Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of Adoptee Stories

Ann: Sleuthing and DNA Led to Answers

Louise Browne & Sarah Reinhardt Season 9 Episode 11

Ann is a Baby Scoop-era adoptee. Born to teenage parents in the early 1960s, she was adopted when she was not quite two weeks old. She’s always known she was adopted. Her adoptive mother told her against the wishes of her adoptive father when she was very young. Knowing caused her a great deal of angst growing up because she felt her adoptive parents were withholding information from her and that coupled with feeling and looking different from her adoptive family was a constant source of cognitive dissonance that lasted into adulthood.

As an adult, Ann searched for her birth mother over the years but with little information to go on, and the imperfect search options available to her, she found nothing. It wasn’t until her daughter convinced her to take a DNA test in 2019 that solid leads led her first to a maternal cousin and then to her birth mother’s family and set her on the journey to discover where she came from, and how it shaped who she’s become.

You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption by Angela Tucker 

Closure - Angela Tucker Documentary

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RESOURCES for Adoptees
S12F Helping Adoptees
Adoptee Mentoring Society
Jeff Forney - Innocent People Project
Gregory Luce and Adoptees Rights Law
Fireside Adoptees Facebook Group
Reckoning with the Primal Wound Documentary
Dr. Liz Debetta: Migrating Toward Wholeness Movement
Moses Farrow - Trauma therapist and advocate
Unraveling Adoption with Beth Syverson
Adoptees Connect with Pamela Karanova



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