103 – Fixing The Fates

Who Am I Really?

Diane called me from St. Petersburg, Florida, but her’s is a story that originated in Germany. Diane tells the story of her parents wanting to form a family with her, but her grandmother frequently talking about her adoption such that no one could ever move on. On a trip back to Germany, Diane stood in the orphanage where her story originated, but answers to her questions were not to be had. It turned out that her birth father was her first connection, and he led her back to her birth mother’s family. Diane met her birth mother’s widower who said her mother always searched for her, and made him promise to accept her if Diane were ever found.

This is Diane’s journey

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Damon (00:00):

Hey there. I just wanted to take a sec to let you know that I took time to write a book about my own adoption journey. It's called, who am I really? Of course, go to who am I really? podcast.com and click shop. I hope to make it to your reading list. Okay, here's this week's show.

Diane (00:22):

He said, I've always wanted to meet you. She told me all about you. She told me that she was going to look for you and she did look for you that for the rest of her life she tried to find you and they couldn't. They wouldn't. They wouldn't let her have the records and he said during the 50s when they were courting, she had made him promise. She told him about me before they were married and she'd made him promise to be my father if she ever found me.

Damon (00:55):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (01:02):

Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and today you're going to meet Diane. She called me from st Petersburg, Florida, but hers is a story that originated in Germany. Diane tells the story of her parents wanting to form a family with her, but her grandmother frequently talking about her adoption such that no one could ever move on. On a trip back to Germany Diane stood in the orphanage where her story originated, but answers to her questions were not to be had. Diane met her birth mother's widower who said her mother always searched for her and made him promise to accept her. If Diane were ever found. This is Diane's journey. Diane was an only child in her adopted family in Philadelphia. She says her adoptive mother was related to the people who ran the orphanage she came from in Germany.

Diane (02:08):

I had a kind of six degrees of separation kind of experience because my parents, my adoptive parents in Philadelphia were related to the person who ran the orphanage in Germany. Um, so what had happened was I was surrendered in a German orphanage at age one. Um, and prior to that I was in what's called a kinder home. So it's a children's home, but the mother, the biological mother can still visit you there. None of this I was aware of, but what I was aware of from a very early age and all along was that I was adopted and was that I was in a German orphanage and that my adoptive maternal grandmother's brother ran that orphanage, that he was a child psychologist. And the implication was always that, um, you know, I was lucky to escape the fate of being in that orphanage. I was lucky to have been brought to America, to these loving parents outside of Philadelphia and to be raised in this comfortable home. Um, so, so that was, my awareness was kind of a, a kind of survivor's guilt or, or a kind of a feeling of escape. Like I had escaped from something and I was just sort of like, whew, that's a good thing. You know, that's, that's past, that's behind me

Damon (03:40):

as a first generation immigrant family. Her adoptive mother's mother had moved to the United States from Germany and she lived close to them in Philadelphia. They had many family meals together and it was she who communicated the idea that Diane had been lucky to escape and was very proud of the fact that her brother ran the orphanage and basically brokered Diane's adoption. He had sent her parents photos of Diane and made the recommendation for her adoption.

Diane (04:08):

She communicated it. Um, I think she was proud of the role that she played in it. She was proud of her brother. I think my adoptive parents, they could have done with less of this story floating around all the time.

Damon (04:21):

Why do you say that?

Diane (04:21):

Um, well I think they just wanted to get on with it. Right. They were coming out of that time of loss of not being able to conceive as a young married couple and they kind of wanted to put that period behind and they didn't, I think they wouldn't have kept that story alive as much as my grandmother did. Um, you know, she was always saying, well, I, I, I'm the one who went and got you. I flew over there and we got you from the orphanage and I brought you here. And they had this film of her descending the plane steps and those days you went down onto the tarmac and carrying me and bringing me into the terminal at Philadelphia airport and handing a to my, to my mother, my awaiting mother and father. So it was just this moment of pride that she had where I think my parents were much more interested in me assimilating and in them completing their lifelong wish or their wish together as a couple to have a child to kind of complete their family and to complete a dream, you know?

Damon (05:32):

Yeah. That's an interesting thing. It's in any sort of challenging, deeply emotional situation. There are those who want to move on from it. Like you want to acknowledge it, you have lived it, that has happened and now you know it's time to move on with life. And then there are those who have also been in this situation and they keep saying, you remember the time you remember back then? Oh my gosh, I remember when, and you, and they prevent you from moving forward. And it's, that can be an interesting juxtaposition for, and especially as you've said, your parents were trying to move on also from the probable pain of not being able to conceive a child themselves. And so here's, you know, her own mother, this was your mother's mother, you know, this is her, you're her own mother who's constantly saying, you remember the time when I brought you this baby? That must've been really tough. Huh?

Diane (06:31):

I really agree. And I think it's a brilliant point because there is a way in which the wound never quite healed over. Right. It's constantly being re-exposed. And I think that for my mother, I think that was aggravating. And for me, you know, I kind of adapted this source of pride. Like I assimilated my grandmothers message. I was lucky to be here. I was lucky to have this family. I was lucky to have this situation. Um, it was unique. It was somehow special. Um, it differentiated me. But then as time goes on, as a kid, you just want to blend in. You, you don't want this story anymore. You want to just be a cool kid like everybody else on the block and not be special anymore. And it won't go away.

