separated through different private adoptions (which is always kind of complicated to try to tell people who I'm meeting for the first time, you know, like coworkers, things like that).
You know, I'm talking about how… The question always comes up, you know, like when you're making small talk, “Oh, how many siblings do you have? Do you have any siblings?” And I always kind of start off by saying that, “Oh yeah, I'm an only child,” you know, whatever. And then, I'll be telling a story and one of my sisters is involved and I mention a sister and then I stop and say, “Oh wait, I have to go back and explain myself.” So that's always a little hairy.
Haley Radke: So I… That's so funny, because that's how I identify, too. I say I grew up an only child and now I'm a big sister, because I have three younger siblings after reunion.
So did you have a reunion? Were you in contact with her at all through your childhood? Or, what's the story there?
Rebekah Henson: No, it was a closed adoption. This was in the mid 1980s. Open adoption wasn't really a thing just yet. So it was kind of closed by default, because that's just how it was done. But I always knew that I was adopted. My mom wanted to make sure that I always knew my own history and my own story, and that I could be confident in it and just kind of take ownership of that.
And she never wanted to lie to me. And she took it to extremes, in fact, to the point where she wouldn't let me believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, either. Because she just couldn't bring herself to tell me any kind of lie at all. And she considered Santa and the Easter Bunny to be a lie. And she didn't want to shake my faith or shake my trust in her. So I was like four years old and telling all my aunts and uncles that Santa wasn't real and they were horrified.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. I am just like, “This is what I have done to my children.”
Rebekah Henson: Yeah!
Haley Radke: My son Isaiah, it's, he's the one telling all his little friends that Santa is pretend.
Rebekah Henson: Oh no.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. That's so interesting. Okay. Sorry, go on. I'm just like, Whoa.
Rebekah Henson: No. So she was just really committed to always being very open and honest with me about my adoption story. And she didn't know a whole lot about my biological family. She did know that I had a brother and three older sisters.
I think she met Mary, my oldest sister when… Oh, what were they doing? She went over to my biological mother's house before the adoption was finalized. Oh, I guess to… I think that was when she gave her the pictures she had. She wanted (my biological mother wanted) to make sure that I had pictures of my older siblings, and her, and my biological father.
So that when I had questions as I was growing up, my parents would have those photos and would be able to give them to me, share them with me. So I would know, you know, kind of who I looked like, and whose nose I had, and whose eye color I had. So she gave my mom one of their wedding photos and she had baby pictures of my four oldest siblings that she gave her copies of those (so that I would always have them).
So when she went over there, I think that's what she was going over there for. They lived like, I don’t know, 10 minutes away from each other. So they were really close to each other. So she was going over there, I think to pick up the photos and Mary was there, and that was the first time that she met my adoptive mom.
And a couple weeks later, she was at church. And she saw me from across the pew. And after the service was over, she actually approached my adoptive mom and asked if she could hold her little sister. And that was just a little too much for my mom. And they never went back to that church again.
So she felt a little threatened, I think, by the idea of my biological family. She always kind of had this fear that they would come back for me. And in fact, her sisters actually tried to convince her against adopting me, because this was around the same time that the Baby M case was a big deal.
Haley Radke: I don't think I know what that is. Can you tell us?
Rebekah Henson: So Baby M, that was… A couple had hired a surrogate to have a baby for them. And after the surrogate gave birth, she decided she wanted to keep the kid. And there was a huge crazy custody battle that lasted for (I think) like a year or two, before the couple who hired the surrogate finally was able to get custody. But it was like this crazy legal battle where the surrogate changed her mind.
So it wasn't totally an adoption case, but it was really high profile in the news at the time. And it was like a couple months before my adoption was finalized and everyone was telling my mom, “Don't go through with it, because the family is gonna wanna take her back at some point, and you have to be prepared for that.”
So she always kind of had that in the back of her mind. So she was—there was always this kind of pull. Like, whenever I had questions about where I came from, what my family was like, she would give me the information that she knew, but she would kind of twist things a little bit to be like, “Oh yeah, like you have the same hair color as your mom, but her hair was always really greasy.”
Like she would always try to take little digs at my biological family in little subtle ways. So that was kind of a weird kind of thing that we had. But, so I knew that I had siblings out there, and I knew that I would meet them, eventually.
And my mom actually supported the idea of search and reunion, but she would always try to dissuade me in little ways. So that's that little back and forth again, too, that was always kind of present in my story, and my relationship with my mom (especially). So we didn't meet until I was in college.
Although I did start searching when I think I was about 16. My parents had actually found a copy of my original birth certificate. I think my biological mother had given them a copy of it along with the photos. Well, I guess to back up a little bit, I found out when I was in first grade that I had siblings.
So I always knew that I was adopted. I knew that I had other parents out there, like another family out there that I would meet, eventually. And then when I was in first grade, I was the only kid in my class who didn't have any siblings. And we were learning vocabulary words one afternoon that had to do with family relationships (like we were learning how to spell like mother, father, sister, brother, et cetera).
