4 Becky
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/4
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season One, Episode Four: Becky. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today we'll be talking to Becky, a fellow adoptee who will be sharing her experiences as a Baby Scoop adoptee. We also discuss her Sherlock Holmes-level searching skills. We'll wrap up with some recommended resources for you.
I’m so happy to welcome Becky Drinnan, and she's gonna be sharing her adoption story with us today on our show. So thank you so much, Becky, for agreeing to share your story with us today.
Becky Drinnen: Well, I'm glad to be here, Haley.
Haley Radke: Would you mind starting out and just saying a little bit about when you were born and the circumstances of your relinquishment, if you know those details?
Becky Drinnen: I would be happy to. I was born in 1962 in Cleveland, Ohio. Although I did not know this until I was already an adult, my mother was 20 or 21 years old at the time that I was born. She was single. She got pregnant by someone who was– it was more of a short-term relationship, and he was not interested in marriage at that time. And right in the heart of the Baby Scoop Era, single moms just didn't keep their babies. So she was forced– she had a choice, but she really didn't see that she had another choice. She lived with an aunt during the pregnancy and then placed me for adoption right at birth. So I was relinquished right at birth. I did not discover this til 2011, but she never saw me. I was in the hospital for 10 days. I was in the hospital there and she never even laid eyes on me during that entire time. And as I've learned more, that was very typical for pregnancies of unwed mothers in that era.
Haley Radke: That's heartbreaking. I didn’t know that.
Becky Drinnen: It is heartbreaking. And as I've talked with other mothers who have relinquished babies in that timeframe, the shame and the lack of compassion that was shown toward them by the church, by their parents, and by other members, you know, other officials in society and the agencies that they entrusted to take care of their babies, is heartbreaking.
Haley Radke: You were adopted after the 10 days?
Becky Drinnen: No, at that point in time I was in– and again, I didn't learn this. I knew that I did not come to live with my adoptive parents until I was three months old. So I did not know. I grew up not having any idea if I was with my mother for those three months, if I was in an institution, if I was in a foster family. I really didn't know those circumstances until much later, until I was an adult. I don't think my parents were really told where I was at, at the time they adopted me, or if they did know that, they didn't remember. But I was in a foster home for three months. And the reason for that, what I've learned, is that the adoption agencies wanted to make sure they weren't passing on damaged goods. They wanted to make sure the baby was healthy and was developing well before they put that baby in a potential adoptive home.
Haley Radke: And do you know why your parents chose to adopt?
Becky Drinnen: They had tried to have a baby. They had been married for seven years and they were not successful in getting pregnant. And in that period of time, it was fairly easy to adopt because there were many, many babies available during that Baby Scoop Era. So actually from the time they applied for adoption until they brought me home, was less than nine months. They didn't have the fertility treatments and that type of thing that parents try now when they're unsuccessful in conceiving immediately.
But then, my parents were actually in the process of adopting another child, they had started that application process, when my mom got pregnant. So she had my brother, who was their biological child, when I was three-ish years old. And then my sister, also their biological child, was born when I was eight.
Haley Radke: So you were the oldest, but of a family of three.
Becky Drinnen: Yes.
Haley Radke: And so when you were growing up, did you notice differences about being the adoptive one in the family?
Becky Drinnen: I don't ever feel that I was treated any differently. I know that my parents loved me, my brothers and sister, my cousins. We had a fairly large extended family that we got together with regularly. I was close with my grandmother, my mother's mother. And I never felt ostracized because I was adopted. I did feel different temperament-wise, I don't know, my personality is different. I tend to question things. I don't accept things for face value, and my mom, especially, did a lot more
Physically, I could look at especially my mom's family, and I could see so much resemblance that I did not see in me. I don't know that that bothered me a lot when I was young because there were enough other family members there that didn't resemble me, it wasn't like I was the only person there. Extended family members who were in the family by marriage and that type of thing. I didn't really feel strange by that, but I felt different inside and I don't know that I really communicated that to anyone.
