The Arduous Task of Attempted Facial Recognition

Freed to Shop

His wife called me about a month after I'd helped him identify and locate his original family. She could hardly wait to tell me about an unexpected bonus from her husband's recent reunion.

"He went to the mall shopping with me," she crowed. "First time in many years!"

That seemed like a strange residual from an adoptee's reunion. I thought I'd heard about every possible benefit of reconnecting with one's blood kin. So what was this all about?

"He couldn't go to the mall before because of all the shop windows. He couldn't pass a single shop without stopping to look through the window, as far into the store as he could see, searching for a face similar to his own. It was exhausting for him, so he quit going long ago."

Of course! Adoptees yearn to look into the face of someone who resembles them - for the first time ever in their lives.

Since that phone call, I've read or listened to adoptees describing similar fatigue after visiting crowded venues like theme parks. The task of studying faces, occasionally spotting one that 'just might be...but wasn't,' is both physically and emotionally draining.

Second Generation Bewilderment

Faye's* son Greg* was troubled by his inability to see his features in anyone else. Greg was six feet seven inches tall with red hair and freckles. His mom, Faye, was an adoptee with no knowledge of her original family. At one point, Greg was convinced he was adopted, since he didn't resemble his mother or his father or either of his siblings.

We found Faye's family, no thanks to Michigan's sealed adoption records laws, and she was welcomed by a host of  siblings, nieces and nephews. One sister's son, ten years Greg's senior - you guessed it - stood six feet seven inches, was red-haired, and had a face full of freckles. Greg and his cousin were like twins separated at conception and gestated a decade apart. They compared photos of themselves at various ages and marveled at how nearly interchangeable their pictures were. It turns out they were throwbacks from a great-uncle, their grandfather's brother. And before that? At least now Greg could explore that, too.


*Faye and Greg, like all other names in this series, are pseudonyms.

Startling Realization - Spouse Abuse?

The Challenge

I wasn't prepared to lead a support group for mothers of loss to adoption (commonly referred to as 'birth mothers' in the media) when I attended this American Adoption Congress conference. But the scheduled leader had been unable to attend the conference and I was asked to pitch hit for her.

The public speaking aspect didn't ruffle me, but I quickly realized I had to find a way of addressing the concerns of women in all stages of post-loss grief. In addition, there would be 'old timers' in attendance, who surely had heard and discussed it all before. But there would also be 'newbies' who were counting on taking something valuable away from this gathering, and I owed them something.

Was there a topic or theme that could give this particular group of attendees something they perhaps hadn't received from the rest of the conference? From the keynote speeches, the workshops, the printed materials in the book room? From the valuable interaction with one another?

The thought occurred to me that this might be a good time to explore a theory I'd formed over the years as I'd observed all stages of adoption search, reunion, and post-reunion. The goal would be to neither prove nor disprove my theory, but merely to start a vigorous discussion.

The Question

There was a good turnout for the support group meeting, and just as I'd expected, participants represented both long-time conference attendees and first-timers. I looked out over the faces in that room and wondered how the question I planned to pose would be received. Well, I plunged in.....here goes!

"I have a question for all of you. And don't feel obligated to participate. Raise your hand only if you feel comfortable doing so.

"How many of you have experienced what you'd consider some kind of abuse - physical, emotional, or sexual - from your mate?"

I had anticipated a small number of hands would go up. And I surely wasn't going to put anyone on the spot by questioning her about it. If someone did care to speak, she'd be given the opportunity, but it would have to be voluntary.

The Stunning Response

I could scarcely believe my eyes! There in front of me, a sea of hands shot up, as though they'd been waiting all day for the opportunity.

The discussion that followed revealed a tendency for many mothers to endure, or perhaps downplay, some form of abuse out of deep feelings of personal unworthiness. To some extent, they felt they deserved the treatment they received because of their internalized guilt and shame. Not on a conscious level, surely, but buried in the psyche where it can be sensed and exploited by others.

Perhaps, then, I postulated, this might account for the marriage break-ups that occasionally followed mother-adoptee reunions. Not that the reunion itself was a stressor or the actual cause of the marriage breakup. But that in reunion, the long-denied mother-child reconnection shed an almost holy light on her long-ago birthing experience, replacing the dark shadows of guilt and shame that had occupied that space. New-found self-confidence, fueled by elevated self-worth, no longer tolerated condescending or downright abusive treatment, and she felt emboldened to step out and away from it.

A lively discussion continued for the allotted time, with much agreement on my postulation. And although there is yet neither statistical nor academic-study validation of this theory, on that day and in that room at the AAC conference, participants felt free to explore and discuss their own feelings and situations after having raised their hands in response to my question.

I'll always wonder whether any of them experienced it as their own personal Liberation Day.

Language Trigger

She noticed the conference materials I was digging out of my carry-on bag and piling on my lap, trying not to bump her arm on the armrest between us.

There was no mistaking what kind of a conference I had attended. Every document I shuffled to the top of the pile had 'adoption' somewhere in its title.

Finally, she spoke: "Are you adopted?"

