So close, yet . . .

It's difficult to convey the immense inner pain of finally finding my son on Facebook 26 years after kissing him goodbye in the hospital nursery, then losing him again -- possibly forever -- before ever really getting to know him.

I imagine he wholly regrets our brief Internet interactions after getting in the middle of a horrible email fight with long-time friend and fellow birthmother, Sarah, only three weeks after he and I began corresponding.

He must detest me even more for contacting his adoptive parents after he'd made me promise to keep our reunion a secret from them. I betrayed his trust because I was worried about his safety and well-being. I betrayed his trust because I was afraid he'd resort to something drastic -- like my own birthmother 19 years before.

My birthmother's suicide in 1991 will forever haunt me. I will always feel partially responsible for her decision to slip out a 13-story window at Columbia University's physics building that rainy Manhattan morning December 4th. She had scrawled a few lines on the back of a postcard three days before and dropped it into a mailbox on her way to the campus a block from her apartment at Amsterdam and West 119th.



"Dear K-T,
Have a great life. I must go.
The pain must stop.
I love you,
SheMa

Be Kind.
Protect the Earth Planet.
It was wonderful knowing you!"


SheMa had called me at my Lakewood, Colo., apartment just before the Thanksgiving holiday, asking me to send her black leather gloves and an alarm clock, then telling me rather matter-of-factly that she was feeling suicidal. At the time of her call, I was busy getting ready to go on a ski trip to Steamboat Springs with my fiancee's brother and his wife. I didn't have time to listen to her tiring attempts to manipulate me into sending her more money. I didn't want to believe she was serious about killing herself this time. She'd been self-destructive for years, apparently. She had talked of taking her own life many times and, I later discovered, even discussed with her friend Paul the various methods of offing oneself, coming to the conclusion that jumping from a high place would probably be the least painful and most effective.

I just wasn't in the mood to talk to her then and subsequently cut the conversation short, failing to tell her how much I really did love her before hanging up. That was the last time I'd heard from her before hearing of her death from a Littleton, Colo., police officer who'd come to my newspaper office to break the news to me. I was completely numb, not fully grasping what had transpired -- and not hearing him tell me she had jumped to her death. I suddenly went into a daze, like you see in movies when people go into shock after losing a loved one and all sounds fade to black, like you're being sucked into some sort of vortex and out of your own body. It was all so unreal.

What the fuck just happened? Was she really gone? Or was it some sort of sick prank she was playing on me? I'd only just began getting to know her after she'd found me in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1987. I knew she wasn't stable. Our relationship was quite rocky because of her illness and my inability to handle it very well at age 24. But this was too much. Even writing about it now, it still seems a bit detached from my own life, as if I'm reading about someone else's twisted tale or watching a movie about someone else. I guess that's just my natural coping mechanism kicking in to keep me from losing my own sanity.

Now, dealing with my son's silence, it's bringing back some of those same feelings of hopelessness and craving -- like SheMa probably experienced when I began to push her away. I had promised myself I wouldn't put my son through the same psycho shit SheMa put me through, but I think I already have.


I had sent Michael (aka Bucky) a copy of that postcard and several photos of SheMa(aka Shela Marie Paul), my birthfather, their parents, birth uncles, and myself from when I was pregnant with him at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, as well as newspaper clips of Times-Picayune stories written about SheMa's search for me and our reunion in New Orleans in 1987, a copy of a cassette tape of the first phone conversation I'd had with my birthfather's brother, John, when he'd found me in Cleveland, Ohio, and various other items I thought Bucky would appreciate while getting to know me.

The over-stuffed, white padded envelope intended for his 26th birthday had to be sent to one of his friends in Jackson, Miss., because we couldn't risk his parents intercepting it at their Gulfport home, where he'd been living since graduating from Stanford in 2006. He'd had a breakdown and had been hospitalized before finally finding refuge on the top floor of the home he grew up in. His parents would have recognized the name on the package, which was the last thing Michael wanted. He didn't want to hurt his parents -- espcially his mom. He thought if his mom found out he was communicating with me on the sly, she would take it personally, thinking it meant he didn't love her or that he wanted a new mother or something.