Being adopted did not bother me until my mom was pregnant with my sister. So I was at that age where I was very aware that my sister's way of coming into our family was much different than mine. I saw my mom, you know, her stomach grow, I felt my sister kick. I don't remember the pregnancy with my brother, but with my sister, I was very aware of just how different that was. And I knew she went off to the hospital, and I went and visited her in the hospital with this little baby in her arms that I wasn't able to hold or touch. Because at that point in time, in 1970, children, if they could come in and get a peek at the baby, certainly weren't allowed to touch it. I think at that point is when I became, obsessed, I guess is the word. I knew at that point that I would find out where I came from and I would learn about the mother who gave me life and gave birth to me. So it's been from a very young age that I was very curious, interested in, and driven to find out where I came from.
Haley Radke: When did you actually search for your birth mom?
Becky Drinnen: Well, because of the way Ohio's law was written, my birth certificate was available to me when I became 18. I didn't know it until I saw a newspaper article when I was 19, but my adoption was finalized in December of 1963, and Ohio didn't close records until 1964, and those prior to January 1st, 1964 remained open.
Haley Radke: So you were just a month, just that year? Oh my gosh.
Becky Drinnen: Yes. Three weeks later and I would not have been able to access my birth records until 2015. So once I learned that, I hopped in my car and I drove to Columbus, Ohio, and I walked into the Bureau of Vital Statistics and I gave them my ID that I needed, and I was able to look at and then get copies of my original birth certificate and my adoption decree. So by the time I was 19, I had the name of my birth mother and I knew my name, the name that she had given me at birth.
It's been many years ago, it's been over 30 years ago, but I can still remember sitting in that room and I can still remember that feeling that I had. It's almost this feeling of looking at something that you're not supposed to, because that's the way society teaches us, right? That ‘that's forbidden, that's a secret, that was in the past, that's not supposed to be brought up’. This feeling of excitement and this feeling of almost, it's like I connected with the name and with her almost immediately. It was just, it was very strange. I also noticed then, once I had taken in the names, I noticed that she was 20. And for me at 19, I was younger than she was when she gave birth to me when I looked at that birth certificate. And I could not imagine why she would've given me up because I had imagined– because I didn't have any facts growing up. All I knew is that she had red hair. That's the only fact that my adoptive parents remember being told about my biological mother. So I didn't know. I had fantasized she was 15 and she was in love with her boyfriend, and they weren't allowed to get married because she was too young, and all of this. And to know that she was already an adult, that was hard for me to take a little bit. And this was all in the span of a few minutes when I was sitting in that room, with this disapproving clerk watching me as I looked at these records for the first time. This was pre-internet, so I didn't have Ancestry and Spokeo and all of those resources that are available on the internet now. So it was a paper search. I started searching Vital Statistics records. I would ask Ohio Vital Statistics to search for her marriage in a 10-year period of time, that they would search for a fee of maybe $10. So I was able to get her birth certificate. I was able to get birth certificates for her– so then I found her marriage certificate, so I had a married name. And then I ordered birth certificates for children born to her and her husband, and I was able to get my siblings’ birth certificates. And so I knew from the time I was 20 that I had a brother and two sisters. And through that I was able to trace her from Cleveland down to the Columbus, Ohio area where she has lived most of her adult life.
At this point in time, I had not talked to other adoptees. I hadn't talked to birth parents. I had read a few articles and maybe a book or so, but I really didn't know that much about what I was getting into.
How I ended up finding her phone number is, a friend of mine was good friends with a police officer on the local police force, and with her name and birth date, he ran her driver's license and was able to get a phone number and a current address. Which is probably not all right to do, but I think back in the early 80s that wasn't so taboo, the privacy and all that stuff. So I had that phone number and I never gave it the first thought that she wouldn't be as thrilled to hear from me as I was to find her and be able to reach out to her.
