Pity Party for One

The first two weeks of July each year is one of reflection and sadness.  On the 6th July 1997 Mark, my 1st husband and father of my two eldest kids, died at the age of 41. It was sudden.  Although Mark and I had divorced several years early, he was still my friend and my rock and I loved him dearly. I miss his voice and I miss our long discussions on raising our children as divorced parents – we were the role models of a happily divorced couple.  I reflect on our life together and wonder if we stayed together, would he still be alive?  He died of an cerebral aneurysms so the likelihood he’d be alive today is, well it’s unlikely.

This year on Mark’s death anniversary my son visited his grave and my daughter posted the annual tribute to her father on Facebook.  This year was probably the 1st time in a while I didn’t post about Mark’s death on Facebook. To be honest I forgot until I saw my daughter’s post and with the outpouring of sympathy and support for her, I remembered that my father’s death date loomed.  But my grief will go without any fanfare or outpouring of love and support not even from my kids – they didn’t know him.   I might post a tribute on Facebook but I think I’ll just have a pity party for one!

My father died on the 9th July 1981.  I was twenty with a three-month old baby girl.  I had no time to grieve my father’s death.  The moment I found out, I had to toughen up and support my mother, plan a funeral with my brother and find out how mum could access some money to live on as dad handled all the finances.  To make matters worse mum was an emotional mess.  I knew she would be as she was always an emotional women, cried at the drop of a hat.  I could never work out why she was so emotional when I was so hardened, if only I knew then what I know now.  I also found out later that my brother had his own burden to bare as he found our adoption papers the day dad died – secrets take their toll on everyone and they certainly took their toll on mum.

All this going on and I was struggling to breast feed a hungry baby!

As months wore on, I spent nearly every day with mum.  I loved her dearly and loved her company and her help raising my daughter.  Three years later I had a son and nothing changed with my daily routine.  Then mum found out she had cancer.  I was 23 by this time.  Mum wasn’t a well woman at the best of times, she had high blood pressure and was always on nerve tables as she called them, we call them Valium. As a diabetic I watched her administer injections twice a day.  I had to learn to do it myself. I learnt using an orange as I didn’t want to practice on mum, I might hurt her.  To this day I’ve never needled anyone.

One year after having my son and mum being diagnosed with cancer, Mark came home from the pub one night and told me about a conversation he had with my brother – he found our adoption papers.  It wasn’t a revelation for me, I had already suspected but the last time I thought about it was 6 months before my dad died, I was pregnant and I told the midwife I was unsure about my family health history because I suspected I was adopted.

Here I was, 24 years old, looking after two kids and an emotional mum dying of cancer and all I wanted to do was ask her 1000 questions but I had to put my feeling’s and question’s aside, at least for the time being, or until I couldn’t bare the silence anymore – which by the way took nine long months.  When I finally broke my silence the conversation was quick and we barely spoke about it again.  Over the next six years my marriage to Mark broke down, my fault, and I had another child to husband number two all the while supporting mum as much as I could.  I didn’t have as much help from mum’s sister as my nan’s health deteriorated during the ten years since dad died so it was all on me and I was becoming an emotional wreck although you wouldn’t know it because I don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve, I still don’t.

Within three months after my 30th birthday, my beloved nan died and one week later my mum died. Which brings me to today 7 July 2018, two day’s before the 37th anniversary of the death of my dad.  The anniversary that kicked off a ten year cycle taking in every year of my 20’s.  Being a responsible adult, mother of three, carer for my dying mum, watching my nan deteriorate, the breakdown of my marriage and for most of those ten years holding in a thousand questions on my beginnings,  all the while secretly searching for the mystery birth mother I knew very little about.

37 years ago, this very day, I was a new mum with a wonderful husband, amazing parents and a great brother.  It was pretty much the last time I had very little to worry about except for how in the hell I was going to get this baby to sleep more than 3 hours without doing as my dad advised, putting a bit of brandy in her bottle.

To you dad, I don’t have any brandy but I have wine and I’ll tip my glass to you and to the 37th anniversary since I last saw you and the 37th anniversary of the last two almost care-free days of my life.

 

The Pity Party Train has just derailed at the corner of
Suck It Up & Move On, and crashed into We All Have 
Problems, before coming to a stop at Get The Hell over It!

#sodramatic #wintercold #woewoeisme

A lonely beginning

My granddaughter turns ten this week and I reflect on the first time I laid my eyes on her, such perfection, so much love.

I was in the room when my daughter gave birth to my granddaughter Matilda.  It’s not a pleasant experience for a parent to watch your child go through labour even though it’s the natural occurrence of life.  There’s nothing natural about giving birth, it’s painful, messy and fucking stressful even though there’s a reward at the end.   I was so stressed witnessing this event knowing that any minute something could go wrong. After I cut the cord and my daughter got a little cuddle of her daughter, the nurse took Matilda to the side to clean her up and get her breathing on her own.  Matilda didn’t start crying soon as she was born but she made noises so I wasn’t worried.