Many adoptive parents have trouble understanding an adoptee's need to know where s/he came from. Even my own adoptive mother, Mona, who had always been supportive of my search for my birth parents, suddenly became insecure when I finally did meet my birthmother.

So when I reached out to Michael's father through his email address at his law office after not hearing from Michael in three months, I asked his father to please keep the contact just between us and not tell Michael about it just yet. I needed to know if he was OK, first of all. I didn't want to upset him. I knew he was quite fragile. Michael had conveyed to me how fragile he really was in his first Facebook note to me back in October of 2008.

Below is the first part of that note after I'd sent him a long letter via Facebook, telling him about my background and the adoption and anything else I could think of that would give him a glimps into my life at the time. I wanted him to know that I have always loved him and have never stopped thinking about him and hoping he's had a good life.

"Wow, that was a lot of information. I really appreciate it. I'm sorry for not getting back to you sooner. My apprehension has been partially due to the effect this might have on my relationship with my family here, combined with the fact that I'm considered to be somewhat of a strange character of late, and that not only am I somewhat afraid of being a bit of a disappointment to you at this point but whatever psychological strain comes along with this reunion might make it that much harder for me to get my life together and get a job and so on. Yet I think much of what's bothered me in the past few years is the question of who I really am, and it's occurred to me often that I would feel more whole, as you put it, if I could know more about you and my biological roots. It's worth a try. I want to say now, though, that I hope we can keep this a secret from my family for some time, and potentially forever. It was made clear to me on my 18th birthday, when my dad gave me a letter from you he'd had since my birth, that relations between us had the potential to break up our family, and that my mom would probably go to pieces if she found out I had gotten in touch with you. I don't necessarily believe that's the healthiest way to go about it, but that seems to be the way they want it to be. I have to admit it's strange to me when you say that you love me, since we're essentially strangers. I just want to be honest about that. But I can understand that after you took care of me up until I was born, and gave me life, and made sure I would have a family who would be able to take care of me, that love is the word for it. I don't know if I'll be comfortable using that word, but it will be nice to get to know you."


Getting that note from him three days after first contacting him was the happiest day of my life. It was something I'd wanted for many years, hoping he would be the one to initiate contact after realizing I hadn't "abandoned" him because I didn't want him. I had written him a note inside a Flavia card before leaving the hospital in early November of 1982, explaining to him that my love for him gave me no other choice but to give him up to a family that could provide so much more than I ever could.

During the adoption process, that card and what little information I had of my birth family at the time and what his own birthfather had provided about himself and his family were sent to his adoptive parents through the law firm handling the private, closed adoption. The lawyer assured me the parents would give him the packet of information when he turned 18. So I had a feeling he already knew the circumstances of the adoption years before I found him.

That first note from Michael was bittersweet, however, when I realized he had inherited the same sort of illnesses as my birthmother. I became quite saddened and concerned about him then, but tried not to let him know of my fears.

It didn't take long, however, before both of our unstable natures came to the surface and we began lashing out at one another -- just like SheMa and I had in the four short years I knew her. Below are just a few examples of that in his responses to me via email:


"Now you're attacking me and saying that I attacked you. I told you I wasn't attacking you. You're being defensive by attacking me and accusing me of being influenced by Sara to attack you. ===> The more irrational things you throw out there, the more it appears I'm defending her when I tell you that's crazy. <==== You see how that works, don't you? --Beware of what you're doing to yourself here.

And about the temper thing: you sort of revised that history a little bit. I felt bad that you would probably take that stuff pretty hard, and I apologized if it hurt your feelings, but I never said I regretted it, and I still don't, because I did not do it for malicious reasons and I thought those things needed to be made as clear as possible so that we could proceed on a common ground of understanding. I have a clear conscience about it, and I'm kind of miffed that you have interpreted it as me flaring up and striking out for no logical reason. I'm not a child. I don't do that stuff anymore. (I only let the "not your punching bag" thing go because I didn't want to keep fighting.) It occurs to me that psychologically you might have been showing a lot of hurt and victimization when I was honest so that I wouldn't attempt to draw lines between us like that again, so that I wouldn't try to "put you in your place" again. ---

I think that if we're going to establish some sort of relationship you should be open to me being honest about where I need your place to be for me to be comfortable with getting to know you.--- By making me feel so guilty for expressing myself, you make it harder for me to say "no" in the future, and that might only cause me to actually blow up and refuse you after I've surrendered enough lines to be nice and then I find that it is too far over the line. I'm trying to build a healthy friendly relationship between us, and I would not just flail out and hurt you for no good reason. I hope this doesn't seem like salt on your wound, but I have no intention of causing harm. I'd hope you could accept this without flinching if you'd first accept that I'm not malicious and I hope for the best for both of us."