Somewhere in an article that I had read, though, I did read that it was best to have a third party make that contact. At that point in time, I worked with a very good friend of mine, and I had kept her in the loop on all of the details of my search. And so I asked her if she would make that phone call for me. So we did that during a break at work, just a few days after I had learned her phone number, and I was listening in on the phone extension while she made that phone call and spoke with my mother. And I don't remember a lot of what was said, but what I do remember is I can hear her almost screaming, “What is she trying to do, ruin my life?” And so with that, I was crushed. I was absolutely crushed. Because I had never allowed myself to think that that is what the response would be, from this woman that gave life to me. At that point, I think I was 22 at the time that I had finally tracked her down. It took me a few years. That was the first time I remember hearing my mother's voice, was her telling me that.
Now, my friend Kay did keep her on the line long enough to get her to take my telephone number. And about 15 minutes after that phone call ended, I got a phone call at work, cuz Kay had given her both a work and a home phone number. And I received a phone call from her sister, who would be my biological aunt. And I thought at that point in time that she was very interested in developing a relationship with me. When I look back on it now, I think probably the only reason she contacted me was to elicit a promise for me that I would not try to contact her sister again. But I did get pictures from my aunt. I also met my aunt maybe a year or so later. My daughter and I were camping up in the area near where she lived, and we met for maybe a couple of hours. And we talked on the phone quite a bit for a couple of years, and we exchanged letters and Christmas cards and that type of thing. And then she just suddenly stopped contacting me. And I don't know, and I never will know why, because she died in 2010. So I had not had contact with her from about 1989 until she died in 2010.
So with that, I pretty well stuffed things for a while. Haley. I don't know if it was ‘fog’, because I was very aware. But my way of dealing with it was just to try to ignore it, and if anybody asked me about it, it's like, “Well, she just doesn't know what she's losing,” or, “she doesn't know what she's missing out on, and it's her loss, and I'm fine.” I didn't really want to acknowledge, I don't think even to myself, how much that rejection had crushed me, but it did. And it scared me to the point that I was afraid to reach out to her again. And that really lasted for probably up until 2008, 2009, somewhere around there where it just got to a point, I think I was getting to an age where I realized that if I was going to get answers, I needed to start getting them. And at that point I started reaching out to the adoptee and birth parent community more. I found some online groups that I became a part of, and I really started to acknowledge that hurt pain that came with that rejection, and started to think about what I could do about it at that point.
Haley Radke: And so about what age would you have been then, when you started that?
Becky Drinnen: I would've been late 40s at that point in time.
Haley Radke: Okay. You have some children, too.
Becky Drinnen: I do. My daughter actually was born when I was a senior in high school. So I, in a way, was living out the same thing that my mother did, but with a very different result. And I think my adoptive parents knew that if they had pushed me to place her for adoption, that it would've driven me away. They knew, we'd had enough discussions about– they knew that I wanted to find my birth mother, and they knew that I struggled with that not knowing, and I think they knew that would not have been a good choice for me. And they were very supportive. I lived with them ‘til she was about a year and a half old, and they supported my decision. It was their first grandchild and they loved, and love, her dearly. Then when I married, I had three more children, three more instant children. When my husband and I got married, he already had three children. So I have a daughter and three stepchildren.
Haley Radke: So you connected with the adoptee community online, and did you try and reach out to your biological mother again?
Becky Drinnen: I did. In 2011. As a matter of fact, I remember the exact date, it was June 30th of 2011. I decided to reach out to her again. And I wanna back up just a little bit to say that probably a couple of years before, I had a new Facebook account, when Facebook was something new and exciting, and I did some searching and I discovered that not only did my birth mother, but all three of her kept children also, had Facebook pages. And at that point in time, privacy was a little bit more hit and miss, and I don't think it was as easy. So I was able to find lots of pictures and a lot of information about my family, and it was the first time I'd seen pictures of them as adults. And I'm looking for resemblance and trying to find out do we have anything in common? Do we like some of the same things?
And what I discovered is that little feature on Facebook where it suggests friends, and it says that you have a mutual friend in common? So after I looked at my brother's page, I can still remember sitting at my desk looking, and he popped up as a suggested friend because we had a mutual friend. And as I looked at that a little bit further, I discovered that he works– So I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. I lived three hours away in southwestern Ohio, and my mother lives halfway in between that. Well, my brother works eight miles up the road from me at a local factory. And, because of course I reached out to the mutual friend that we had on Facebook, I discovered that she's worked in the same unit with him. It's a fairly large factory, but they've worked in that same unit for about 12 years together.
