6 Liz Prato
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/6
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast for adoptees to discuss the adoption experience. This is season one, episode six, Liz Prato. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today, we'll be talking to Liz Prato, a fellow adoptee who will be sharing her search and secondary rejection experience with us. We also discuss her beautiful reunion with her sister.
We'll wrap up with some recommended resources for you.
I'd like to welcome our guest, Liz Prato, to the show today. You've experienced a great deal of pain in your search to connect with your biological family. Thank you for being willing to share your story with us.
Liz Prato: I'm honored to do so. Thank you.
Haley Radke: Could you start by telling us about your birth and relinquishment?
Liz Prato: I was given up for adoption in 1967. It was a time of closed adoptions, and my adoption was handled by Catholic Charities, which also handled a lot of adoptions at that time. My birth mother relinquished me when I was born. I was born prematurely, and under fairly traumatic medical circumstances. I was in an incubator for a while, but she relinquished me right away. So I was an incubator by myself. I had no one who loved me, basically. No one who was visiting me, nobody who was my people looking out for me while I was in an incubator.
And then I got out of there and I was released into an orphanage for the next several weeks. My parents, my adoptive parents, took me home on August 11th. I was born on June 3rd. So that was the whole period of time that I was either–that I was alone.
Haley Radke: Oh, that's heartbreaking.
Liz Prato: And I didn't really think about it until I got much older: What does that mean? To have been alone during those first two months of my life, to have no one who loved me, did not have that kind of touch?
I'm a massage therapist as a job, and I don't think it's a coincidence that touching people in a nurturing way for a living is a coincidence that that's what I do. I think that's something that I missed. It is certainly something that calms me and makes–and I crave all the time. Yeah, I think it's a really big deal to not have that in the beginning.
Haley Radke: Mhmm. And so do you know why your birth mother relinquished?
Liz Prato: I do now. I didn't for many years, not until very recently. She wasn't as young as I had always assumed she was. I had a–My parents had always said, “Oh, I'm sure your birth mother was a teenager and too young to give you a good life.” But she was, in fact, 23 years old when she got pregnant with me.
However, what I now know is that she and my birth father were not in love. They had no plans to get married. That would've been just a disaster if they had, but they both came from Catholic families. And her father, in particular, was extremely Catholic, and I think there was even a member of her family (an uncle or somebody) who's a deacon or something like that.
So it was a big shame to her dad, in particular, that his unmarried daughter got knocked up and he sent her away (which happened back then). She, my entire biological family, lives in Buffalo, New York. And she was sent away to stay with her godfather in Denver, Colorado, because he did not want any of his friends knowing about this.
And not only that, but before she left, he would not talk to her. He didn't talk to her for an entire year. He was ashamed and he was punishing her for what she had done. So that was this extra trauma that she took on. And she was sent away to Denver, and that's where I was born.
Haley Radke: That's so sad.
Liz Prato: And my birth father, from what I understand, totally abandoned her, too. I mean, again, they weren't in love. They weren't gonna get married, but he was not there for her in any way during that time.
Haley Radke: Was she a student, or working, or do you know?
Liz Prato: She was working. She was–I believe she was a bookkeeper at that time. But she was living at home. I think it's hard to understand in modern times why a 23-year-old wouldn't have more autonomy than she did. But I think we need to take ourselves back into a very traditional Catholic family, maybe even to a place in the country where things were a little more traditional than that, so…
Haley Radke: Yeah, and you're right, I mean, the sixties. The Girls Who Went Away, that book by Ann Fessler, right? Yeah. It was very common for them to be sent away, birth mothers to be sent away to have their child in secret.
And so were your adoptive family, were they Catholic to adopt from Catholic charities or…?
Liz Prato: Yeah, my dad had been raised Catholic. My mom wasn't, but that was also just kind of where you got babies from then. You know, that was an easy way to do it. And I think since my dad had ties to the Catholic Church, it made sense at the time.
But my Catholic education ended pretty early in my life. Like I never even did First Communion and all that stuff. My dad broke away from the Catholic Church.
Haley Radke: And did they have other children?
Liz Prato: Yeah. A year and a half before I came along, they adopted my brother Steve, and… I always have to explain this to people. He was adopted from a different family, biological family than I was. So we are not biologically related in any way. And so it was just the two of us.
Haley Radke: So you said in your email to me how you've lost all of your adopted family now. Is that right?
Liz Prato: Yes, correct. My mom died when I was 26. She died from emphysema. She was only 58 years old.
Haley Radke: I'm sorry.