I only heard from him once after sending his birthday package about a week after the above email. I didn't even know if he'd received it until I resorted to contacting his Jackson friend through MySpace and he confirmed he had given Michael the package. A few weeks after that, Michael sent me a short email to tell me he was stepping away from our correspondence for awhile to "reset his batteries." He said it was taking up all his spare time. He said nothing of the package and to this day I don't know if he even went through its contents. He could have tossed the entire envelope in a trash bin, for all I know. Or he could have burned it in a bonfire on the shores of the Gulf Coast, rejoicing in the symbolism of ridding himself of me forever.

It makes me angry, in a way. It seems incredibly selfish of him to just cut me off like that, knowing how much pain he's causing me. But I have to remember he's not well, either, and is fighting against the dibilitating forces of mental illnesses passed down through generations. I must remember to put myself in his shoes, seeing things from his perspective. That's fairly easy, after all -- He's in the same place with me that I was with my birthmother 20 years before.

Only this time, he's the one in danger of permanently retreating from this world.

A simple question

When someone I've just met asks me if I have children, it seems like such a simple question. It's usually asked as an ice-breaker -- not a heart-breaker. The new acquaintance has no idea what's in store for him or her when they ask me that simple question.

It would be so much easier to just say, "No -- never had the pleasure. You?" But to me, that feels so dishonest and unfair to the son I bore 27 years ago. It would be like pretending he doesn't exist. I realize that would probably make my life so much more bearable -- to just pretend the pregnancy and subsequent adoption never happened. But I can't do that.

So I usually say something like "Well, yes and no." And I can see in their face they wish they'd never asked me because they can sense becoming entangled in an all-too-personal conversation they're not quite prepared for. "I had a baby when I was in college and gave him up for adoption. I never had any other children." Sometimes, the conversation ends there or is quickly re-directed. Or the more curious take it once step further and risk endulging me by saying something like, "That must have been so hard. Have you ever tried to find him?" or "Did you ever have any contact with him?"

Yes, it was the most painful thing I've ever done in my life. It's still very hard, I tell them. No, I never had any contact with him while he was growing up because it was a closed adoption -- very unlike today's arrangements where the birth parents either gets letters and photos from the adoptive parents through the years or they actually have visitation rights as the child grows. Some even go as far as to have a co-parenting situation. But I had nothing.

Until I finally figured out where he was being raised and placed an ad in that town's newspaper when he was 13 in the hopes someone would help me contact his parents. But I'll save that for another blog post.

Reader's Guide

Some of the posts below are still works in progress, so if you already read them once, you'll probably find I've added more to them since your last visit, especially the one about my pregnancy. Although I started that post three weeks ago, I've been working on it nearly every day since and there's still quite a bit more to go. This is the only way I can tell my story in chronological order. Otherwise, the whole thing would be bass ackwards if I opened new posts with each sitting. That's one fallback to writing a blog, I've discovered.

So please be patient and keep checking back to read more. And please don't be afraid to leave comments -- good or bad. The last post on this page (the first one I actually wrote) will be expanded later when I write about meeting my birthmother.

The Pregnancy

He was in my public speaking class at the Univ. of Alaska-Fairbanks, the cutest and most charming guy on campus, I thought. I was in my first year as a journalism major and excited about being away from my Anchorage home a good seven hours' drive. Although I had managed to straighten up and stay clean during high school, I easily slipped back into the party lifestyle once I entered college. Let's face it, there's not much else for young people to do in Fairbanks, especially in the dead of winter when temperatures dip to -40 and the sun only comes out for a few hours each day.

