Brenda was born in California, grew up on the east coast and lives in Texas. She’s the child of a military family that has lived all over. When a school project required her to ask her adoptive mother about her family tree at eight years old, she was shown her non-identifying information for the first time. While the offer was open to review her information anytime, Brenda felt like the topic of her adoption was stressful for her mother, so she never asked. After the birth of her first son, Brenda sought her birth parents, definitively identifying her birth father first. He was emotionally ready to welcome her in. Finding her birth mother, she saw the mirror image of her self. Unfortunately, the woman was so traumatized following her pregnancy and the adoption process, she wasn’t as open to Brenda’s return. But the door isn’t completely closed.

Read Full TranscriptBrenda:         She just started crying and she just said, you know it, It took so long to forget and such a short time to bring it all back

Brenda: What did you think in that moment.

Brenda:    Well, I mean I understand. I understand. She had to forget about me to move on. She had to because she just couldn’t live there and beat herself up for the rest of her life.

Intro voices: Who am I? Who am I?..Who am I? Who am I?… Who Am I? Who am I?

Damon: 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 hear from Brenda who called me from Texas. Brenda was raised as an only child in a military family and her parents always gave her what she needed to have a healthy, happy upbringing. After a school project, she was shown her non-identifying information and her curiosity about her birth mother opened up and her imagination kicked in, but it was her biological father whom she definitively identified first and who was mentally ready to receive her unscarred by the burdens, her biological mother bore after Brenda’s birth. This is Brenda’s journey.

Damon: Brenda was born in California and grew up an only child of a military couple. They moved around a lot, living in different parts of the United States and overseas. At one point her parents intended to adopt a boy, but her father’s military orders transferred him. Before that adoption was completed.

Brenda: I was the only one in the family that was adopted, you know, in the entire, either one of their families. So I didn’t really have anybody to talk to about it. They were always very open about it even though they were a little nervous about talking about that kind of thing. They’re just kinda little uptight about a lot of things. And um, so they had, I remember as a kid, I mean I’ve always known I was adopted and as a kid my mother would give me this little book to read about how special I was because I was adopted. I was selected, I was chosen and um, you know, that was kind of how it was approached. And uh, you know, most of the family, the extended family didn’t really treat me any differently than anybody else. We didn’t because again, with the military life, we didn’t live near anybody in the family either. My parents, they lived, their parents lived in different places and in the United States and we’d go visit occasionally about once a year, but that was about it and so it was just kind of the three of us growing up.

Brenda:  Brenda says she looks different from her family, but over the years people have said she looks like her father, which always made her laugh and oddly Brenda and her mother’s voice is sound almost identical. A bizarre coincidence for Brenda who worked in broadcasting. She speaks reverently of her mother and honestly about her father.

Brenda:  I’ve always gotten along great with her. I mean she really, she was a stay at home mom and even though, you know, we certainly weren’t wealthy by any stretch. I mean we always had kind of what we needed and you know, I was very fortunate, you know, Christmas time and that they would make sure that I got some things that I really wanted, but they didn’t want me to be spoiled because of being an only child. So my mother and I have always been very, very close, I mean very close. My Dad and I had a little bit of a stormy relationship. We just butted heads a lot and I think we just approach things differently, we think differently and we’re both pretty stubborn and so that’s been difficult. That was always difficult growing up. I mean once I got past about five or so things kind of changed with our relationship, you know, we’ve had a lot of difficult times know where we wouldn’t speak with each other and you know, even the living in the same house and we just wouldn’t speak with each other for like a month.

Brenda:    Yeah. Which is really bizarre and you know, you don’t know any different at the time, but getting out of that, I realized that’s not the way that most families are, you know, it was, it was stressful. That part was really stressful and you know, I don’t know. I think deep down I always wanted to make sure that I didn’t cause too many problems because this is totally unreasonable and irrational, but I think in the back of my mind was always, well they could send me back, you know, they could, they could have me go back to foster care or the orphanage or wherever, you know, and you know, so I think it was always kind of one of those things like I don’t want to get too far out of line.

Damon:    So Brenda’s parents try to make her feel comfortable with her adoption, with the books and the messages that she was special because she was chosen, but adoption wasn’t a comfortable topic and she could sense the tension. So she basically never raised the issue. Of course that made it tough as a kid when she had to complete one of those dreaded family tree projects. But it was that project that opened Pandora’s metal box for her.

Brenda:  I think I was in elementary school and I came home with homework one day and you were supposed to trace your family tree. And I remember I went up to my teacher privately, you know, in elementary school and I said, Hey, I’m adopted. And she said, well then just do your parents. And it was like, okay, so yeah, and you know, so it’s like, well that’s not.

Brenda:   Yeah, yeah. So it was really awkward and I still remember going home and I talked to my mother and I said, hey, you know, this is the assignment. And she brought out this metal box that I’d never seen before and open it up and inside where my adoption papers and it did have one type written sheet of non ID information. And in that it gave. And I saw for the first time my background in terms of my ethnic background and I found out that my mother was an immigrant to the United States. And uh, I had no idea.

Damon:   I was glad Brenda came around to her biological mother being an immigrant because she alluded to looking different from her parents. She says her mother is tall and thin, fair skinned with reddish brown hair. Her father is shorter and she just doesn’t look like them.

Brenda:  I have almost black eyes, you know, I have dark hair and all that. And so I just didn’t look like that.

Damon:   What did you think you ethnicity might be?

Brenda:   Well, I just didn’t know back then. I didn’t know. I mean, you know, you’re a kid, you don’t really, unless that’s part of your culture. I mean, you know, I was in an urban area at that time and so, you know, it was like, well people are, you know, African American or they’re Puerto Rican or their native America, you will really, really neat mix of different types of people. And so, you know, we had somebody from Portugal and and so those kinds of things. But I didn’t think about myself being like that and to find out that, you know, my mother had come to the United States from another country was like wow. And it was even a country I really didn’t know too much about.

Damon:    Seeing the physical description of her biological parents and other non identifying information was really interesting because it painted a picture of traits about her biological mother, like athleticism and being good at crafts. She also learned that

Brenda:   when she had me, she was a junior in high school and that when she came to the United States, she didn’t speak the language in. So even though she was older, you know, they didn’t do bilingual education back then, so she had to go back to elementary school, you know, and sit is a big kid with little kids to learn the language and it was kind of humiliating for her.

Damon:     Brenda, read about her birth parents, family structures on both sides. She learned their birth years and that her biological father was in the armed forces.

Brenda:  So then your imagination starts really taking off as a kid and you know, Gosh, who could my parents be? And that’s, that’s where it gets kind of interesting because you know, you start looking for familiarity in the face of strangers and you look at people and think do… do they look like me? Could that be my family? You know, and you just don’t know. And that’s the hard part.

Damon:   Yeah, that’s right. So who did you think they could be?

Brenda:   Oh, you know, when you’re a kid, I mean I used to think, oh my dad’s going to be Johnny Carson.

Brenda:  (laughter)

Brenda:   you know, and my mom is probably like, Cher.

Damon:   It’s not uncommon for adoptees to imagine that their parents are famous people. It’s no spoiler for me to tell you Brenda’s parents were not in Hollywood. So, Brenda has seen this paper with the identified information at about eight years old. Her mother said she could look at the papers anytime she wanted to, but she didn’t want to make her mother nervous or stress her out, so she never brought it up again. Over the years,