Liz Prato: Thank you. My dad died when I was 43, and then my brother died the following year, when I was 44. And in addition to that, all my aunts, uncles, grandparents were deceased by that time as well. So I was really utterly abandoned and orphaned by the time I was 44 years old.
And you know, I think when you're young, 44 sounds old and “Oh, that's a total grownup.” But I did not feel like a grownup. I felt like a little kid who was abandoned again.
Haley Radke: That was really sad. I'm sorry.
Liz Prato: Thank you.
Haley Radke: My goodness. There's a lot of sorrow in your story.
Liz Prato: I know.
Haley Radke: When did you decide to search for your birth mother, Liz?
Liz Prato: I started thinking about that, I think, in my early thirties. But it was a really slow brew. It was like, I thought about it, and then it sat for a while. And then I looked to see, how would I go about that?
And at that time Colorado's adoption records were still closed. But they did have a program called the Confidential Intermediary Service, where I could hire an intermediary (who was court appointed) who could go in and open my adoption records, see the names of my birth parents, and search for them. I still couldn't know it.
She was not allowed to tell me this, but she could search for them and ask them if they wanted to be in contact with me. I found out about that program online and I thought about it, and then however long later, I downloaded the forms and then they just sat in a drawer in my desk. Yeah. So it was this long process, until one day I just filled out the forms and got them notarized, and I cannot tell you why, what happened in that moment, but in that moment, I was ready.
And for me, being ready meant being somewhat emotionally prepared for the possibility that they will not want to have reunion with me. I needed to be ready for that. And I felt like I was finally in a place where I was strong enough and stable enough to be ready for that possibility.
So, I think I was about 35 when I started the process. And the intermediary who was assigned to work with me, it was this wonderful woman named Pat. And Pat contacted my birth mother first, and that process took a very, very, very, very long time. That took about a year and a half before my birth mother made her final decision not to have contact with me.
And then Pat contacted my birth father, and he took about six months before he made the same decision. So by the time all was done with, I was–I remember this so clearly because we were still going back and forth with my birth father, and it was the week before my 40th birthday.
And I remember thinking, I can't keep going through this. I can't go into another decade going through this with these two not able to make up their minds whether or not I am worthy to be in their lives. And it was either right before or right after my birthday that my biological or birth father made the decision not to.
Haley Radke: And how did he let you know that?
Liz Prato: Both my birth parents had the opportunity to write me a letter that was sent through the intermediary. I had no idea where they lived, where it came from. It didn't have their name on it. And in his letter he– It was interesting. It was a really kind letter and he explained to me, as much as possible, the circumstances surrounding why I was given up for adoption.
He told me that I had a brother and a sister, and he told me a little bit about them, but he said it was a very difficult time in his family's life at that point, because his daughter had just found out that she wasn't able to have kids. They were– And it would just be too much of an emotional blockbuster to all of a sudden hear about me. He said he had not refused contact with me easily. He wanted to let me know that he hoped someday things would be different, and that was the last thing he said in his letter.
Haley Radke: That must have been hard to hear.
Liz Prato: I was prepared for it by that point. It was hard to hear. I'll tell you what was the hardest about it: It was still an open door. Hope is always the last thing to die, you know. So that last sentence of, “I hope someday things will be different” was there, but it was so vague at the same time, and so I didn't know what that meant.
What does “someday” mean? When is “someday”? How do I, like, how does my heart calibrate “someday”? I don't know.
Haley Radke: And knowing, too, that you have siblings and he's closing the door to that, too?
Liz Prato: Yeah, and my birth mother, I found out through her, I had a brother and a sister from her as well, who also didn't know about me. And both of my birth parents said basically the whole reasoning was, “None of my kids know about you, and it would just be too traumatic. It would be…”
I mean, really, they felt like it would be catastrophic if their children knew about me.
Haley Radke: Wonder where that feeling comes from for them. Just the shame of your history and keeping secrets...
Liz Prato: It just so doesn't give people the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't give their kids, for sure... It doesn't give them the opportunity to just be compassionate adults, to take it as they want to. I mean, these are grownups. We're not talking about children, you know?
We all have curve balls thrown at us as grownups. And I'll tell you something that I forgot to tell you earlier, which is that actually my father (who I grew up with, my adoptive father)-- I found out when I was in my thirties that he had given a child up for adoption with a woman he met before my mother, and I had never known that. He'd never told me that, which is so bizarre, because my parents have always been so open about the whole idea of adoption, and if I want to find my birth parents, and all that stuff. But out of the blue in my thirties, his biological granddaughter contacted him, tracked him down, and contacted him with the blessing of her father (my dad's son).