And the teacher, my first grade teacher, asked all the kids to “raise your hand if you have a brother or a sister at home.” And everyone in the class raised their hand except for me. And she went on this, like bizarre rant about how it's, “We should feel really sad for kids who don't have brothers or sisters at home because they must be so lonely and,” you know, “they'll never have anyone to rely on in life. And it's just really so sad when you don't have any brothers or sisters. So we should really pity these kids who don't have brothers or sisters at home.” And as the only one who didn't raise my hand, you know, I took that pretty personally, and I came home from school crying. And my mom asked me what was wrong, and I told her what my teacher said, and she had some really choice words for that teacher.
And she sat me down and she started telling me, “You know that you're adopted, that kind of means that there you have another family out there who you'll meet eventually when you decide to. But you also, in addition to, you know, having a second set of parents out there, you have siblings. You don't know them right now and I don't know when you'll get a chance to meet them. You'll meet them when the time is right. You're an only child right now, but you won't be an only child forever.”
I kind of knew that I always knew that they were out there from that day. I would write them. I would actually write them letters in my journal. And my mom found their pictures when I was…I think I was 12. She wasn't able to find the pictures that day when she told me that story. She uncovered them one day when I was about 12 years old, and I carried them with me everywhere I went. And I felt like they were really a part of me.
Even though we didn't know each other yet, I felt like they were always like, kinda like these shadows on my heart that were—they were just always a part of me. And I wondered about them a lot. I would have pretend conversations with them.
Like when I was falling asleep at night, I would pretend like we were sharing a rumor or something. I had a very vivid imagination life, yet when I was about 16, my parents were going through an old trunk that they kept important documents in. And that's when they found the copy of my original birth certificate that actually had my original name on it.
My biological mother named me before she placed me. And I'm actually the only one who was adopted outside of our family, because some of my siblings were adopted by our biological grandfather. And then the rest of us had private adoptions to strangers, people who weren't related to the family.
So out of those adoptions, (and we were all placed as the rest of us were all placed as infants pretty much immediately). So out of those adoptions, I was the only one that she had named, because she had originally intended to keep me, but ultimately she just didn't have the support that she needed to be able to raise me, which always makes me kind of sad.
In addition to my birth name that was on there, which made me feel a little weird seeing that. It made me feel like… I don't know, like there was a second me out there that just could have been, but wasn't. It was, I don't know, like just the sense of who I would've been if I hadn't been adopted.
It was like this second me that kind of haunted me from that day forward. And it had my biological mother's name listed as the mother, and then my biological father's name listed as the father, because they were married as well. And that kind of got my wheels turning.
I was always really curious about my family and you know, kinda like what their personalities were like? Did they think like me? Did they believe things like me? Because I kind of felt like I never really totally fit in with my adoptive parents.
I love them, but I'm the complete opposite of them in every single way. So I always kind of wondered, you know, would I fit in with them? Would they, are there other people out there who think like me? Share my personality? (that kind of thing). And then especially at the age of 16, you know, seeing all of those names on this document that was part of me just got me really curious.
And I actually Googled my biological father's name and I think there were about four different phone numbers that came up for him. So I kind of stopped my search there, because I was… First, I was underage. In the state where I was born, anyway. I don't know if this varies by state or if it's a federal thing—I'm not sure.
But with a closed adoption, your biological relatives can't have any contact with you unless your adoptive parents give permission. And my adoptive parents had always told me that they wanted me to wait until I was 18. Because again, my mom was always kind of… She always had this just the sense of fear that as soon as I met my biological family, I would just abandon her and my dad and they would never see me again. And I would just disappear into this other family.
And I mean, that's not how it works at all, but that was a really major fear of hers, so she made me promise to wait until I was 18. I did try to kind of broach the subject with her very carefully when I found all those phone numbers that, you know, supposedly belonged to my biological father.
And she didn't seem to think it was a good idea for me to follow up on any of that, so I didn't, although I was still really curious. And I went away to college when I turned 18 in 2004. And I was actually taking an anthropology class my second semester (spring semester) of that year and we were learning how to actually like, properly chart a family tree in that class. And of course that brought up, you know, all kinds of adoptee feelings, where just thinking about family relationships and how the family tree that I actually know, that I actually grew up with, never really felt like mine.
You know, having to revisit all of that in a college class, like kind of all that trauma of the family tree projects that I went through in elementary school, that all kind of resurfaced again in college. That got me really thinking, again, about trying to actually search for real and try to find my biological parents and my siblings.
So I was actually planning this huge speech in my head. It was the week before spring break, and I was gonna be spending spring break at home. And I was planning that week (you know, like when I was home for spring break), I was just gonna talk to my parents. I was just finally gonna do this.
You know, I'm just gonna jump in and just say, “Look, you know, I mean, I'm 18. I’m almost–” (it was right before my 19th birthday). So I was like, you know, “I know you like you made me a promise to wait. And I did. And I feel like it's really time for me to start searching.” I just felt like this… it was this like burning, like deep in my soul.
It's, I need to search, I need to meet these people. I need to just connect and be part of this family that's always been out there and these siblings that have always shared a piece of my heart as I was growing up.
