Late Discovery Adoption - The Awareness of Its Impact on My Life Is Never-Ending

by Kathleen Kirstein
I am a late-discovery adoptee. I learned I was adopted at age forty-nine when I couldn't get a passport because, on the application, I couldn’t explain why my birth certificate had been filed fourteen months after my birth. The answer was in my medical record, buried under 49 years of office notes. I found the first entry in my chart: “ Adopted Baby 4 lbs 4 oz, two weeks premature. My parents then confirmed this for me two days later.

I want the world to know that even the best adoption situations carry trauma. Even those of us who didn’t know we were adopted. My childhood was as normal as expected in the white suburbs of a small New Hampshire town in the late 1950s. This is a story of how, at age sixty-seven, I came to realize the true level of trauma from relinquishment.

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My son’s best friend, Joe, recently buried his dad. That event made my two sons realize they wanted me to make all the decisions about what would happen at the time of my death and how to close out my life.

After our discussion, I ordered the end-of-life planner called Fuck, Im Dead Now What? from Amazon.

The planner arrives, and I start to fill it out. It looks very comprehensive. I am working through the basic demographics. Then I hit my first speed bump: Father's Name.

It starts to feel thought-provoking and tricky. I know they mean my adopted parents' names, but what about my biological parents? Where do their names go? Because there is ample space under the lines already provided for my legal parents, I added my biological parents in the space underneath. That feels wrong. My biological parents were first; they should be listed first, but they never knew me.

Emotions start to creep in. A tear or two escapes my eyes, and I realize this will not be the quick, down-and-dirty get-it-done I had initially planned.

It seems everything in my life revolves around the fact that I was adopted. Even when I think this can’t possibly be related, it turns out it is. As I navigate the adoptee community, I discover things I never knew about myself, mirrored by my fellow adoptees.

On the form, I stumble through the social status section and then proceed to the other family section. Here, I add everyone, from the sister I grew up with, with whom I no longer share DNA, to my biological half-siblings and cousins—even the paternal brother, who doesn't have contact with me.

In the friends section, I feel the need to note every friend I have ever had. I am overthinking my responses big time. I tell myself the critical friends in positions to notify my other friends. Write their names down. I reach the password section, and there are spaces for 12 passwords; I fill those in and then create a Google doc with an additional 23 slots. I print a few of those pages off and fill them with the contents of my password file card booklet. My sons are not going to need all this information. Yet, I cannot pick and choose what stays and what goes. This is an example of my trauma response of not being able to make a decision.

For the first 49 years of my life, I was confident in who I was, despite my different body type and my unique problem-solving skills, which made me feel I didn't belong. My personality was quiet, almost invisible. I had a gentle presence in the world. I liked to please everyone and be helpful to others, all the reasons I excelled during my career as a registered nurse.

When you live with a certain narrative for 49 years, it's like a record playing on a turntable, the needle playing the music from the grooves engraved deeper in the vinyl, telling the same story repeatedly. The music is comfortable and pleasing to the listener's ear.

August 22nd of 2005, at noon, when I learned of my adoption, the music stopped. The needle suddenly jumped out of the grooves and scratched the vinyl. The turntable came to a screeching halt.

My identity shattered, and I was in shock. Slowly, a second layer of vinyl would be poured onto the original record, the needle back in place, engraving the grooves the more I told my adoption story to others. The second layer of vinyl did not completely cover the initial layer, as my adoption story has a few holes. Sometimes the needle falls in an old grove, and I think the old story is true and the new story is just a dream.

That's what it's like for me, living life as a Late Discovery Adoptee with two stories, a before and after, occasionally muddling together, confusing my brain.

As I sit here filling out this journal, all my trauma responses flood into my thoughts and behaviors, making filling out this simple document so much more complicated.

I now recognize that I overthink; I bully myself for not being perfect. I am overresponsible; I resist when others try to care for me. I am independent and never
ask for help, even when I could use it. I don't feel worthy of anything. I focus on my mistakes and not my goodness. All things I consider trauma responses, I put in place as I strived to fit in with my adopted family.

During this process of end-of-life planning, I have discovered that I don't want a funeral; I don't want a headstone. I just want to slip away like I never existed, and I don't want to be remembered. I think someone who was not adopted, or maybe even another adoptee, might value themselves more than I do. They might wish for mourners and celebrations of their lives.

Being invisible is my comfort zone, even though I set myself up in visible situations within the adoptee community.

I am a conflict within myself. I have cried for three days straight over the fact that I was an adopted person. My counselor put a name to this: grieving oneself.

When it comes to my pain, I have a mantra: “Feel it, write it, heal it.” This has resulted in growth as I move forward in my journey.

(A version of this essay was previously read onstage at The Rockwell Theater for Boston Post Adoption Resources: Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kathleen Shea Kirstein is a Baby Scoop era, domestic, same race, Late-Discovery adoptee and NPE(Non-Expected Parent Event). She’s the mother of two sons, a retired Registered Nurse, and the illustrator of 3 children's books with author D Ann Hollon. Additionally, she serves as a board member and a peer support facilitator for AKA. She has three essays published in Severance Magazine: “Dear Mother,” “Blown Off Course,” and “There Was A Secret.”
Kathleen can be found on Facebook under the name Wendy Kathleen Janet and on Instagram under Kathleen Kirstein

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