And so suddenly, in my thirties, my dad said–I found this out, that my dad has this son out there in the world. So I do know what it's like to have that curve ball thrown at you. I do. And it's weird. And my brother, who was definitely a more closed down, protective person than I am, was finally even able to accept it. So it makes me very sad that my birth parents were not giving their kids even that opportunity.
Haley Radke: I just, I'm just so upset about it. It's not fair.
Liz Prato: I know. It's terrible. It's not fair.
Haley Radke: You're right. It's not fair. You're right. They're all adults and grownups can make their own decisions about whether or not they want to have a relationship with you, but it's not fair for them to keep you a secret, I don't believe.
Liz Prato: I agree with that.
Haley Radke: You shared what your birth father had written. What communication did you get from your birth mother?
Liz Prato: I shared two letters with her. It was very weird, because here's this thing I had wanted for so long to have some communication with this woman who brought me into the world.
And then when it really came down, when the onus was on me to ask those questions, or launch that relationship, it was a really hard letter to write. And at that time, I was so… I didn't wanna scare her away, because she was scared. It took, I wanna say maybe nine months to even get her to agree to do this kind of anonymous contact with me.
She really went back and forth and back and forth a lot, and so I really didn't wanna scare her away. So I was trying to strike this tone of being kind of lighthearted, but not like , “Hey, this is all blasé, this doesn't matter to me.” But I didn't tell her my mom was dead. Both my dad and my brother were still alive at that point, but I didn't tell her my mom was dead, because I didn't want her thinking I was looking for a replacement (because I wasn't).
We shared a little bit of information, but it was all pretty surface level stuff. And I had the feeling that she was only doing this to keep me away from her kids, actually. Because she knew that through this law in Colorado, if she refused contact with me that I legally had the right to contact her children.
I suspected that was the only reason she agreed to this anonymous communication. And so I talked to the intermediary and I said, “I want to give her my name and my address and my phone number and see if she'll still continue communication.” And my intermediary was very clear: “If you do that, I can't be a part of this anymore. The case is closed because the confidentiality has been broken.” And I said, “I get that.” And so I did that. I sent my birth mother all my information, and I never heard from her ever again.
Haley Radke: It's worse not hearing anything than hearing, “I don't wanna talk to you again.” In my opinion, that's what I feel like.
Liz Prato: Well, and as you know… And as we talked about earlier, I later went on to find out who they were. I was able to get that information many years later. And even in those circumstances, really, I just wish they'd given me the benefit of the doubt of being a grownup, capable of having a conversation, being understanding and compassionate, instead of just shutting me out entirely.
Haley Radke: How were you able to get their information?
Liz Prato: So it was about eight years later. It was, I remember this, it was December of 2013, and I decided I wanted to know who my siblings were. And so I decided I wanted to go back and hire the intermediary service again to contact my siblings.
And I contacted the woman who had done the search for me before to ask if she was available, and she said, “Yeah, probably. But hold on, because Colorado is trying to get a law through the legislature that would open up all adoption records for adult adoptees.”
And so I did some research into that and I found out that they were introducing a bill in the house in Colorado. I wrote a letter in support of it to several—everyone on that committee. I sent this letter out telling them how important it is for people to know where they come from, that it turns out is not a right in our society, that's a privilege that not all of us are afforded. I explained some of the ways in which not having that information had impacted me, not just in the physical ways, but also in my heart, in my soul, and I asked friends to do the same.
And sure enough, they passed that law and the governor of Colorado signed a bill saying that all adoption records could be opened. And it took a while to get all the administrative stuff figured out. And then at the same time, like around the same time that they opened up records, I had my first book published, and I was out on book tour and I knew I could not handle that.
And being on book tour with my first book at the same time, it was just like, Oh my God, that's too hectic. And I wanted to make sure that when I did this, when I got this information about who these people are, when I got their names, that I could commit to it in a sort of grounded way or as grounded as you can be, under such circumstances.
So, it was about a year after the bill passed, and this was just last year, August 23rd, 2015. I was in Denver. I went down to the courthouse, I got my records. And for the first time in my life, I saw the names of the people who brought me into this world.
Haley Radke: How did that feel for you?