There were two important new friends in my life that year who happened to be in the same speech class: the cross between James Dean and Paul Newman mentioned above, Trent, and a quirky, free-spirited chick named Sara who drew me in like a barker at a circus. We all started hanging out together in the campus pub and at dorm parties. Trent and I also slipped off campus from time to time to get high and mess around on his water bed in his seductive lair set up in the basement of his father's home. Also living at the house was his sister, Kim, and step-sister, Julie. His whole family --including his father -- smoked pot out in the open, usually in the kitchen. The mother lived somewhere in West Virginia, but that's all I knew about her.

I wasn't exactly a virgin before college. My innocence was lost on a previous water bed to my first "serious" boyfriend at age 15. He was 18 and had just graduated from West High in Anchorage, where I had just entered in 1977. He lived in his mother's basement downtown. Don Casanovas (yes, his real name, believe it or not) swept me off my klutzy feet with roses and short poems, songs on the guitar, and the best homemade spaghetti I'd ever tasted. I thought we were madly in love. He even gave me a tiny, white gold and diamond-specked "promise ring" and told me he'd wait for me to graduate in four years. But, alas, his heart (or other body part) strayed into the arms of a girl from a rival high school and I was crushed -- for a few days.
I was able to move on before too long, having summer flings when visiting my dad in Houston and dating another older guy who was in the Army, based in Anchorage.

Condoms were always my birth control of choice, even after getting to college. I hadn't obtained any sort of reliable birth control like the Pill yet because I was too embarrassed to go to the school clinic and admit I was sexually active. Even though it was sometimes uncomfortable to buy rubbers in the store (especially when you had to ask the clerk to get them for you from behind the counter), it seemed easier and cheaper than the alternatives.

This is why I try to advise parents of teen-age girls to make sure their daughters are protected with more than just condoms, although some of them are still in denial that their sweet babies would ever do anything with a boy other than kiss. I wish my mom had sat down with me and openly discussed sex with me and made sure I was protected. But even after all we'd been through together, she was probably in denial, too. To her credit, though, she was still trying to deal with the emotional and psychological abuse from her second husband. Being an attentive, involved parent just wasn't on her radar at the time.

But I digress . . . back to Fairbanks and the night that changed my life forever. It was February 3, 1982 -- my brother's birthday. Trent, Sara, and I had stopped at the campus pub for a beer after our speech class. While Trent was in the restroom, I confessed to Sara that I wanted to go home with Trent -- even though we were out of condoms. Sara asked about my menstrual cycle and quickly deducted that I was at my peak of fertility that night. I just laughed. Silly Sara. What did she know? I was sure we'd be fine. I would make Trent promise to "take precautions" to make sure I didn't get pregnant. It was just a matter of timing, after all, right?

Yea, right. Once I start drinking, it's all over for me. All cares and inhibitions fly out the window. So when Trent told me he'd be sure to pull out in time, I relaxed underneath him and tried not to worry about it. Unfortunately for us both, Trent was a bit off in his timing and failed to keep his promise. And somehow, I knew in that split second that I was in trouble. It was as if I could actually feel a sperm make contact with an egg at that moment. "Oh, shit," I mumbled. Trent laughed nervously, wanting to believe the odds were in our favor.

Hardly. I stopped by the school clinic about a month later to confirm what I already knew. The nurse advised me to "take care of it as soon as possible." Oh, I knew I would -- for the next eight months.

I'm sure if I'd taken the nurse's advice and had an abortion, my life would have gone "back to normal" sooner and I wouldn't have had to face my parents with the earth-shattering news of being pregnant at 19. I wouldn't have had to listen to my mom's selfish reaction on the dorm pay phone, asking why I was doing this to her and enduring her pleas to get an abortion because "it's not human yet." I wouldn't have had to puke into a cup next to my bunk in the mornings or taken showers at odd times of the day to prevent others from seeing my bulging belly. I wouldn't have to worry about choosing a good family for the baby and I wouldn't have had to deal with the pain of saying good-bye to a baby I'd carried for nine months. I wouldn't have had to spend the rest of my life wondering how he was doing, how he was being raised, whether he ever felt "abandoned" and if I'd ever meet him.