I think that got it from interest to obsession. And fortunately at that time– When I searched for my mother initially, I had no support, no resources, didn't know anybody else that was searching. I didn't really know anybody else to reach out to. I live in a small community and that just wasn't something that was happening. This time, I had the adoptee community to support me. I had online friends that I'd met and some people I'd met in person. So I was a lot more vocal in trying to talk it out and figure out ‘what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?’ And I had a lot of advice that said, “Reach out to him, have the mutual friend arrange an introduction. Call 'em, you've got all their phone numbers. Call them. If she doesn't want to talk to you, let your brothers and sisters decide if they want a relationship with you.”
But I knew, from that conversation that I'd had with her way back in 1984, that she had not told her husband about me, and her children had no idea about me, and that was the reason that she was so freaked out when I called. I did not feel comfortable, regardless of what all of the people in the adoptee rights community said. I didn't feel comfortable doing that. Because what my goal was, I wanted to connect with her. So after a lot of conversations and a lot of soul searching, I decided I was gonna reach out to her again. And so I think it took me probably 15 tries at the phone. I'd pick it up and I'd start to dial and I'd hang it up. And it was terrifying to do because now I knew what the range of reactions could be. But I finally did it. And I called her, and it was certainly shocking to her to hear from me again. She first denied that I had the right person. But then I asked her about her sister, and the conversation went on, and she finally said, “Well, okay,” and she says, “but I really can't talk right now. Can we talk later tonight?”
I wondered at that point, when I hung up, if I had had the only conversation I would ever have with her, but we did end up talking that evening. So that's been almost five years ago. At the end of this month it will be five years. And we had about an hour and a half, two-hour conversation at that point. I will say that it was probably one of the most healing phone conversations I've ever had. She told me about the circumstances of my birth. She wouldn't tell me my father's name, but she told me a few more details than what my aunt had told me and what the adoption agency had put in the non-identifying information that I had requested from them. So I learned a little bit more about him, and about her, and about her family. And she talked a lot about her husband and her children and her grandchildren and that type of thing. But what sticks out with me the most from that conversation is she remembered what she named me. She told me that she loved me. And she told me that she prayed for me every day. That was more of a gift than I can imagine.
Now, when we left the phone call, I really felt like we would have– she really left it open, and I truly believe that she is interested and curious and wants to have more contact with me, but I think her biggest fear is that she never told her husband about me, and she fears the reaction if he would find out. And I think she worries about the reaction of her kept children as well. But I did feel like we'd have more contact. And we have had some brief emails. She had promised to send me pictures –that I never received– and I put a bunch of pictures in an online album for her and sent her a link to it. And we had some friendly email correspondence, but we have not talked. And I've been at that place where I'm unsettled enough with it now that I will at some point, probably in the not too distant future, try to reach out by phone again to see if we can connect again, because I feel like I need some closure with that. It was left open. It wasn’t a ‘this is the only phone call I'm ever gonna have with you, so you better ask me every question that you have’ type thing. I thought we would have more contact and I've been disappointed that we have not.
Haley Radke: Do you have a desire to connect with your siblings?
Becky Drinnen: Absolutely. Absolutely. I've talked with other adoptees, too, that, you know, it's a connection. I'm not particularly close to my brother. My sister and I are close, but we don't live close together, so I don't see her a whole lot. But I have an intense desire to be able to connect with them, but it's not as strong as my desire to have a connection with my mother, with the mother that gave me life. And she's 74 now, so I also have this little bit of a sense of you better not wait forever.
Haley Radke: I understand that. What's going through my head is sometimes I Google the name of my maternal grandparents because I wonder if I would know, if someone would tell me if they passed away. So I understand that feeling. So she told you some details about your biological father but not his name. I read on your blog that you were able to piece some of those together.