Liz Prato: I thought it was gonna feel much crazier than it felt, and it just felt like everything settled into place. I just felt calm, I felt– I was excited. But not like spazzy excited, not, I wasn't manic, and I thought I'd be manic. Oh my God. Oh my God. And actually it didn't get manic until I started sharing that with my friends and my husband. And they're like, on the internet, we're all on the internet at the same time, searching, trying to find out information about all these people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I finally had to say to them, “Listen, this information's not gonna change. I gotta go take a shower and eat lunch.” But really for the most part, it's just–something settled into place that had not been there before. It was so simple: It was names. It was names; it was a piece of paper with names on it was the thing that brought me this huge piece of relief of myself, into place.
Haley Radke: And so you had the names of both your birth mother and birth father?
Liz Prato: Correct.
Haley Radke: And also their children?
Liz Prato: No, their children weren't on there. It was because it was only the information that they had then. And strangely, for reasons that I still haven't been able to get to the bottom of, the records from when the intermediary did the search, I can't find or I can't get access to.
I think they're actually in Catholic Charities. And Catholic Charities isn't letting me have them, and are being very weird about stuff. So that's a challenge. But no, anyway, so I got the names of both my birth parents. And birth fathers are always easier to find, because they don't get married and change their last names.
And my birth father was very easy to find. It's not like he was named Mike Smith or something like that. He had a name that was relatively unique. The intermediary who had done the search before, I just asked her, “Is this the right person?” She, of course, ethically and maybe even legally wasn't allowed to tell me his name, but she could say yes or no (I think).
And she said, “Yes, this is the right person.” And then the other thing I knew, because she had shared this with me way back when she did the search for my birth mother, is she had told me back then, and I remembered that the way she found my birth mother's married name was she actually looked for an obituary for her father.
And so I knew to do that. I knew to type in “obituary” and her name and look for her father's obituary. And then through her father's obituary, I saw what her new married name was and what her husband's name was. And that's how I was able to find her. And again, these were totally uncommon names, and especially for the town that they live in.
And I was really quickly able to find all of my biological siblings. Well, that's not true. There's one that I had a harder time finding than others. But on both sides I was able to, and especially (interestingly), my biological father's daughter, she has a pretty public presence because she's a performer and a model. And she had a Twitter feed, and she has a Facebook page, and an Instagram account.
And there's like a billion pictures of her out there. And we look alike. And it was the first time in my life I'd ever seen someone who looked like me.
Haley Radke: Isn't that an odd feeling?
Liz Prato: It's again, one of those things that people who are not adopted take for granted, I believe .
Haley Radke: When I first met my birth mother, it was before I had children. I remember just looking at her face and just basically being in shock.
Liz Prato: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Have you connected with any of your siblings then, now that you have their information?
Liz Prato: I connected with my sister on my birth mother's side. I had called her before I did this, by the way. I called her, I left her a message. I said, “This is Liz Prato,” and she already knew my name because I'd revealed that to her before.
I let her know that Colorado had opened their adoption records, so I now knew her name. I was more emotional in that phone call than I'd been in our entire correspondence before. I was kind of over the whole, “I don't wanna scare her away” thing. I'm just like, “Wow, this is what I feel.” I said, “I wish you'd just please talk to me and tell me what happened back then.”
And I didn't hear from her. But some voice told me–I mean, this was such a profound story for me. I really thought, Oh my God, this is it. I can't ever know these people. She wants nothing to do with me. And for some reason, I still to this day, very much intertwined their parents not wanting anything to do with me and my siblings.
I think it's the same thing, for some reason. Even though I should know better; I'm a grownup. I know I have very different ideas than my parents, you know? But one day I was trying– I was having kind of anxiety over the whole thing. I was trying to calm myself down. I was lying in bed. I had finally calmed my brain down and my body down, and it's like I heard this voice say, “Email your sister.”
I know it sounds like I'm crazy or something, but it was just such a strong, clear voice and I heard it…not heard it. I felt it, whatever, three times. And so I did. I got up and I went and emailed my sister. And I told her who I am and I said, “I hope I did this right. I don't know how to do this. I've never written a letter like this before, exactly. I just want you to know that I hope you're doing okay and...”
I just tried to be really careful about it, too. She wrote me back in about two hours and said, “My mom has never said anything about this to me and what makes you think you have the right person? Can you give me more information?” And it was very pleasant. It wasn't at all defensive.
And I wrote her a long email telling her the whole story. I scanned copies of my adoption papers, the whole thing. It was instantly clear, of course, that I had the right person because she and I don't look alike. Even though I look like my birth father's daughter, I don't look like my birth mother's daughter.