And so I wrote everything down; I planned everything out. I was getting myself all psyched up and I had no idea that during that very same week, two of my older sisters had actually found my parents' phone number, and called the house, and actually talked to my mom for about two or three hours each. So they had (my sister Lisa) had actually searched when she was 16 and found our older siblings.
And so she had been in reunion with them for about, I guess about two or three years? I think it was about three years at that point. And they had all kind of made a pact that if we hadn't started searching for them by the—if they hadn't heard from us by the time…. Like the younger siblings. There's me, and then I have two younger sisters after me that I didn't actually know about until I met my older siblings.
We knew about the four older ones. I’m number five out of seven. We knew about the four older ones, and my parents had actually told my biological mother that if she ever found herself in a spot where she needed help again, they would gladly take any other children. If she needed homes for other babies, you know, they said, “We would very happily take any others, if you need any other help. And they never heard from her again. So they just assumed that I was the last one and that was that. So I got two surprise younger sisters after I met my older siblings. So that was a fun twist.
So yeah, so while I'm having this kind of very strong urge of, I need to search. I need to do this, like the time is right. During that same week, as I was writing out this speech to my parents, my sister Lisa, and my sister Becca (there's another Rebecca in our family, which makes things fun), they had found my parents' phone number and talked to my mom for a couple of hours. And actually, she took a bunch of detailed notes that she typed out for me and had an envelope waiting for me on the kitchen table for when I came home for spring break.
And she got pictures off of (I think it was Lisa's MySpace), where she had a bunch of photos. And I think Becca emailed her some photos and then Lisa gave her instructions on how to find photos on MySpace and stuff. So she (my mom) had printed all these photos off the internet of some of my older siblings.
And she had this whole dossier, basically, on like everybody's ages, and their likes and dislikes, and personality traits (and things like that), just waiting for me in this whole neat little package.
So they came and picked me up from college about a week later, and we’re at dinner. I went to school about…it was almost two hours away from where I grew up. So like close enough that I could still come home for a weekend, but far enough away that, you know, there was a little bit of distance. So we stopped for dinner on our way back home.
And it was a T.G.I.Fridays and we were sitting out on their patio area and I was like… We were just talking about just random stuff, like how classes were going, whatever. And we had ordered dessert and our server was bringing the check. And my mom got really, really quiet all of a sudden, because she had wanted to wait until we got home, like to give me the envelope and tell me what happened. But she just couldn't contain it anymore. So the server's coming over with a check and our dessert and stuff like that. And my mom just gets just real quiet and she's just looking at me and she gets all teary eyed. And she tells me that she had some really big news for me.
I kind of looked—I was trying to figure out, What's going on? What's happening? What, did some like foreign prince propose his hand in marriage to me or something? Like, I don't know… The way she was acting, was just… I had no idea what was coming. And she told me that two of my sisters had contacted her and she had talked to them, and they wanted to meet me.
And after that I couldn't string two words together coherently. It was—I had such a mix of, it was just this overwhelming… I still can't really put into words that the actual, like the actual emotion that I felt in that moment. Just everything kind of stopped.
I wasn't in a restaurant anymore. I just... I don't even… Time didn't even exist. I just— this moment I had waited for, these words that I had waited to hear for my entire life, that my siblings wanted to meet me. It was, I just…I still can't even put it into words. That's basically what I sounded like when I responded to my mom.
And I think for another, like hour or two after that, the only thing I could say was, “Oh my God.” For just an hour, for an hour straight. And this poor server is standing there just like holding our check out, like waiting for someone to give her a Visa card, you know? She's…
So I get home (we get home), and I walk into the kitchen, and my mom gives me the envelope and all of that. And I'm reading all of these notes that she just so painstakingly put together about these people that I had dreamed about for my entire life. For 19 years, I had been imagining these people in my mind, and they were one step closer to being actual, like flesh and blood family. It was just such a bizarre feeling.
And she had everybody's phone numbers listed on there too, so that I could get in touch with them. And then, I had to call Becca first though, because Becca was the first one to reach out and call my parents. So she insisted that she be the first one that I called when I reached out. Fair is fair. So I called her first, and we talked for about an hour. And then I talked to Lisa after that. And then Mary, and then our brother Jacob. Just hearing, even just hearing their voices on the phone and like hearing how Lisa laughed with the same laugh that I had, and seeing their young adult faces in these the photographs that my mom printed off...
And just like the, all the similarities, I felt like I was seeing my face on other people's heads. Like it was such a bizarre, like something I hadn't experienced before. People who shared my…. looking at people who actually shared my features. Like we all, it's so freaky, because we all have the same exact eyes. I remember the very first time that we met in person, it was at our biological mother's house. It was a couple months later that year. We got together over Memorial Day weekend. Jacob had—I think he was in…. Had he just graduated?