Although I was "pro-choice," I just couldn't fathom disposing of the growth inside of me in that way. As an adoptee who probably could have been aborted herself, even in 1962, I just couldn't do it. It would have seemed like I was aborting myself. And it was difficult for me to understand my mother's views since she adopted two children herself. If all unwanted pregnancies ended in abortion, there wouldn't be any babies for desperate, infertile couples, I figured.

My mother even had my aunt -- who was married to an OB-Gyn -- send me pamphlets on abortion from her husband's clinic in Warner Robbins, Ga., to try to convince me it was no big deal. She just didn't understand where I was coming from. My father, on the other hand, was proud of my decision to have the baby and give it up because he was against abortion and he knew I wasn't ready to be a mother.

I knew keeping the baby was out of the question, especially since I couldn't count on help from my parents and I certainly wasn't prepared to drop out of school and try to make it on my own with a newborn. That wouldn't have done either of us any good.

When Trent learned of the pregnancy, he asked if I thought we should get married. I laughed. We weren't in love -- we barely even knew each other, to be truthful. He then said we could maybe give the baby to his mother in West Virginia. But that didn't sound like such a great option, either. I imagined her living in squalor in Appalachia, surrounded by mangy stray cats and flea-infested dogs.

No, my mind was made up and I wasn't turning back. I started looking into adoption agencies in Anchorage. I contacted Catholic Social Services, but I didn't like their policy of not giving the adopting couple the baby right after it was born. There would be a waiting period, where the baby would be placed in temporary care for several days to make sure the birth parents weren't going to change their minds. But I'm a firm believer in the importance of bonding and I didn't want my baby to be "in limbo" like I was for six weeks. So I kept looking.

For the next few months of school, I attempted to minimize my bulging belly with loose-fitting frocks and dorky maternity pants, but there wasn't much I could do about the morning sickness keeping me out of my 8:00 a.m. editing class. I tried to explain the situation to my professor, but he couldn't have cared less, looking down upon my dark copper head with a smug smirk that said "That's what you get for being such a reckless slut." It was the first time in my entire life I'd ever failed a class.

There was another student at UAF that year who looked so much like me, people thought we were twins. She, too, was pregnant, but a lot farther along. She was planning on keeping her baby and trying to stay in school. I remember seeing her carrying her baby around in a car seat, toting it from class to class in the frigid cold, trying to keep it from crying during lectures. She ended up dropping out for good and getting a job as a bartender nearby. That didn't seem like a viable option for me.

As spring semester came to a close in May, I went back to Anchorage to live with my recently-divorced mother in a tiny one-bedroom condo until I could return to Fairbanks the following January. Until then, I concentrated on finding a good doctor and an adoption agency. Since I was still on my mother's health plan, I was able to get a check-up without paying more than a minimal co-pay.

As the nurse practitioner examined me and the growing life inside, I let her know of my plans to place the baby for adoption. She immediately came to attention, realizing a rare opportunity to help another patient desperate for a family. She told me she knew of a nice couple who would love to adopt my baby, but she asked me again if I was sure I was going to go through with it. When I smiled and nodded enthusiastically, she was thrilled and told me she'd pass on the good news to the adopting couple.

Since I wasn't due for another five months, we didn't feel a sense of urgency at the time and just agreed to touch base again toward the end of summer. Nothing was signed.

Shortly after that, my mother received a phone call from an old family friend from our days in Houston, Texas. I grew up with the Emmerich kids as our parents played tennis together and we'd go on overnight horseback trips and sailing ventures. Celia and her husband John happened to own a small newspaper in Greenwood, Miss. When Celia learned of my predicament, she offered to put me up in their home for the summer and would pay me $50 per week if I worked at their paper -- in the editorial department in the mornings and in the circulation department in the afternoons. Sounded like a great deal to me. I was just beginning my journalism studies and couldn't think of a better way to get some real experience.

So I was on my way to the Deep South -- again. I'd been to Mississippi before, visiting my great-grandmother "Big Mama" in Hazelhurst a few times while growing up. It was where my mother had been raised and attended high school. I loved the century-old homes with their wrap-around, screened porches, wobbly brass doorknobs, creaky wood floors and abundant vines covering the weathered, pealing paint. The weeping willows, giant, moss-covered oaks, and endless chirping of the crickets added to the charm of an otherwise oppressive atmosphere.