And she said, wrote back and she said, “I'm in shock to say the least, and I need some time to absorb this. And will you please just do me a favor and don't tell my brother about this? Don't get in touch with him.” And I said, “That's fine.” And I said, “Take as much time as you need. I'm not going anywhere.”
And then the very next morning, she sent me an invitation to Google Chat. And we chatted for two hours, and then for the next nine months we were in touch every single day.
Haley Radke: What was your first conversation with her like?
Liz Prato: Oh gosh, I wish I could remember a little bit better. I think we were going back and forth about what I wanted to know about my family, so I was just asking her lots of questions about, “Who are these people,” yeah. So I think it was like that, but it was really clear early on that she had a sense of humor and we shared that. I often use humor to not necessarily diffuse difficult situations, but because there's usually something funny (even in difficult situations) that you can pull out. She had that, as well.
We made lots of jokes. She was very honest with me. I would ask her about health things. I would ask her about, not just physical health in my family, but mental health–all really honest about that stuff. And it was more of a sharing, a back and forth, this is who I am.
Oh, it's funny, I just got a text message from her pop up on my screen right this second, asking if I would send her a copy of the recording of this interview. That's hilarious.
Haley Radke: So you're still in touch with her, then?
Liz Prato: We are…The contact has faded a little. So, we have met in person three times since we first got in touch. And the last time, I went to Buffalo. And it was her birthday, and I happened to be on the East Coast for a conference, so I just…. There was no reason I wouldn't bop over to Buffalo to see her. And that was so hard for two very different reasons. One, it was hard because we drove by my birth father's house (and we have to get back to that story in a sec).
And then she took me…and I saw her mother's house. Her mother was out of town, but I did see her mother's house. She showed me the house that her grandparents lived in, where her mother lived with me when I was in utero (before she was sent away). And that was all so much more difficult for me than I could have imagined.
I so clearly felt this sense of, I don't belong here. I was never meant to belong here. This is not my place. That was really hard. And certainly in her house, in my sister's house, I felt welcome and warm and comfortable, and her friends were very, very, very welcoming to me. They were so sweet; everybody was so kind.
And at the same time, it was really clear: we are very different people. We live very different lives. I'm just the West Coast liberal and her friends aren't. And some of our ideologies are very different.
And I think it's really easy to pretend those things don't matter, or to not even recognize them when you're kind of exist— Your relationship is existing in this vacuum, because up until then, the two times we had met before, we’d met in other cities where neither of us had people; it was just us. And so it was kind of like having this really intense romantic relationship, you know? And then as soon as you bring it out into the outside world, you see the honeymoon period is over; the bubble pops a little bit.
That was at the beginning of April that happened, and I'm not really sure where we are as a result of that. I love her, and I want her to be in my life forever. And it doesn't matter to me at all that she and her friends live a different life than I do, and I hope she feels the same way. And we can just kind of put that somewhere else. Does that make sense?
Haley Radke: It totally makes sense. And as I was listening to your story about her, and you said “the honeymoon stage,” it is very much the stages of reunion. And it's interesting to hear that from a sibling perspective, because all the writing is about reunion with a biological parent. And so it's interesting that transfers on to siblings as well. You can use the same stages.
Liz Prato: Yeah, and it's real. And I kind of knew something like that would happen, because I knew we couldn't carry on that level of excitement and communication every single day for the rest of our lives. And that doesn't mean I'm not sad about it. It was really fabulous and I loved it. And I loved being able to tell people that's what the situation was, and I just hope we are able to find what our next phase looks like in a grounded, loving way. It's okay if we don't have communication over this period of time, or that period of time, or whatever...
Haley Radke: I'm so glad that there is a joyful reunion moment there for you and her.
Liz Prato: Yeah.
Haley Radke: That's really awesome. Okay, so you said there's something we should go back to about your birth father.
Liz Prato: Right. So last we heard from him, I think you'll remember that he had sent me this letter years ago saying he hopes someday that things would be different.
So I, all these years, had been carrying around that in my head and thinking he was gonna be the person who I was going to connect with the most. When I got his name, I sent him an email. I said, “Will you please confirm that you get this? Because I don't even know if I have the right email address.” And I just said, “This is me. The adoption records were opened. This is where we are.”
I said, “I don't really have concrete expectations about what I want to have happen next, but I want you to know I'm out here and I know this is a shock for you. And let's kind of see what happens next.”
And he wrote me back and he said, “I got your email and I'm thinking about it.” And that's all he said. And I didn't think much of that, which is interesting, because all my friends who I told that to said, “Really? He didn't say anything like, ‘I'm glad to hear from you’? Or, he didn't say anything emotionally related to it or…”. No. I'm like, “No, that's really all he said, what I just told you.”