He was in the Army and I think he was, he may have just been finishing training. I don't totally remember, though. But anyway, he came back to New Jersey for the Memorial Day holiday and then he was going to be heading back down to Virginia, I think, to finish the semester or something. So he was back for a couple of days and he wanted to meet me. And then Mary and Lisa heard that he was planning to meet me in person for the first time. They're like, “Well, we have to be there, too.”
So they got plane tickets. And Lisa was in Florida at the time and Mary was in Chicago. And so they both flew in from their respective areas. It's so crazy too, because we all actually grew up (with the exception of Mary and Becca). They were out in Oklahoma with our biological grandparents. But all of the rest of us grew up within about an hour or less of each other in southern New Jersey.
And then by the time we actually met, I was going to school about 45 minutes outside of Philly. Jay was finishing, I think, his military training down in Virginia. Lisa was in Florida, Mary was in Chicago, Becca was in Oklahoma. And Meg and Lesley, (our two youngest sisters) didn't even know anything about us yet.
And they were still in South Jersey. But the rest of us were all scattered to all four corners of the U.S. map, pretty much. So that made things kind of challenging over the next couple of years, as we had several other reunions. We met Meghan for the first time, I think it was two or three years after my first reunion with everybody.
And then we met Lesley for the first time, I think another two years after that. So it was this series of reunions, and we were getting increasingly spread apart physically, when we had all kind of started out in the same kind of nuclear area (when we didn't know each other). And then when we were finding each other, we were all like far flung all across the continent.
So that made for some interesting dynamics. And actually, it took us 10 years to actually get all seven of us in the same place at the same time, which happened back in 2015 when Mary's book got published. So it's a process, which is kind of our tagline. #it’saprocess.
Haley Radke: That's an amazing story. I really want to hear, how are your relationships going now with your siblings? Now you're what, 12 years out from the first kind of meeting them?
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, it's… Man, that's such a, it's not a complicated question to try to answer.
Haley Radke: How are your six relationships with your siblings, plus your parents and….? Yeah…
Rebekah Henson: Yeah. So I went from basically having no siblings at all (people that I only just kind of dreamed about), to having…. Well, first I had four siblings and then I gained two younger siblings a couple of years after that. Yeah, it's been a lot.
It's been a really interesting journey, going from— So it's like these people that I built up in my head from photographs, to these people that I met for the first time when I was 19. And just see, like that transition from people who I imagined, to these people actually being flesh and blood who shared my DNA, and had like my facial features, and things like that.
Like going from the people that I imagined, to the people that they actually are was an interesting journey of discovery for me. I think one thing that's been, I think kind of the most complicated in our relationships, is the fact that we have between us, between the seven of us, we have, I think, five different sets of parents.
Like we have—It's not just like when a lot of siblings who grew up together you know, like you share your childhood, and then you kind of go your own ways for college. And then you get married and you have your married family, and settle in different areas, and you know, you kind of drift apart because you have these different family relationships to manage in adulthood that weren't there when you were kids.
And you know, kind of there's different obligations and that kind of changes the flavor of your sibling relationship. And it feels like it, like we never really got that real bonding experience, because we've always had other family obligations. Like we've always had that other family out there, you know, that other sibling groups don't really have, if that makes sense.
Haley Radke: It does make sense. It just makes everything so much more complicated.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah. Like we also had this poll of, you know, our adoptive families who expected that family time with us, because there is this sense of trying to balance almost primary and secondary family?
But they don't feel like a secondary family to me, but that's kind of how it ends up working in reality, even though I don't think any of us really want it to work that way. But I think by necessity, it's this sense of: you have the family you're obligated to. And again, obligation feels like such a wrong word, too, but it's the family who expects you to spend time with them versus the family that you want to spend time with.
I kind of felt like I was two different people for a couple of years, earlier on in my reunion. I was the person who I got to be when I was around my siblings. And then I would come back home after a reunion to just like my bedroom, with my twin bed. And it was just me, and my parents, and my cat.
And it was a very different vibe. It was so quiet and there was an emptiness that I just didn't like and didn't settle well with me. And I felt like… I dunno, I felt like I was a lot more “me” when I was with my siblings. And then when I went back home, I had to be the person that my parents knew me as, even though I felt very different when I was with my siblings.
So it was this kind of balancing act that I was doing for a couple of years. And I think that kind of affected how my relationship with my siblings grew, because I was trying to be like one person with them, who really… I really wanted them to like me. I had this underlying fear that maybe “me just being me” wouldn't be enough for them.
I still have that fear sometimes. I mean, it's been 12 years. I think one thing that really helped was actually finally being able to get all seven of us in the same place in a place where we didn't have any other obligations at all. It was a random week in the summer. It was like the middle of June, so there were no holidays going on. There were no other family members. We decided to make it just strictly siblings. So no spouses, no significant others. No distractions, because all of the times that we've gotten together in the past, it's either been around Christmas, or a wedding, some big event where there are a lot of different family dynamics happening at once.
So we decided to completely take that out of the equation and have it just be the seven of us, no distractions. And we bonded on a level that just felt very, very natural. We fell into these very natural, these natural patterns, and I think that was the first time, really, that I didn't have that fear.