Damon (07:22):

When Diane was about seven years old, she thought perhaps she was going to have an adopted sibling. She had opened her mother's desk drawer where she found an envelope with an assortment of photos of children, including herself.

Diane (07:36):

And I saw my own picture and all these other kids. And I remember just like sitting back on my heels, like, you know the sweat, you know, you're just sort of perspire. You just are, you know, you're just hot. Suddenly. It's like,

Damon (07:50):

it's that adrenaline rush of,

Diane (07:52):

right, right. And you're seeing actually the reason you came, you know, you there was you and there was this description of you and I was at, had a sunny disposition. That's what they said. Um, and I was, you know, and I was struck by that because I thought, well that's, I have to keep that up, right. I have to keep up that sunny disposition. Or else? I might have to be sent back, you know, returned or something. Um,

Damon (08:19):

it was like, it was, this was part of your, the sales pitch, the marketing material around you.

Diane (08:26):

Exactly. This is how I was promoted. So I mean, um, but you know, I, I kind of was that same time, it got lodged into my consciousness at that point that I, that I had to keep that, that game on. So I had to ask her, you know, are you, am I getting a brother or sister or, you know, I had to obliquely ask or, um, it turns out that they never adopted other children. Um, so

Diane (08:55):

my curiosity about what that might be like was, you know, if that was, that was the end of that.

Damon (09:01):

Hmm. That's really interesting. Can you remember examples of, of times when you felt like, Oh, this is one of those moments where I better look sunny and have a sunny disposition or just did it, how did it impact your personality? I mean, I get the impression that it was in fact very much part of you anyway. But I get the impression also that there were times when you thought to yourself, Ooh, this is might be one of those moments.

Diane (09:27):

Well, you know, when you were like introduced, um, to other kids, like two other, you know, couples, kids and um, especially, you know, well, I mean it could be a girl or a boy, but, um, I can remember thinking, um, you know, because it would be, you know, if, especially if my grandmother was present, it would be, well, and she's the girl that we got, you know, from Germany. Um, and, and I'd be like, I just want that to go right. Or I just wanted to own the information. I said I was much too young to be able to say that that was what I was feeling, but I wanted to express it when I was ready to express it and on my own terms. Um, and so I might be thinking to myself, Oh, now that little boy knows that about me and I'd have to stand there and be kind of performing this happiness ritual of yes, you're, I am the happiest smiling child who was lucky to be in this family.

Diane (10:28):

You know, and of course I was lucky there was but, but there is that lack of agency, right? There's no owning your situation. It's actually kind of um, manufactured for you, uh, on a kind of a continual basis. And, and I think that something that a lot of us adoptees really struggle with is just being able to own your own narrative. There's no way of preempting it. There's no way of holding it as your own until much later. You know, when you're out of the house and out of the story and, and, and you, you know, look like others and people don't know that you're necessarily adopted. And, um, that seems more organic to me and more natural.

Damon (11:19):

When Diane was 17 years old, her grandmother took her back to Germany. It was a coming of age Rite of passage for her, her grandmother. And adoptive mother had been returning to Germany for years, visiting family and friends in their home land. The family was making every effort to maintain their ancestral connections.

Diane (11:38):

But of course for me it was much more loaded than that. I was tapping into something, a Lodestar, a kind of a home, um, if you will. And so for me it was completely different experience than going back and meeting all the aunts and uncles and sitting around and having coffee klatch and um, you know, yes, I, I was happy to learn about my German heritage. I was more than fascinated to learn more about my adoptive, um relatives. But there was something in me that was just instantly galvanized, you know, when my grandmothers said, okay, well we've gone to Germany now four or five times and now these aunts and uncles would like to meet you. And you know, it's time that you went back to, you know, our Homeland. And I'm thinking about, it's my homeland too. And you know, for me, I was instantly like riveted by the idea of going to Germany because I knew that for me it's symbolized much, much more than just it tripped back to the old country.

Damon (12:43):

Let's consider the family dynamic for just a moment. Diane's grandmother, a native German who only learned English when she arrived in the States, felt a deeper connection to her country than her daughter, a woman born and raised in America. So naturally the trips back to Germany meant a lot more to Diane's grandmother because she was truly going home to the place where she grew up. So Diane's parents didn't go with her on that first trip to Germany. It was just Diane and her grandmother. They visited her grandmother's family in a small town of only a few thousand inhabitants in the Southwest region of the country, a Northern suburb of Stuttgart. Diane knew from her grandmother that she was born in Stuttgart that the orphanage or Kindler Haim was also in stood guard and she got the sense that those details really should be enough to satisfy her about her own origins.

Diane (13:36):

Just knowing this much would should be enough. And um, anything else would be when I met, finally met this uncle, um, my grandmother's brother, he told me flat out, but anything else would be just too confusing. And children were not meant to know about their biological families that would make their loyalties divided and they were only to have one family. That's how it was to be. And that the only way to cement that in your heart was to not know anything else about their biological family. But he held firm on this idea that one family. And of course inside me, I, there was just this loud protestation I thought, no, I love my parents. I will never not love my parents, my adoptive parents. I simply need to know. And also I was so close, you know, so channelizing here I was talking to people that I knew full well. He must know and, and no, but it was a kind of like the, the glass door just dropped down right there. Like just couldn't ask or you couldn't know. You could ask, but it was futile.

Damon (14:46):

That glass door coming down, blocking Diane from