And about a week or 10 days went by, I didn't hear from him. And then I woke up one morning and there was, on Facebook, a friend request from him. And I was really excited about that, because to me that felt like a gentle way to get to know somebody. He could just look at my Facebook page, you know? He could just see what's on there, and see what kind of things I post, and who my friends are.
And it's a very kind of non-confrontational way to learn about somebody. And I thought that's what he wanted to do. So I accepted the friend request. I had just woken up. It was a Sunday morning. I came upstairs, I told my husband, he said, “Wow, that's so much better than being blown off.” Poured myself coffee, sat down to look at his Facebook page, and he had deleted my friend request.
Like, he had unfriended me already, and I just had no idea what that meant. And my husband was saying, “Maybe it's just ‘old-person-using-Facebook syndrome,’” and things like that. And so I sent him another friend request just to be like, Okay, maybe that was an accident, that he unfriended me, somehow.
And when I went back to check to see if he accepted my new friend request, he’d deleted his entire Facebook profile. And that was the day I called my birth mother for the first time. And that's why I was so emotional in that phone call, because of this bizarre experience with my birth father on Facebook that did not make sense at all.
And that's–I was saying to her, “Please let me know what happened.” And, because I was like, Why? Why am I such a big deal? Why am I such a catastrophe? Why? Why am I so scary? And she didn't call me back, as I said. And then, a couple weeks later I thought, I wanna contact my birth father’s siblings, specifically his daughter, since she and I look so much alike. And there's something about that's so compelling.
I mean, we could be like completely different people in this world, but there's something so amazing about seeing this other person who looked like me. So I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt (and I do not know why I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt). But I wrote my birth father an email and I said, “I don't really know where we are, especially in light of the weird Facebook incident, but I want to know if you've told your children about me yet. I would like to be in contact with them. They're a huge part of who I am and my lineage, and this is really important to me.”
And I said to him, “I know this is really hard for you, but I want you to know this is hard for me too, but I am your blood. I am your DNA.” He wrote me back and he said, “As for the, ‘Where are we now?’ question, I'll have an answer to that for you in a couple of days. And let me explain about the Facebook incident.”
And he said he accidentally sent a friend request to me and then when he saw the mistake he had made, he rescinded it. I said, “Okay.” And I wrote him back and I said, “Thank you very much for replying to this.” I always wanted to let him know, “I am grateful that you’re doing this.” So that was on a Wednesday.
Then he said, “I'll have an answer for you in a couple of days.” And what I got in two days was an emailed letter from his lawyers telling me to leave him and his family alone. And it said at the end that if I chose to ignore the letter, he was ready and willing to do anything necessary to protect the harmony and privacy of his family.
I was devastated. I just can't explain how heartbroken I was, that he never ever gave me indication that's what was coming. He not only sent a letter that you know, at that secondary rejection, but he did not give me any reason to believe that's what he wanted. All he had to say at one point was, “I am not ready for this,” and I would've said, “I understand. Let's revisit it later.”
He did not give me the benefit of the doubt in any way, shape, or form, as being a person capable of being reasonable. And he just shut me down in this very impersonal, degrading way. And I think he assumed I'm not a very smart person or a very resourced person. And I think he thought I was just gonna accept that at face value.
What I did was I sent it to my attorney right away. “Hey, guess what? I have an attorney!!” And my attorney said, “This is BS. There's no legal standing behind this whatsoever. His children are adults. You can do whatever you want. You can contact them if you want.” He said, but I don't know why he would want– My lawyer said this to me, “I don't know why you'd wanna be involved in this man's life.”
That's kind of where that landed. And that was a long time ago. That was back in September of 2015, and here we are now in 2016. His daughter, like I said, has a public presence. I followed her on Twitter for a while and she followed me back, which I realize is creepy.
But I saw someone who looked like me for the first time in my life, and I could not turn away. I don't know if she knows who I am. I don't think she does. I wanna tell her so badly, but my birth father has bullied me into the shadows. He has done what birth parents do for a lot of adoptees, which is push us away, pretend we never existed.
And I have let him do that. And I hate that, that I've let him do that. I have let him make me believe that my presence in his kids' life would be a catastrophe.
Haley Radke: I'm just–I'm in tears listening to this.
Liz Prato: I'm a little teary, too. Terrible.
Haley Radke: I don't understand how they don't understand that we're human, and all we want is that connection.