Becky Drinnen: I was. Probably a year or so after, maybe not quite a year after we had talked, I was beginning to realize that I probably wasn't– Because when we talked again, I wanted to ask her again about my father because half of who I am came from him. And I was always very close to my adoptive father, and I wondered about my biological father as well. I wondered a little bit more about him. So I thought I'm just gonna have to see what I can find out.
So that's when I connected with an organization called Adoption Network Cleveland, and I spoke with a woman there who was their search expert. And I was asking her first for advice about how I should handle reaching out to my mother again. And then I also said, “What can I do about finding my father?” And she pretty much said, “You're kind-of outta luck unless she wants to give you a name.” And I kind-of accepted that as a challenge, and I started thinking about it. I'm not one to accept being told that I can't do something very well and to hear her say that, I don't know, hearing somebody reflect that back to me, it's like, ‘now, just wait a minute’. And at that point I learned about DNA testing and I thought, ‘By golly, I'm gonna do some DNA testing and see what I can find out there’.
And so I talked with a few people who had studied genetic genealogy, and I also had read quite a few articles online. I knew enough to know that, just spitting in the tube or scraping your cheek, it wasn't gonna give you all the answers, that it was gonna take a lot of work to do that. So I ordered my Family Tree DNA kit, and I scraped my cheek and I sent it back and I started building a family tree. I had done some of this already on Ancestry just because– it’s I think kind-of a curse for an adoptee. My dad was a history teacher. I'd always had an interest in history. I'd always had an interest in roots and where you come from and all that kind of thing, and here as an adoptee, I didn't have that.
I'd had enough information about my mother's family that I started to build some of that tree. Now, I knew I needed to do that in earnest, because I needed to build that part of the tree to be able to rule out the people that were maternal DNA matches so that I could maybe try to pin down my father. So while I was waiting on that, I was really obsessed with the genealogy piece and putting that together. I pulled out every piece of information that I had gathered from letters from my aunt, from talking with her, from the conversation with my mother, from the adoption agency. And I realized I knew a little bit more than I thought. Because I knew that my parents had met when my mother was visiting an aunt in Illinois. And when I looked at that, I thought, ‘Gosh, the census records are out. I can look at the census records and figure out which aunt, and where’.
And I was able to figure out what aunt she had to have been visiting, cuz she only had one aunt that lived in Illinois. So I was able to pin it down a little bit. I knew a few facts. I had a basic physical description. I knew he was a farmer, and his father was a farmer. And I knew then where she lived, and I knew her name and that family, and she was also married to a farmer, my aunt was married to a farmer. So I had a pretty small area of where I could start looking. And I also had a note from one of the conversations with my aunt that talked about them meeting at a wedding.
So at this point, now this search was so different because first of all, I was armed with more information and second of all, I had the internet at my hands. So I was looking through indexed records of newspapers in the area where they lived, and I looked for every mention of my aunt's family in that area. And what I came across was a wedding announcement for a daughter of that aunt, who would've been my mother's cousin, and they were the same age, and my mother was a bridesmaid in that wedding.
The timing was such that from everything I knew it would've fit about the timeframe when she had met my father. I started researching everybody in the bridal party. I had narrowed it down. Just this gut instinct told me that I knew I was on the right path with this, and I researched every single male that was listed in that newspaper wedding announcement, that was a part of that wedding, and found some information online about them. And I knew he wasn't married, or at least I was told he wasn't married at the time that I was conceived and there was only, I think, one in that bridal party that met that criteria.
So I had it figured out and then I thought ‘let's go for broke’, and I called the bride in the wedding. And I didn't specifically tell her what I was doing, what I was looking for, but just a few minutes into that conversation when I told her that my birth mother was a cousin of hers, she knew exactly who it was, and she confirmed for me that I had the right person. So my father was the best man in that wedding. So within five minutes after I talked to her, I had a picture of both of my parents. It was a wedding picture with both of my parents in it, but it wasn't their wedding. Cuz she emailed me that almost immediately. You go from growing up with knowing that your mother had red hair to, wow, you've got a picture of both of your parents. And you have it confirmed that's who they are.