I didn't have that sense of, I need to be the person who I want my siblings to like. Yeah, I was very afraid. We all came from very different family backgrounds. I was raised very conservatively and I was homeschooled from middle school through high school. None of my other siblings were homeschooled, and I think their parents were like, kinda like varying levels of religious, but they weren't as conservative as my parents were. My parents were like the most conservative of the bunch. And so I didn't have a lot of the life experiences that my siblings had growing up.
You know, I didn't have the typical high school experience. We also had some mental illness in my adoptive family. My dad was bipolar and OCD. He had a kinda major breakdown when I was in high school, and that really isolated us. We lost a lot of friends and were isolated from family members, as well, during that time. That had a real impact on me during my formative years. I didn't have a very normal childhood in my adoptive family, especially during some of those crucial years, when it really matters, when you're really trying to form your identity. I never really felt like I knew who I was.
I felt like there was always kinda like a gap in my personality. There was always something, some part of me that was missing, somehow. And I still felt that after my reunion. Reunion didn't fix that. And I think reunion highlighted that more in some ways for me, because I was trying to be cool. Because I, you know, like I wanted them to like me. I wanted to overcome this sense of “Oh, she's the—Rebekah's the conservative, homeschooled girl, you know, and the rest of us aren't.” You know, I wanted to like, feel like I fit in and I didn't always feel like I fit in. And I don't always feel like I fit in.
And I think I expected that from reunion. I definitely connect with my siblings in a different way than I do to anyone in my adoptive family (whether that's like my parents, or cousins, or grandparents, or any of that). I feel like the relationship that I have with my siblings is very instinctual. It feels very instinctual, very natural, very intuitive. Like we just kind of get each other on a level, even though we didn't grow up together. We had very different childhood experiences, very different formative experiences, and very different families, there's still this kind of visceral level that we really connect on.
It's like we just, we can just pick up from wherever, even if we haven't talked in months. And with my parents, I feel like the relationship I have with them is something that we've really worked for, and fought for, and forged, you know, kind of tooth and nail over the past like 31 years. It's been a work in progress for my entire life with my adoptive family. But it's very instinctual and natural with my biological family. So there's a different quality, even though there's been insecurity. There's a very kind of natural, instinctual level that kind of feels like we always just kind of get each other, no matter what.
Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit about, what does it feel like to know that you were one of the first ones that was relinquished to a completely different family, like strangers? And then your, was it your two youngest sisters? Were they adopted to the same family? Am I getting that right?
Rebekah Henson: They were, yeah. Yeah. They grew up together. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Can you just talk a little bit about your feelings about that?
Rebekah Henson: I was really jealous, honestly, when I found that out, because I didn't know anything about them or anything about how they grew up or…
So Lisa was an only child and she has a similar beginning as my story, where her parents told our biological mother the same thing that, you know, “If you need a place for any other kids, you know, we'll gladly take them.” And they never heard from her again. So they just figured there weren't any more out there.
So I was a surprise for Lisa, when she met our older siblings at 16. And then Meghan and Lesley were a surprise for me. I felt jealous and I felt kind of a sense of betrayal a little bit, just at the thought that I could have like… My parents made the offer, you know? It's not like they didn't want any more kids. They wanted more kids and they would've taken more. They would've taken both of my little sisters and, you know, just the sense that I didn't have to be lonely. I didn't have to be an only child. It just, someone else made a decision that that's how it was gonna be for me.
So there was a sense of powerlessness. There was… I felt kind of betrayed that my birth mother would've made that decision. I don't know entirely what her reasoning was. I do know that our biological father kind of had this sense that they couldn't afford the family that they were having, so....
Because they weren't able to afford to raise a family, he felt that it was a good thing to give us to couples who weren't able to have kids. So he kind of felt that it was like a personal mission, almost, to bless other people with all these kids that he was having and couldn't afford?
Which I mean, on the surface, maybe sounds altruistic, but when you really, when you unpack it for more than half a second, it's a little twisted. He was trying to kind of drive that decision. And then she at one point decided, “That's not how it's gonna be, and we're gonna keep the last two together.”
So I mean, that's… I don't know what made her decide to place Lesley in the same family that she placed Meghan in. I don't know what made her not kind of take that stand earlier? We haven't really talked about that. But yeah, it was something that I had to work through, for sure.
It took me a couple of years, honestly, to kind of come to a point of forgiveness. I don't blame her for anything. I feel like she was kind of, (my biological mother), I feel like she was in a lot of ways a victim of her circumstances. And the people around her, she didn't have any support from her husband, from his family.
She was really kind of trapped in these decisions that other people were trying to make for her. And the counsel that people were giving her was to kind of follow what her husband was saying and do this nice thing for these other couples who can't have babies. It's great. So she was… That's what people were telling her to do.
That's what people were kind of cheering her on for. And you know, like when you're surrounded by that, like what other options do you really have? You know? So that's kind of how I view it now. But in the moment when I first found out that I had two younger sisters who got to grow up together, I did feel very jealous and I had some forgiveness work that I had to do there. I had a really good counselor at the time, which really helped. I recommend therapy for anyone going through reunion.