Liz Prato: Yeah, and I like… I don't wanna be invited to Christmas dinner at his house. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking like…wow. Just like you said, the connection, the understanding of where I came from.
Haley Radke: I'm so sorry.
Liz Prato: Thank you. But you know, I'll tell you one thing. I got that letter from his attorneys. It was really terrible, because they sent it to me via email and then followed up with a hard copy in the mail. So I get the email on a Friday morning, and I told my sister who I'm in touch with (Kate), and she was supportive and horrified and that he would treat me that way. So I think it was the following Tuesday, I got the hard copy of that letter in the mail from my birth father's lawyers.
So yay, I actually have proof of it!! In the mail, the exact same day, I got a card from my sister and it was a thank you card. And on the inside she wrote, “Thank you for finding me.” And it doesn't make up for what my birth father did. It's not a replacement for that, but at least there is this one gem in the middle of all that crap. And she gave me that; that's a huge gift.
Haley Radke: That's beautiful.
Liz Prato: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Just like other adoptees, it sounds like you've got a lot of woundedness and rejection. And is there anything that you've done to work on that in your life?
Liz Prato: I think for me, what was surprisingly healing was I've been very open about my story, on Facebook and on Twitter. Because I– Even though (like I said) I've let my birth father bully me into the shadows when it comes to contacting his children, in every other way I am very open about this.
I talk about it on Twitter, and what's funny about it is I talk about it on Twitter (without using names). And my half-sister, who doesn't know she's my half-sister, was following me. So she'd be reading this stuff and it was just so bizarre, anyway, where I was going with that is… being very open about that. People have started telling me their stories. They have written me emails and private messages on Facebook and on Twitter. At readings that I've done, people will come up to me and start to tell me their stories about being separated from their half-siblings.
There are a lot of us out there. That's the thing that's just amazing me all the time. I mean, I feel like everybody needs to go– Even if you think you know your parents' life, you need to go ask your parents, “Do I by any chance have any half siblings out there?” Because a shocking number of people do.
I was amazed at how many people came out and started telling me their stories, and what was very clear to me very early on, is how many stories there are. I'm happy to recommend books and websites and things like that. I find that books focus on one person's story more often than not, and every story really is different. There's some strings that run through it, of course. And I think it's important to know what those strings are, but I actually got so much out of talking to individual people who have been at different points in their story.
And for that matter, I have two close friends who are birth mothers who reunited with their children. And talking to them about the way that went and what it felt like for them… I mean, I am not lucky enough to have birth parents who wanted to reunite with me like my two friends did with their children. But at the same time, it's just having the support and the understanding from all these different perspectives has really been more helpful and healing to me than anything.
Haley Radke: I’ve found that, too.
Liz Prato: Yeah. You're doing this podcast–that's why, right?
Haley Radke: Absolutely. Thanks for sharing your story, because others are going to hear and feel, I'm not alone in this secondary rejection. And as you said, I mean, there are so many of us, there's so many, there's millions of adoptees, so we're connected to–-connected somewhere.
Liz Prato: And so many of us have a second class citizen status when it comes to being able to have our birth certificate. You know, I wrote a piece several years ago, in which I took my amended birth certificate. And I, in the piece, wrote, “Okay, here's my amended birth certificate. This is not my original birth certificate.” Because I think most people don't even understand that we have fake birth certificates.
I don't know what it's like in Canada, but that's what happens here in the U.S., is we're given this kind of fake birth certificate that makes it look like our adoptive parents are our biological parents. And nowhere on there does it say that we're adopted, and these people are not our biological parents, and it's this huge lie. The first piece, the proof of our existence, is a lie. And so for me, I wanted to expose that lie. So I took that birth certificate, and I annotated it to tell the story of my adoption.
Haley Radke: Powerful. I have a fake birth certificate, too.
Liz Prato: It's all weird, right?
Haley Radke: It is, it is.
Liz Prato: Yep. And it's legal. That's the crazy thing about it. It's a huge lie, and it's all legal.
Haley Radke: Sad that our time is coming to a close, because I've really enjoyed our conversation. Is there anything else that you want to share before we go into recommended resources?
Liz Prato: I guess I would just always encourage adult adoptees to know: This is your life and you have a right to know your lineage. You have a right to know your background, you have a right to know where you came from. Push for that right. If you live in a state, or a country, or a province, whatever, that doesn't have open adoption records, write to your senators to your whoever represents you in politics and make a strong case for why a law should be passed to open those records.
