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All Grown Up
Adoption Stories of Adults By Teri Brown
Adoption is often considered from the perspective of a child, but we rarely revisit the topic years after the fact. What about when the child becomes an adult? Will time affect the way they view adoption or give them a different perspective? The following stories are the adoption stories of adults. The stories are very different, but alike in the fact that they are filled with love.
Unlike many children adopted during the early '60s, Radmer learned she was adopted at a very early age and was thankful that her adoptive parents didn't look at adoption as being something that they couldn't talk about. Like many other adopted children, she had many questions about her birth parents, but unfortunately, her adopted parents had no information to give her.
As an adult, these questions were what prompted her to begin searching for her birth parents. After having no luck on her own, Radmer hired a private investigator in 1993. She had very little information to go on: her date and place of birth, the name of the attorney her adopted parents used and that her first name was possibly Annette. "In February 1994, this man called me and gave me the names and phone numbers of five of my eight siblings," says Radmer. "Turns out that I am the eighth of nine children and the only one that was put up for adoption."
Radmer has met her siblings since that time and has kept in close contact. Through them she was able to arrange a meeting with her birth mother. "Last August, I did finally meet her face to face," says Radmer. "It was something I just needed to do. I had to at least hug the woman that brought me into this world. But, for reasons I am not clear on, we do not stay in touch. She doesn't stay in touch with the rest of her children either."
Through her mother, Radmer learned that her birth parents were divorced in 1969. Her mother says they gave her up for adoption because her birth father didn't want anymore children and threatened to leave. Radmer isn't sure that is exactly what happened and may never really know. Her birth father died in 1991 of lung cancer.
Though Radmer and her birth mother haven't developed a close relationship, she isn't sorry she found her birth family and on the whole feels good about her adoption and adoption in general. "I think I have been fairly positive about being adopted," she says. "I can't change it, so there isn't much point in being negative or hateful. My biological parents made a decision based on their situation at the time. I have never had a negative feeling toward them for what they did, and that may be, in part, because of the open attitude that my parents had about my being adopted. I truly believe that adoption as a whole is, and should be, a very positive, good thing. It is a good thing when you can put children needing homes into a home where they are wanted."