It was nothing like my Houston neighborhood, where the oldest home was built in the early 1960s. There were also more people of color in Hazelhurst than in my home surroundings. The only black person I ever saw in Nottingham Forest was our maid Annabelle. She was shared by a few of the other white families on our street. We'd have her on Mondays, say, and the Hollisters would have her on Wednesdays and the Harpolds would have her on Thursdays, etc. She was a status symbol, for sure. It wasn't like any of the women on the block really needed any help -- they were all housewives, after all. The husbands were businessmen and lawyers, doctors and stock brokers. They were living the American Dream.

So until our family fell apart when my father confessed an affair in 1972 and told my mother he didn't love her anymore, I'd lived a very sheltered, white-bread life. I was barely even aware there was a war going on in Vietnam, although I do remember seeing news about Watergate. My parents were loyal Republicans, so I imagine they were cursing Nixon's stupidity.

I think the Emmerichs were among their more liberal friends, although I don't think they were quite Democrats. I hadn't even thought my mom had kept in touch with Celia much after the divorce, but I guess it was just lucky timing that Celia would call during such a traumatic time in our lives.

The Emmerich's Greenwood estate was like something out of "Gone with the Wind." Their two-story, five-bedroom brick home with stately square pillars sat atop a lush green hill adorned with a small duck pond filled with giggly gaggles. And just down the hill on a path through old oaks and slender pines, horse stables beckoned this Texas-raised, cowgirl-wannabe.

It was the perfect escape. I didn't have to explain anything to anyone or worry about running into old friends. And once I hit the newsroom at the Greenwood Commonwealth and got a whiff of the printing press and heard the comforting clickety-clack of reporters and editors at their coffee-stained keyboards, I knew I was where I was meant to be.

They put me to work immediately in the newsroom and darkroom (back before digital photography), proofreading stories and going after my own features and "fluff" photos to help fill the pages. I even got to write my own column every now and then. The afternoons weren't quite as much fun, answering circulation complaint calls, although I did get a chuckle out of one elderly caller who politely declared: "I love reading your paper, but I'm having a little trouble reaching it on my roof."

I devoted some leisure time each day to staying fit by swimming laps at their country club pool or taking evening walks around the Emmerich's homestead and down around the corn field across the lane. I was determined to make sure this baby had the healthiest start possible. I had no idea what fate had in store for him. No amount of exercise, healthy diet, or abstention from alcohol could have prevented what was already imprinted on his DNA.

(To be continued . . . )

Email to my son and his parents

I just sent an email to my son and his parents, letting them know of this blog. I'm sure they won't be happy about it, but I assured them I wouldn't use their real names, except "Michael" for my son since that's a common enough name. I am also using the nickname I had given him when he was born, "Bucky."

I felt it was important for them to know about the blog since they will play a crucial role in it when I begin writing about my pregnancy, the adoption, and later finding Michael on Facebook.

It is not my desire to harm them or cause them any upset with this blog. But it is what it is. As a writer, I feel I can't ignore this story any longer for my own therapy and sanity. And maybe it will even help other families down the road.

The photo with this post was taken by friend Monte Paulsen just after Bucky's birth in October of 1982. It was one of the last times I ever saw him before leaving the hospital. It was one of the most painful periods of my life.

Growing up adopted

I have no idea who held me, fed me, looked into my eyes, changed my diapers, bathed me, and made me feel loved and wanted in this world for the first six weeks of my life. I was in foster care before going to my permanent home after being placed for adoption. This was to prevent any messy issues before the agreement was finalized -- to make sure the birth mother wasn't going to change her mind and break the hearts of the adopting couple. There had to be a clean break for the health of everyone involved.

My adoptive parents (referred to as "parents" from here on) were apparently told very little about my birth family, except that my birth mother was "a beautiful red-head with musical talent." That's it. Even that I wasn't privy to while growing up because back then, adoption agencies and social workers thought it was best for the adopting family to put the birth family out of its mind so that we could all bond as "normal," biological families do. The adoption wouldn't be final for another six months, so there was always that fear that my birthmother would change her mind and take me away from them.

