In an earlier post, outlining my various connections to the world of adoption, I mentioned that besides being an adoptive mom I am also a birthfamily member. I am an aunt to several children placed in closed adoptions. Two of them are now 18 and I had just begun to consider that they could now quite possibly show up on my doorstep at any time, if they decided to search. Well that possibility became a reality this week.

On Thursday evening I was unexpectedly reunited with my nephew J.

Over the years I have never stopped worrying about them all. There was no time when I did not wonder of they were happy, well loved, and living the kind of life our family imagined them to receive with their adoptive parents. Part of my own struggles with not knowing about those nieces and nephews played a huge part in my strong insistence that we have open adoptions for the three children my husband and I now parent. The not knowing seems like it will never end. All you can do is wait for the day to come when you meet that grown child face to face, and perhaps some of your wondering will come to an end. In reality though I have discovered that long awaited meeting is just the beginning of a whole other process of wondering.

On Thursday evening I got a call around 6:00 pm from my brother who lives a few states away. His oldest son J had found his birthmother, my ex sister in law, and he had called my brother wanting to meet him. As soon as my brother got off the phone he loaded his family in the car and had begun the long drive to the town near me where his son was staying with his mom. He called me from the road and asked me if I would like to have my long lost nephew J come over to my house for awhile. I could go pick him up in 45 minutes.

After eleven years of not knowing, I could go pick him up in 45 minutes.

Of course I was way to nervous to go pick him up, so I stayed with the kids and my husband went to get him for me. I busied myself with crazy work (I defrosted my ice maker) while I waited. I really did not know what to expect. I did know that at long last I would get to tell J that my husband and I had tried to get custody of him and his siblings, we wanted to adopt them, but the DFS in Missouri is highly warped and unethical and that merits a whole other post of its own. At this point I had no idea how badly DFS had handled this child’s ‘fresh start’ but I would soon find out.

When my husband arrived back home with J it was such a surprise to see a tall young man who looks like his mother and so much like his father all at the same time. The little boy I remembered was gone, replaced by a very handsome young man. After the initial awkward hug he told me a little about himself. He professed to be a good student with intentions to attend college in the fall. I felt for a second some relief that perhaps adoption had been a positive experience for him, and it was then that he dropped the bomb in my perfect imagined portrait of his childhood.

He told me that after only one year in his adoptive home with his two siblings, the adoptive parents actually returned him to foster care. He was just 8 years old. They kept his younger brother and sister. Over the years he drifted from placement to placement. Seventeen in all. Earlier this year, when he turned 18, he aged out of the system. We never knew. To say I was angry about the way things had transpired for him would be an extreme understatement. To say my wondering about this young man and his life was now over with our reunion would also be very incorrect.

The knowledge of what J had experienced after he was placed for adoption was hard to wrap my mind around. My brother and his ex wife were not abusive, but perhaps they were young, without resources and somewhat neglectful, but there were other family, myself included who could have been given the opportunity to keep these children in the family. To find out that this young man was never given any foundation or permanency was very upsetting to say the least.


Knowing what I do about attachment, bonding and adoption issues, I could tell without asking that J has not come away from his experience unscathed. He was superficially charming, he was also not willing to disclose much about his life in the five hours we talked while waiting for my brother to arrive. He did share a few things with me, like showing me the myspace page of one of his siblings, but I also noted that he wiped clean my computer history when I wasn’t looking. One of the reasons he said that his adoption had not worked out was that he did not like being told what to do. I just laughed and asked what 8 year old does? To myself though I recognized that need to be to highly independent at such a young age, extreme rebellion to any parental control, and the smooth unemotional way he told me all the sordid details of his life as indicative of underlying issues. I see a very detached young man, I can only wait and wonder and hope that I am wrong.

Photo Credit:© 2007 Deb Donatti