Haley Radke: Yes, yes, yes. I definitely agree with that. So you guys had a pretty public story. It's a unique one. There's seven siblings. Your sister Mary wrote a memoir about your story, from her perspective. But, you know, she kinda shares bits and pieces of all of your stories.
Can you talk a little bit about people's reactions to that? To you personally? And some of the things that they might have said that maybe they shouldn't have? I'm sure you've had lots of well-meaning people tell you some things that maybe shouldn't come out of anybody's mouth.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, yeah, for sure. One of the things that people always like to ask me, I think one of the first that comes out of people's mouths when I start telling my story… “Oh yeah, you know, I mean, I was adopted. I'm an only child, but I also have seven siblings and–” (or six siblings, rather. There's seven of us, six siblings. I'm good at math).
“I was adopted. I'm an only child, but I also have six siblings and they were adopted by other families.” And one of the first things that people always tend to ask is, “Well, why didn't they use birth control?” And I've always– I never really know how to field that one, just because I was like, “Well, if they used birth control, then I probably wouldn't be here. I don't know. Which one of my siblings shouldn't be here? Which ones should they have used a condom for?”
You know, it's almost kind of wishing part of my family out of existence. And I'm not gonna say that I haven't wondered that myself sometimes, but it's such an invasive question to ask someone about their family. It's… Well, I don't know. “Why didn't your parents use birth control? Why are you here, even?” I mean, like what? What kind of question is that, even?
Haley Radke: Wow. Okay. Well that's one I haven't gotten yet, so that's interesting.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, and I mean, I think it's more because of the nature of our story. I mean, they kept having kids and giving them away. So why didn't they just use a condom? You know? It's like, “Well… Why do you have the number of siblings that you have?”
You know? I mean, it's just something you don't really have the right to ask anybody, but somehow I feel like anytime adoption comes up, people just feel they have the right to give you opinions or ask you questions that they wouldn't ask other people in other family situations.
**Haley Radke:**Oh, no kidding. I have, I think… I don't even know how many times people have been like, “Wow, you're adopted. That's awesome. I wish I was adopted.”
Rebekah Henson: Yeah.
Haley Radke: “Um, Actually no, you don't. But thank you. Thank you for that helpful... ”
Rebekah Henson: “It's actually a little complicated, but uh, yeah…”
Haley Radke: Oh, that's awful. Okay. Anything else?
Rebekah Henson: There's the whole “real” family thing, too. I get that a lot. In fact, one of my very first encounters with like, “Which one is your real family?,” or, “Who are your real parents?” I was in third grade, and I had one of my best friends from grade school over. She was visiting my house for the very first time and we were playing Barbies, and I was telling her about my adoption story.
And my mom was in the kitchen and we were in the living room, and she looked over at my mom and she said, “Oh, so that's not your real mom, then.” And I kind of looked at her and I was like, “Well, yeah, I mean, she is my real mom. She's standing right there. She's not a fake person,” you know. “What does that mean? Yeah she's my mom and she's…”
And my friend just kept insisting, you know, “Well, yeah, but she's not your real mom. What happened to your real mom?” And that was the first time that this concept of “real” came up for me and I was like eight years old. And this sense of someone in my life, who was part of my family, has no legitimacy.
It's this “either/or” situation. It's either my adoptive family isn't my— But before I met my siblings, it was always, “Well, when are you gonna meet your real family? When are you gonna meet your real parents? Don't you wanna look for them? Don't you wanna find your real family?”
And then after I met my biological family, it shifted to, “Oh, well how do your real parents feel about that? How do your real parents feel about your reunion?” Or, “Which one do you consider to be your real family?”
It's like, “Well, it's not either/or. It's not this sense of only one family has validity. Like they're all my family members.” You know, we don't ask people with stepparents, you know, “Who…?” I have friends whose parents have gotten divorced and remarried and I don't think I've ever heard them talk about, you know, getting asked, “Who you know, which one is your real mom? Is your stepmom your real mom, or what?”
Or when you get married, you know? I mean, no one asks if your parents are jealous that you have in-laws now. Like, nobody. But when you meet your biological family, that's one of the top questions I get is about you know, like “How did your parents react to this? How did your…” “Well, you know, it's not about them. It's about me and this, like this crazy blended family that I have.”
One of my favorite recent memories was at my own wedding. I had my family there, my husband's family, five of my siblings (that were able to make it), my biological mother, her husband, and my biological grandfather were there, as well as my adoptive grandmother. And we were able to get this photo with all three of my families in it (well, I guess four if you count my husband, because he's my family, too).
All four of my families in this one single photo. And that really—that moment felt kind of almost bigger than my wedding itself, the fact that I was able to get all of these family members who represent all these different facets of my family relationships in my life; they're all in a single photo.
And that's what reunion is like. It's just different facets of the same family. It's not—you don't have to pick and choose. And I just wish people could understand that more. They understand it when it comes to in-laws or stepfamilies. I don't really, I never get why people have such a hard time with that concept when it comes to adoption, too.