Having to rely on adoption to start a family was the last thing my mother wanted to do. She didn't even realize she was unable to conceive until she was in her mid-20s, when a doctor revealed that the rupture of her appendix as a teen left her ovaries infected and useless. What a blow that must have been for her. All she ever wanted was a husband and family, to be a happy housewife for the rest of her life.

But like most adopting couples, they did their best to love and care for my brother and me -- even if we weren't from their bodies and didn't share their DNA. The adoption agencies did their best at matching us with families with similar ancestry. Since the agency knew I came from Irish, English, and German lineage, they hooked me up with the McKee clan. Amazingly enough, I ended up physically resembling my father and the women on his side of the family and my brother looked more like our mother and her relatives, who were English and Italian.

Matt and I always knew we were adopted. There was never a time when our parents sat us down and dropped that bombshell on us. My mom would always say "You are special because we chose you." I don't remember ever thinking much about being adopted while growing up in Houston, Texas. I had a happy, active, free childhood in our little upper-middle class neighborhood of Nottingham Forest. We lived at the end of a short cul de sac on Heatherfield, where nearly every house contained playmates and our grassy side yard served as a football field, the paved circle was our baseball diamond, and every moss-covered oak tree was a place to hide.

Looking back on it now, I don't remember either of our parents spending much time "playing" with us much during the days. That was probably Dr. Spock's doing, believing you can't be both a friend and a parent to your children. Oh, they had their fun moments: dad playing the "talking pumpkin" on Halloween and livening up my birthday parties with Bingo, mom reading "Rain Makes Applesauce" with me over and over and over and letting me dive under her legs at the pool. Mostly, though, our dad was busy making his fortune with his own management consultant business and our mom was occupied with tennis, bridge, sewing, and hanging out at the local tennis club with friends. My brother and I were involved in scouts, ballet or Judo, piano lessons, sleep-overs, climbing trees, swimming at the club, looking for snakes and frogs at Buffalo Bayou, and torturing babysitters. I also spent a lot of time with two main friends: Annick Hollister and AnnG Campbell. We are still friends to this day.

I didn't start wondering about my biological roots until I was about 13, the time many young people go through an identity crisis. My parents, whom everyone thought was the "perfect couple," had divorced a year or so earlier and my mom had married a man who moved us from Texas to Alaska -- about as far as we could get from my father, it seemed. To me, it was a great adventure, although tough to leave the only friends and home I'd ever known. My brother took the divorce much harder, believing our father's affair was his fault. Because of that, my brother easily slipped into using drugs and alcohol at 14 and I wasn't far behind.

I transformed from being a goody-goody, violin-toting "A" student to sneaking around to parties, lying to my mom and step-father, and not caring about my grades as much. The darker side of my step-father, Martin, also came to light when he was suddenly arrested for check and credit fraud and thrown in jail for a few days. I also had quite a crush on my 16-year-old step-brother, David, who took full advantage of that and became the first boy I ever "messed around" with. We never "went all the way," but came close enough. I'm not proud of that, but it helps explain the turmoil and confusion in my life at the time.

It also might help readers understand that by the time I was 14, I was fully-engrossed in the party lifestyle and losing my true self more and more. In addition to saving up my lunch money during the week to buy pot for the weekend, I tried acid and hallucinated with a friend at a "kiddy club" in Anchorage. I began getting involved with more boys. Tensions at home were mounting as my mother's relationship with Martin became more bizarre and disruptive. Martin, we figured out later, was probably bipolar. He was definitely a compulsive liar and con artist. Because of this, my mother had no idea what was going on in her children's lives. She never even attended parent-teacher conferences at school. She told me recently she was too embarrassed by her own screw-ups to interact with teachers. I watched Martin almost strangle my mom one day during an argument. I remember running down the stairs toward the kitchen to see what was going on and my mother yelling at me to go back to my room, saying it was all my fault, anyway.

Another time, Martin and my brother got in such a terrible fight, my brother grabbed a machete from the garage and probably would have used it if Martin hadn't pinned him on the floor and begun choking him. Why we didn't call 911, I'll never know. At least we would have found out that Martin had been in prison -- twice -- for fraud and never earned the civil engineering degree he claimed to have. Mom and I finally convinced Martin to get off of Matt and things went "back to normal" for awhile.