"No. But I just attended an adoption conference here in New York. I brought lots of reading material home."

"I was adopted from Canada," she offered, adding, "Quebec."

Because of her street-clothes attire, I hadn't guessed that she was a nun. (My second encounter with with a nun connected in some way to adoption.)

"Oh, really? As a baby?"

"As an almost newborn. My parents went there to get me."

This wasn't the time, nor was it appropriate, to fully engage in a conversation about adoption with this sweet lady. Instead, I just listened as she told me of a recent jolt she had experienced.

"We had a guest speaker at the convent," she said. "A monsignor from Quebec. He was a marvelous speaker. And after he gave his presentation in English, he said he'd like to repeat a few paragraphs of it in French, just so we could hear the beauty of the language."

My seat mate paused briefly to collect her thoughts and prepare for her next sentence.

"When I heard him speaking in French, I lost it! I cried and cried and had a hard time pulling myself together. It was just so strange!"

I knew, of course, why she was triggered by the sound of her mother tongue. And she knew, instinctively, the reason for her reaction. But it was obvious she had not scratched the surface of her separation trauma from all that had been familiar to her in her mother's womb. Had we been in a position to have explored that trauma at length, she might have made far more discoveries about herself. But we were simply two travelers making conversation that day. And of course I'll never forget her.

God bless you, Sister, wherever you are.

Sister Mother

The Phone Call

"We found her!"

"You did? Where?"

"You're not going to believe this! But it's going to explain why she was so hard to find."

Becky* knew that a whole team of sleuths had been working on her search for months. This was back before high-speed Internet. What little was available online was painfully slow (and by-the-minute costly) to retrieve with dialup access. Those of us who could afford sets of CDs of regional phone directories felt fortunate, indeed. Much searching was done by phone and by snail mail, using various ruses to track people down without spilling the family beans.

Becky's mother wasn't listed anywhere. We could find neither a marriage nor a death record for her, so it would seem she shouldn't be that hard to find. But it was as though she had left the planet.

Until the breakthrough came, explaining it all.

"Your mother is in a convent."

"A convent? As in a nun in a convent?"

"A nun in a convent."

"Oh! Oh, now what do we do?"

"But there's more. You have a sister."

"Now I'm really confused. How can I have a sister if my mother is a nun?"

"It's a long story, and there's something else you need to know. Your mother was told, following your birth, that you were a boy and that you died."

"What? Are you serious?"

"I'm serious; I've spoken to her."

Silence; sound of sniffling.

"She wants you to write to her and send her a picture."

"To the convent?"

"Yes. She gave me permission to give you her address. And she said not to worry. Mother Superior knows all about you."

And so it began. Becky and her Sister Mother began the get-acquainted dance we're so familiar with - but with a twist unlike any other.

Recapturing a Childhood Dream

Sister Mother had been on her way to becoming a teacher when an 'unwed pregnancy' (don't you hate that term?) sidetracked her. Obeying societal and religious mandates at the time, she hid her pregnancy, gave birth - in a Michigan hospital - and intended to relinquish her baby for adoption. But even that part of her planning went awry. Her baby, a boy, died shortly after birth - or so she was told - so she felt like a double failure.

Life went on, however. She became a teacher, got married, and had another child - a daughter. But her marriage was on shaky ground and eventually ended. Yet another failure. After her daughter graduated high school, Sister Mother did an evaluation of her life to that point and pondered how to rebuild it in some meaningful way. In the evaluation process, she remembered fondly her childhood dream of becoming a nun. But would the Church let her, after all her troubled life experiences, actually become a nun?

The upshot was that she could, indeed, become a nun, but first she had to have her marriage annulled. She was already divorced, of course, but now she had to make it appear she'd never been married. This is a bit difficult for me, a Protestant, to understand, since that would seem to make her second daughter illegitimate. Be that as it may, she did what she had to do.

She was now very happy and felt satisfied and fulfilled with her new life. So would the shocking news of her thought-to-be-dead child's sudden appearance - a daughter instead of a son - destabilize everything she had worked so hard to achieve?

The Reunion

Mother Superior had known of Sister Mother's pregnancy and her 'dead' baby all along, since this had been shared with her from the first interview. Now she would need to be told of this new development and would be asked for guidance on how to handle it.

A loving Mother Superior came through with flying colors for this anxious sister. Not only did she endorse and encourage a mother-daughter reunion, but she arranged for a private apartment for them to spend some time together at the convent. It was like something out of a movie!

Witnessing all this from a distance, I made a guess that Sister Mother would leave the convent after the reunion and take up being 'mother' to her two daughters. But I was wrong.

Peace at Last

Sister Mother found peace in a way that had alluded her prior to her meeting Becky and bringing closure to that long-ago traumatic experience. Her religious fervor deepened and she was able to give herself over totally to her chosen vocation.

I didn't communicate with either mother or daughter very long beyond their reunion, but the last I knew, they - and Becky's half-sister - had settled into a comfortable, largely long-distance, relationship with occasional visits at the convent.

And I just know God was smiling on them all, including Mother Superior.

*Becky, as in all names in this series, is a pseudonym.