Haley Radke: Hmmm…. Rebekah, I think that is a perfect place to kind of stop. I love that picture of your four families at your wedding.
So my recommended resource, I told you before we started recording, I'm kind of embarrassed that I haven't even talked about this on the show yet, because it's anything that Betty Jean Lifton has written. And we've mentioned Nancy Verrier a number of times in The Primal Wound.
But Betty Jean Lifton was also one of the first people to really write about adoption, adoptee rights, adoption reform. She was a great advocate for our community. And I have this quote that I just keep coming back to that she wrote. It's, “Reunion is an ongoing dialogue between the past and the present.” And she has all these little gems. The book I'm reading right now is Journey of the Adopted Self: A quest for wholeness. And she's got a number of others.
And I just have a copy of her obituary printed out. It's from The New York Times. She passed away in 2010. She was 84. The end of the obituary talks about the dedication in one of her books, that she dedicated the book to her two mothers who she wrote, “might've known and even liked each other in another life, and another adoption system.”
Rebekah Henson: Mm-hmm.
Haley Radke: Yeah. So I'd recommend just picking up one of her books, or if you Google her name, she's got a lot of different articles available. I think Davis from Season One, I think he was the one that first sent me one of her articles that talked about the “ghost kingdom,” which we often talk about, if you're an adoptee “in the fog” or “out of the fog.”
And I think that might be where that term comes from, the “ghost kingdom,” about which, where people are in your life. And anyway, I don't want to explain it because I'm sure I'm gonna get it wrong. But yeah, just go look go look for one of her books at the library, or just Google her name and find a couple of the articles she's written. Lots of really valuable thoughts and things to think about. They're dated, of course. I think this book is from the nineties. So there's some things that are out of date, but I've been…
Rebekah Henson: But the nineties were only 10 years ago.
Haley Radke: Oh, that's right. And fashion, I mean, we're in it again, right? So it's all…
Rebekah Henson: Exactly, exactly.
Haley Radke: Do you have any choker necklaces?
Rebekah Henson: I don't actually, I don’t.
Haley Radke: I can't bring myself to buy them.
Rebekah Henson: I gave my last one away in college.
Haley Radke: I'm sure. I'm sure. Me, too. I'm just a couple years older than you, but I am still in my thirties, too.
Okay. So Betty is my recommendation. What did you bring for us, Rebekah?
Rebekah Henson: I think the one that I will go with, so kind of, I don’t know, something that's always kind of struck me, I guess, is kinda like the limited language that we have to try to describe family relationships. And like what the experience of being adopted really is like.
I'm personally a really big fan of the Donaldson Adoption Institute. They publish really in-depth research to help reform practices and public perception of adoption in the U.S. They have a really, really great blog that gives really unbiased perspectives from adoptees especially, but also all members of the triad.
And they just have some really valuable insights and really valuable data, too, about what the experience of being adopted really is like. And how it differs from, I think, the popular cultural narrative. They do really good work that I'm a real big fan of, especially when I try to tell other people about my story and trying to challenge some of the cultural narratives and cultural perceptions that are out there.
Haley Radke: Yeah, and April Dinwoodie is one of their directors and she's got a great podcast that I love to recommend. I've recommended it before, I think. Born in June and Raised in April? Yes. Also, did you see the study that the Donaldson Adoption Institute put out about relinquishing mothers? And it was just a couple months ago, I think. About the reasons for relinquishment and yeah… It was really amazing to read. So sad, but really good.
Rebekah Henson: They released one back in November, as well, about options counseling and how… One of the statistics that they uncovered was that about 80% of relinquishing mothers would have chosen to parent their child if they had been given more comprehensive information about support services that would've been available to them. And that was a really…
We kind of talk, or at least in the adoption circles that I run in, we talk a lot about how biological mothers are very misperceived. You know, it's kind of, they're like, “Oh, they're doing this really selfless thing, because they want to,” or “They're saving a child from abortion. How great.” Or like, “All birth mothers are terrible drug addicts who should never be parents in the first place.”
And this, the study they released in November just really shows that no, actually that's not the case. These are actual, like actually responsible women who are trying to make the best choice with the information they have. And if they were given better information, they would've kept their kid and been a parent. It shows that, I don’t know… That we still have a long way to go, I think.
Haley Radke: Yeah, definitely. That's exactly the one I was talking about. And I agree that it was a lot of stereotype busting.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, yeah.
Haley Radke: Because it was talking about their levels of education. And for some it was a financial hardship, but for others, it wasn't the case. So yeah, I would recommend going and checking that one out, specifically, as a starting point. Okay. What else would you like to recommend?
Rebekah Henson: Yeah, so you mentioned Betty Jean Lifton's adoptee activism, and I am a little bit of an adoptee activist myself. I recently got involved as a volunteer organizer with the Adoptee Rights Campaign.
They are doing really incredible work. They've been hard at work since 2015 (at least) to try to pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act, to grant automatic citizenship to all adoptees. And this was something that I found out about for the first time in 2015 during National Adoption Awareness Month.