I reached out to him by phone and I think he's hard of hearing a little bit, and I knew we weren't really connecting by phone. I was able to learn quite a bit about him because this cousin had been married to his best friend and she knew him and still lived in the same community with him. So I knew a bit about his personality and I also knew that there’s an event in his town that he is very integral to putting on every year. So my guess was that I would be able to find him at that show somewhere and get a look at him and that type of thing. So my husband and I drove over to this show, and within 15 minutes of the time that we drove onto the grounds of this tractor show, I had found him. And so I ended up introducing myself to him at that tractor show.
Haley Radke: You're so brave, Becky.
Becky Drinnen: I was terrified. I don't think I would've done it if my husband hadn't been there with me because I was shaking, but what my husband ended up telling me is, he says, “If you don't go up and talk to him, I will.” So with that, I did. It was certainly a shock for him, but I could see that he was starting to put the pieces together as we were talking. And we had a very good conversation that day.
That was in 2013, so that's been three years ago. And we've got a very good relationship. I have four additional siblings. He was married about eight years after I was born, and he and his wife have four children, so I have a total of seven siblings. So I've met these siblings. He and his wife and his sister, their entire family, they've been very welcoming. One sister's not real happy about my existence, but everybody else has been very, very welcoming to me and it's been a completely different experience. I've learned so much about where I come from and who I come from and I've been able to go from knowing that my mother has red hair to being able to trace back to third-great-grandparents on both sides of my family and developing relationships with my father's family. And the interesting thing is I've also had the opportunity to meet an aunt and an uncle and some other cousins on my birth mother's side of the family as a result of finding my father.
Haley Radke: Unbelievable. That must be healing for you to be welcomed into that family.
Becky Drinnen: Oh, it has been. Absolutely. It's very validating and healing and I've got a picture of my sister and I, and it's like, ‘wow I've got a picture of me taken with somebody other than my daughter that I resemble’. And they're great people. I've loved being able to add those extra pieces to my puzzle and be a part of that family and get to know these people that I'm related to by blood.
Haley Radke: So beautiful. That's a nice happy side, right?
Becky Drinnen: It is, and it's a mixed bag, just like the rest of life is. It's not all good, it's not all bad. But I feel that I've learned really when you think about it, from our ancestors on back, they all made decisions that end up making you who you were. Several generations back, if one person had done something different, you would be a different person than you are today or maybe not even exist. It's just a lot to think about. And it's great to know, to be able to put names and some stories behind all of those names.
And the interesting thing is, though, because I started building this family tree stuff so that when I got DNA results back, I could start to do that work to maybe be able to put those pieces together at some point. I would've been able to do that with what I can see with the DNA matches now, but I was able to figure it out from a paper trail even before I got the DNA results back.
Haley Radke: When you were describing all the different things you did to search, I just thought this is like Sherlock Holmes. I can't–
Becky Drinnen: It really gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment to be able to do that. And I say that with knowing that I have adoptee friends who have done just as much hard work as I have, and they've come up with dead ends. And with a lot of compassion for people who aren't able to put all of those pieces together. The right person hasn't tested or the right paper trail's not there.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I feel so fortunate that my searches were extremely easy compared to that, and so I really have no concept of what it would take. So it was really wonderful for you to share all that. It's so complex.
Becky Drinnen: It is. It's definitely not for wimps, is it?
Haley Radke: No. So, I'm gonna ask you if you feel comfortable discussing this, you know, adoptees, we have a lot of wounds and hurts from that rejection initially when we're relinquished, and you've shared a little bit about that. Have you done any work through counseling or other kind-of healing things to work on those woundedness in your life?
Becky Drinnen: I have, Haley, and there's two things that I can really point to that have been very healing for me. One of those is reaching out to other people in the adoption community and not just adoptees. I think I have learned more and gotten more information, or things that helped me heal from other birth parents who relinquished children in about that same era that I was born. So that has been very healing, to learn about what the experiences of other adoptees are, to see what we share, to see what's different, and to talk with birth parents who share with me things that are in their heart, that my own birth mother's not in a place to be able to do. So that has helped me very much.