I continued to sneak out of the house and meet friends at parties. There was one particular party that became a turning point for my sanity. After having had a few beers and smoked a little hash, I was easily lured into a closet by a boy as others took note. Although we weren't in there for more than 10 minutes, it was long enough to lead others to believe we were doing more than just kissing. Shortly after coming out of that closet, I stumbled upstairs to go to the bathroom and was intercepted by a boy I had a mad crush on. He ended up following me into the bathroom. As fellow 8th graders were pounding on the bathroom door and trying to peek beneath it, the cutest boy in school attempted to have his way as he wriggled on top of my half-naked, shivering body.

I managed to convince the boy to let me up before he was able to stick his half-stiff penis inside me. With friends and enemies still pounding on the door, I struggled to get my clothes back on before he opened the door to flee. He kept telling me to put my shoes on, but I was still so out of it, I didn't understand the ramifications of coming out of the bathroom holding my shoes. That was all the kids at school needed to tarnish me a slut for the rest of my 8th-grade year. Food was thrown on me in the cafeteria, former friends confronted me in the girl's restroom, reminding me of my scarlet status. As I walked down the halls, I imagined everyone whispering about me, spreading more lies to further ruin my reputation. Pre-teens can be so cruel.

Break Down

It was all too much for me. I had a complete psychological break. My detachment from reality began one night while my mom and step-father were having a noisy fight. I slipped out the front door and began walking in the snow toward the home of a boyfriend I'd had in the 7th grade. I always remembered his mom being so sweet and accepting of everyone. He lived a few miles away, but I didn't care. I came across a German shepherd who appeared lost, too. I thought I could psychically communicate with the dog as it followed me to Todd's house. When I finally reached Todd's neighborhood, I became disoriented and ended up sitting in front of a stranger's house a couple of doors down, in the snow, waiting for someone to rescue me. Todd's sister happened along and took me in. I stayed with their family that night, then called my mom the next morning. She was frantic, which was strangely comforting.

But my troubles didn't end there. I continued to lose touch with reality for the next couple of months and at one point told my mom she was under Satan's power simply because she cut her hair. It was terrifying. Then, when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I blurted out the one thing no adopted child should ever say to his or her adoptive mother: In the middle of an argument over something stupid and inconsequential, I asked her why I should obey her and she said, "Because I'm your mother!" and -- before I could stop myself -- I yelled, "YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER!!" Horrible. She ran into the bathroom, sobbing, and continued to sob in the shower as I attempted to console her, telling her I didn't mean it.

It was such a hard time for our family and my twisted state of mind certainly didn't help. I don't know if having information on my birth mother would have done any good at that point, but perhaps knowing that she, too, had had break downs, we would have been more prepared for it. I eventually "snapped out of" whatever was plaguing me and was able to get on with a semi-normal life, although I always felt like the odd girl out, even in high school and college. That's probaly why I was still quite vulnerable to self-destructive behavior and what later led to an unintended pregnancy. More on that in another post. It's that pregnancy which changed my life forever and is the reason for this blog.

I found out later from the mother of my childhood friend, Annick, that I probably had a schizophrenic episode at age 14, which can appear like that only once in a person's life, then never reappear again. It can be brought on in young people by stress, drugs, and/or a genetic propensity and I was holding a royal flush. Annick's mom know what she's talking about because Annick was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 16 and had a very rough time getting stabilized for the next few decades. Her parents founded Narsad Artworks, which helps raise funds and awareness for those suffering from schizophrenia and depression by allowing artists afflicted with either to sell their beautiful paintings via greeting cards, pottery, T-shirts, murals, etc. Annick is one of those incredible artists and is doing very well on her own now, thanks to the right combination of medications and the continued love and support from her family and friends.

Meeting She-Ma

A word about my nickname, K.T. My birthmother, Shela, gave it to me when we met for the first time in New Orleans in 1987. It's a combination of my adoptive name of Kathryn (Kate) and the name Shela had given me at my birth, Trina. Since I'd always been known as Kate and wasn't comfortable being called Trina, Shela put the K and T together to make "K-T." She hyphenated it like that. From then on, I became known as K-T and she became known as "She-Ma," which is a mixture between her legal name of Shela Marie and a way for me to acknowledge her as a mother without actually calling her "mom."