And if you need some help about how to do that, look at the state of Colorado, look at the state of Oregon. Those are both states that have done that successfully.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Yes, that is really important.
Okay, so I asked you if you would have something to share with our listeners to recommend, and I prepared something as well. So if you don't mind, I'll go first.
Liz Prato: Yeah, go ahead.
Haley Radke: Mine is a Facebook group. It's called “How Does it Feel to be Adopted?”
Liz Prato: I like it.
Haley Radke: And it has almost 4,000 members and it's run by Pamela Karanova (and I follow her on Twitter as well). And she blogs at adopteeinrecovery.com. Now, the Facebook group has adoptees answer each other's questions, and also questions from other members of the triad. So adoptive parents, or biological parents, extended family, a variety of different questions.
It's fascinating to go back through the old posts, and it's just crowdsourcing wisdom. If you're a really sensitive person, I would say this would be a trigger warning, especially for me at some times of year, especially Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthday…
Liz Prato: Father's Day!! Right?
Haley Radke: Exactly. Those times of year, maybe I wouldn't particularly look at it just to protect myself. I'm gonna just read off…Let's see, what's one of the questions right now? There's a question from an adult adoptee: “My birth father and I have been in contact for a couple years now. It's been a complicated relationship with him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….”
Right? So she's just asking about, “What should she do in this situation?” And all of these people reply, so there's “out of the fog” adoptees replying, but there's also “in the fog,” too. So it's a big mix, anyway.
Liz Prato: Yeah. There's no right answer.
Haley Radke: Exactly. There isn't. Yeah, but it's a fun group to join and like I said, almost 4,000 members. If your question gets posted, you get plenty of replies.
So what did you want to recommend to our listeners today?
Liz Prato: I actually have two books I want to recommend. One is Found by Jennifer Lauck. She's a memoirist, and she wrote about finding her birth mother and connecting with her birth mother. But also she writes very eloquently about the sense of displacement, and the lack of grounding in her identity that followed her throughout her entire life that she believes comes from being adopted. And I think that's a really profound thing that's hard to articulate.
When people ask adoptees, “Why do you want to find your biological parents? Why does that even matter?” That's a very difficult thing to articulate. And I mean, I can say, “Oh, I wanna know where I came from.” That doesn't mean anything to someone who doesn't know what that experience is, necessarily. So she does an amazing job of articulating that, and so I recommend that.
And then I recommend, also, a book called Black Baby White Crib by Jaiya John. And he is an African American who was adopted into a white family in New Mexico. And he talks very specifically about what that's like to be in an interracial adoption. Because I think that in itself is a very specific set of identity issues that arises from that: to be so separated from your ethnic identity, in addition to just not knowing, out there.
I mean, because it's very clear. He was Black; his parents were white. That's very different. So I think that's a really important thing to put out there, too, because we don't all have the experience of even sharing the same ethnicity as our adoptive family.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing. I haven't heard of either of those books, so I'm definitely gonna go get them and read them.
Liz Prato: Good.
Haley Radke: There's a lot of wonderful memoirs out there, and so I'm excited to collect all those titles to share with our listeners. How can our listeners connect with you?
Liz Prato: I have a website, which is www.lizprato.com. That's L-I-Z-P-R-A-T-O.com. I'm on Twitter. I honestly don't remember my Twitter handle.
I'm not a very good Tweeter, to be honest, but you know, there's not that many Liz Pratos out there, luckily. So you can find me pretty easily,
Haley Radke: I'll link in the show notes to that, so everyone can connect with you if they have more questions for you.
Liz Prato: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for your time today, Liz. I really appreciate your sharing your story and your heart.
Liz Prato: Thank you for having me. I feel very honored to have the opportunity to do this.
Haley Radke: If you would like to thank Liz for sharing with us, you can find her on Twitter @Liz_Prato. Liz has links on her website to all of her writing projects.
To share your adoptee story, ask a question, or to find the show notes, visit our website, adopteeson.com. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @adopteeson.
Today, would you share our show with an adoptee you know that’s struggling with feeling rejected by their biological parents? Maybe hearing Liz's story would encourage them that they aren't alone. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again soon.
Hey, you made it to the end. Thank you all for your kind words about the podcast, and we especially loved getting this tweet from @filmplane on Twitter: “As an adoptee actively searching, I really appreciate the generosity of adoptees in sharing their adoption journeys.”
Thanks, Matthew. We agree. If you'd like to send us your feedback, we'd love to hear your thoughts. You might hear them on an upcoming episode.