It was actually through the #FliptheScript hashtag. I think one of their organizers used that hashtag to mention something about their campaign. And that was my first exposure to what they're doing. And I was completely blown away to find out that there are currently about 35,000 adults who were legally adopted as children, just like me.
The only difference is that they came from other countries. People who were adopted before 2001 and who were over the age of 18 in 2001 were not protected by the Child Citizenship Act, which sought to kind of correct a legal loophole (where children brought from overseas for adoption were not given citizenship). So there's a whole other process that adoptive parents had to go through to get citizenship for their newly adopted children. And just that something as basic as citizenship isn't a right that's given to adoptees is something that is so completely unconscionable to me.
And when the Child Citizenship Act passed in 2001, that still didn't protect all adoptees. There are still currently children coming into the U.S. through legal adoption channels that our government cannot guarantee citizenship to. And they are deportable for even just minor things, like if you registered to vote because you thought you were a citizen (like the parents who were raising you, who adopted you), and you find out you're not a citizen, but you voted an election, you can get deported for something as basic as that. Even though you're, by all accounts, an American, who has grown up in an American family with American parents. It's just absolutely unbelievable to me.
So I joined up with the Adoptee Rights Campaign earlier this year as part of a nationwide push that they're doing to recruit advocates in every state to finally try to pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act this year. There's been a lot of contention, because it involves some immigration issues that people can get touchy about, especially in this political climate.
So we're really hoping that we can kind of capitalize on some of the momentum that's been building up, with the surge of activism that's been kind of rising up since the November election, to try to get more people on board to lobby their senators and Congresspeople to finally get this basic human right passed.
Haley Radke: Well, I'd love it if you would send me a link to that so I can put it in our show notes, so people can sign up to volunteer with that as well. Thank you. That is an incredibly important… I mean, I'm Canadian, I'm just flabbergasted that, “What do you mean you're not including people that grew up there?” I don't understand that.
Rebekah Henson: Yeah! Right? Right?
Haley Radke: That's crazy.
Rebekah Henson: I know. And so it depends on the visa that the child is brought in from. So different countries use different visas for their adoptions. And the Child Citizenship Act that passed in 2000 to help, it was supposed to help streamline the process.
So if a child is adopted on one certain type of visa, then they automatically get citizenship when their adoption is finalized. There are, I think, about five other visas that children can come into the U.S. on, and none of those visas come with automatic citizenship. Parents have to go through a completely different, a completely separate process after the adoption is finalized.
So it's not— The law that was supposed to standardize citizenship for adoptees, still doesn't standardize citizenship for adoptees. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Haley Radke: Yeah, that's kind of a problem.
Rebekah Henson: So there are still like, there are still children who are vulnerable, who could get deported. It's ridiculous. And because things aren't standardized, it means that parents get misinformed sometimes. There's a parent who has a son who's actually impacted, who had a lawyer. The lawyer who handled his son's adoption straight up told him, “Now that the adoption is finalized, there's nothing else you have to do.” When in fact, that wasn't true.
So lawyers are giving their clients incorrect information, because the law isn't standardized and adoption agencies are sometimes giving out misinformation. So it's been a problem for a very long time, and it's a problem that we very much need to fix, especially now.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you for telling us about that.
I follow you on Twitter and you have been tweeting up a storm lately. A little bit about this and a little bit about just educating people on adoption issues. So what's your Twitter handle? Where can people follow you?
Rebekah Henson: I am @BekHenson. That is b-e-k and then Henson, h-e-n-s-o-n.
Haley Radke: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Yeah. I just really appreciated your honesty and candor with us.
Rebekah Henson: Yes, it was lovely. Thank you so much.
Haley Radke: If you want to hear another side of Rebekah's story, go back and check out Season One, episode 7 to hear Mary Anna's perspective. These are some amazing, passionate sisters. I'm kind of in awe of them. Links to that episode, and everything we chatted about today are on adopteeson.com.
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Thank you for listening. Let's talk again, next Friday.
Hey, you made it past the outro. I wanna say thank you by letting you in early for a contest I'm launching to celebrate my podcast’s one year anniversary, in July. If you leave me a rating and review on iTunes, you will be entered to win an autographed copy of a book by my dear friend Anne Heffron. Her memoir, You Don't Look Adopted, is the best adoptee memoir I've ever read, and you will love it, I promise.
She will personally mail you a copy if you live in the U.S. and if you're outside of the U.S., I will send you an e-copy, which won't be autographed obviously, but I bet I could convince Anne to write you an email or something to go along with your ebook.
So that's a rating and review on iTunes, and hopefully you'll leave me five stars, but just as much as a one or two sentence review of why someone should listen to the show can really help me grow my audience. And I'll read some of my favorite reviews on the podcast. I will choose five winners. So write your review and then go to adopteeson.com/contest.
Send me a note telling me what you wrote and your mailing address, and I'll be announcing this on next week's episode. But I wanted to give you a head start. So if you do your review this week, I'm gonna pick one winner before next week's podcast even goes live. So that is a special thank you for listening to all of my extra words.
Have a great week!