And though I have not gone to counseling, what happened at about that same time in my life that all of this was coming up for me in 2010, 2011, I started a side business. And through that, I was connected with this group of people called life coaches, and most of these coaches that I connected with were trained through a lady named Martha Beck. Through this coaching community, through some classes I took, and through a couple of retreats that I attended, the biggest thing that I took away from all of that is: what we have choice over, you know, that we have choices that can keep us from playing the victim, that we don't have to play the victim, we can choose not to. And probably the biggest point that I took from all of that is that I can only choose the actions that I take. And I can only choose my reactions. I can't control what anybody else does. And really internalizing that I can't control what my mother says and does, or any of my siblings, or my father or my husband, or children for that matter. I can only control my reactions. And so to realize that has been very affirming for me, very powerful for me because what I've been able to realize is that I've got those certain things that I can control. I can control whether to search or not for my father. I can control whether to try to reach out to anyone else in my family. I can't control what their reaction is. All I can do is deal with it, and as hurtful as that may be, realizing that that's outside of my realm of things that I can control has been very powerful.
Haley Radke: When you don't have to take personal responsibility for other people's actions, it can be really freeing. So thank you for sharing that. So is there anything else that I didn't ask you about that you wanna touch on?
Becky Drinnen: One of the questions that I've been asked a lot is where my faith or religious beliefs come in with all of this adoption experience that I've had. The interesting thing for me through all of this is, I was adopted through a Lutheran adoption agency, I was raised a Lutheran. And I think there was a whole lot of midlife crisis stuff going on when I was ready to reach out to my mother again, when I was in my late 40s. I was struggling with faith. I had backed away from church a little bit, the same church that I had gone to from the time that my parents adopted me. And I was really struggling with that.
Through all of the searching that I did, I realized how deep the Lutheran faith was not only in my adoptive family, but in my biological family. On both sides of my biological family there's a very deep Lutheran faith, where my father's very involved in his church, as were his parents before him. And on my birth mother's side I have grandparents and great-grandparents that were teachers and principals in Lutheran schools. And it really caused me to reevaluate a little bit what role faith had for me. And where I've come out with that is that I feel like my relationship with God is even stronger now than it was, just through that process that I went through of evaluating what that meant to me.
That said, though, in all of this adoption stuff, the anger that I still have is with the adoption agency and the way they try to play God over the information that they will give me or not, and over how they treated those moms that came to them for for help when they were pregnant in the 60s and 70s. It's this two-sided coin.
Haley Radke: Definitely. Thank you for sharing that. I'm a person of faith as well and my adoptive parents are Lutheran and my husband and I go to a Baptist church. But when I reunited with my father, his family's Catholic. They are very involved in their church, and that's been a wonderful bond for us. It's nice to hear that the faith aspect can be healing as well. I've heard from a lot of adoptees, especially with Catholic agencies and Mormon agencies, that there's a lot that have rejected faith because of that. I'm glad to hear that you were able to reconnect with that.
Well, I would love it if we could share some recommended resources for our listeners, and I know that you have a couple to share and I'm hoping that you're okay if I go first. So I came across this article, and it's by Frank Ligtvoet. And you spell his last name L-I-G-T-V-O-E-T. So I actually tweeted him to ask him how to say it. He's actually quite a prolific freelance writer. He writes about adoption and he's an adoptive father. And in this article, it was released in May 2016. It's called On the Venerable American Bar Association, or the Myth of Normal and Good in Adoption. He just outlines his views on adoption and how he has researched over time, actually mostly via Twitter, it's quite interesting. And there's one sentence in here I wanna read: “Like everybody else in the adoptive parent community, I long time believed that adoption was a good thing that came with loss, of course, but in the end was all around a beneficial child welfare intervention. I don't believe that anymore.” And so he goes on and talks about the money involved in adoption, the ‘goodness of adoption normalcy’ myth. And it's a really powerful article and I really appreciate, as an adoptive parent, him speaking out on that issue. So I'm gonna link to it in our show notes, and I really recommend that our listeners look it up. And it's a good article to share with people that aren't familiar with the profit side of adoption.
Becky Drinnen: Yes, that's very disheartening when you start to realize that babies are a commodity, isn't it?
Haley Radke: Yes. Human trafficking is alive and well, even in America. Yeah, it is. It's very sad.
Becky Drinnen: I look forward to looking that article up.
Haley Radke: He's tweeting all the time on Twitter, not just his writing, but anything he comes across in adoption.
Becky Drinnen: Okay. Good. I look forward to checking him out.
Haley Radke: Becky, what resources did you bring today?
Becky Drinnen: So I really had a lot of trouble just finding one resource. So what I'd like to share with everyone who's listening today is two resources and then a recommendation. One is a blog and it is written by a woman named Deanna Shrodes. She is an adoptee, she's also a Pentecostal minister in Florida, but she writes a blog called Adoptee Restoration. And the URL is www.adopteerestoration.com, and she shares a lot of her journey in a very easy to read, open, thoughtful, caring way. And it's just amazing how she hits on points, and she hits with compassion while sticking to her guns about what she believes about what's right and wrong in adoption. She's about my age, I think, a little bit younger, so she's also that Baby Scoop Era adoption. And she just writes very eloquently about the adoption experience, and I think every adoptee that has read her blog comes away with something. So for adoptees and for adoptive parents out there, I think that's a great resource.
The other is– I'm a prolific reader, I love to read, and I have a whole shelf full of books about adoption. But the one that I go back to, the one that has taught me the most and has helped me the most in healing in my experience as an adoptee who has faced rejection, is a book called The Girls Who Went Away by Anne Fessler. It is interviews with a lot of birth parents who relinquished children in that era post-World War II to Roe v. Wade, and what they endured, and what they have endured since they relinquished their baby for adoption. And it's very powerful.
Haley Radke: Yes, that book. That book!
Becky Drinnen: Have you read that book, Haley?
Haley Radke: I have read that book, yes. That was something I read. Oh boy. I think I was just out of secondary rejection with my mom. I'm not sure, but I remember reading that and just being shocked and horrified and I don't know if I finished it because it was just so overwhelming.
Becky Drinnen: It is overwhelming. And it's not one of those books that you can read in one sitting, it's one of those you have to bite off pieces of it a little bit at a time. I agree, it's very triggering and you can't read it without getting a knot in your stomach, but it's very educational for us who don't understand what it was like to be pregnant and single in the 50s, 60s, or early 70s.
And then I guess the last thing I would just like to mention is, as much as I have healed and learned and connected with people online, I really encourage everyone who is trying to deal with anything to do with adoption issues, or rejection or, even relationships and how to navigate them: find an in-person support group, go to a conference, reach out to someone that you've read their blog online and try to develop more of a personal connection with them. Because nobody can get it like another person who has lived adoption, and doing that in person is amazing.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. So speaking of that, where can we connect with you online, Becky?
Becky Drinnen: I am frequently on Facebook and a lot of what I share is private, but I love to have people who are connected to adoption as friends on Facebook. And you can find me under Becky Conrad Drinnen there. And I'm also on Twitter, my Twitter username is @drinnebe. And you can also find me at my –much neglected at this point– blog which is at puzzlesandpossibilities.com.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I so enjoyed our conversation tonight and I thank you so much for being so candid with us and open with your story. I'm very grateful for that and I'm sure our listeners will be, too, as they listen to you share your heart with us.
Becky Drinnen: Well, thank you very much. That's been an amazing experience talking with you, Haley. I appreciate it.
Haley Radke: I would love it if you would tweet Becky and let her know your appreciation for her candor with us. If you'd like to share your adoptee story or contact us, visit our website Adopteeson.com. You can send us an email, or you can record a short voicemail that we could feature on an upcoming show. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @adopteeson. Today, would you share our show with your adoptee community? Someone in that group may need to hear Becky's story today. We'd love to hear your feedback, rate and review us in iTunes to let us know what you think of the show. Thanks so much for listening, let's talk again soon.