After a little while I couldn’t resist the urge to check out Matilda’s toes to see if they were webbed just like mine, her mothers and her Uncles, and they are.  The nurses were still fussing around Matilda but they let me check her toes.  I noticed the nurses were a little bothered and I noted Matilda still hadn’t had a big cry.  She was whimpering as if trying to cry but I didn’t think anything of it until the Nurse told us she needed to take Matilda to a high care unit for a short time.  She also assured us everything was OK.  She explained that Matilda was born so quickly she was a little distressed so she need some specialist care to clear out her lungs and get her breathing normally.

Matilda disappeared with the nurse and I was left in the labour room with my daughter and her husband.  The birth was so quick it also left my daughter in some terrible pain that continued after the birth and that wasn’t normal so she was being attended to by the Dr and her husband.

There was nothing I could do for my daughter, she was in good hands.  My thoughts were with Matilda, I should be there with her.  She was ten minutes into this world and not with her family.  She needed me!

I asked the nurse if I could be with my granddaughter and she showed me the way to the high care unit.   As I entered the unit alone, I noted how big the room was and how empty except for a tiny baby crib at the far end of the room.  As I approached my granddaughter’s crib the nurse assured me she was OK and not be alarmed by the wires connected to her.  It was routine and she was just fine and needed a little time and some extra oxygen to get over her quick entrance into the world.

It wasn’t the wires that alarmed me but the overwhelming mixed feelings that swept over me.  My granddaughter was just born and was left alone in her crib at the end of a big room.  To be fair the nurses had just finished wiring her up for oxygen and other things to monitor other vital organs, whatever they were.   I leaned down and kissed her on her head and caressed her cheeks softly with the back of my fingers.

I’m here now my baby, you’re not alone!

As I stared down at this perfect angel, the love that swept over me took my breath and I swear my heart’s temperature rose a few degrees. I will not leave this darling girl. I will not leave her alone for a second.  In that room and in that moment, I was all she had and I didn’t want her to be or feel alone.

As I sat silently next to her as she slept it dawned on me that Matilda and I had very different beginnings.  Although I was taken to a ward very soon, if not immediately after birth, I had not one family member there to have the same feelings that swept over me.  No doubt I would have been alone in a ward for weeks possibly more. No one to caress my cheek with a loving hand and no one to stare down at me with overwhelming love and joy.  The only touch would have come from the nurses who fed and changed me. My heart ached for that baby (me).   I’d not wish this beginning on anyone let alone my granddaughter. I can’t help but wonder…..

Was my lonely beginning in life the reason I’ve been alone in my heart since the day I was born?

Who am I?

Who am I?  A question I didn’t seek an answer to as an adolescence but it’s a question that blossomed in my later teen years and advanced through to my young adulthood and marched on into my mature aged years and still today remains unanswered. Does it keep me up at night?  No.  Does it define me?  No.

The important question is, can I live with this question unanswered?  I don’t know!

As a  child I felt detached from my surrounding world and I can only conclude these feelings started when I was about four, in what I refer to as the “sandpit incident” which is a vague recollection of being told I’m adopted by two visiting children as we innocently played in the sandpit.  For most of my childhood that memory was suppressed and only just recently have I connected that suppressed memory with another incident that happened when I was about 7, and that was when I saw the movie Oliver (1968) and had a very bad reaction to the film, read all about that here.

The only way to explain my feelings of detachment is to compare it with living life as if in a bubble,  looking out at the world around me, observing people, their relationships and interactions with each other especially within their families.  I noted similarities in looks, actions and personalities between family members, especially my own family,  but I didn’t see me in any one around me, although for the most part I didn’t think too much of it because as a child I didn’t consciously acknowledge I wasn’t one of them.

On my mum’s side, my cousin looks like my mum and my aunty looked similar to her aunty, my great aunty.  On my dad’s side,  my dad looked like his brother, and when my cousin got older he looked like his dad who looked like my dad.  Having said that,  it wasn’t obvious that I didn’t belong to my family, I was Caucasian with fair skin and so were they.  Besides you don’t always see noticeable features in blood family members so not getting told “you look like your mum/dad/brother” didn’t bother me at all.  I can only recall one time when the opposite was said and that was by my brother’s mates who said “you don’t look anything like your sister”.  I was about 17.

After my adoption was confirmed when I was about 24, I  began crowd surfing.  Searching crowds for a faces that resembled mine, spending endless hours wondering, wishing, surmising about my birth family.  My only hope was the information my birth mother gave to the adoption agency was correct because that was all I had, non-identifying information.  I’d scold anyone who questioned the validity of the information.  As it turned out, the information Anne provided was mostly true but that wasn’t realised for another 32 years.

Not only did I live in my bubble but I did so whilst sitting on an invisible fence.  On one side, my adopted family and on the other side, unanswered questions.  Then I found my birth family and after the dust settled and after a few family reunions, I find myself still sitting on that bloody fence.  My adopted family still on one side,  and the other side now taken up by my birth family.  Regardless which side of the fence I fall into, I don’t fully belong.  I’m genetically dissimilar to my adopted family and I’m environmentally dissimilar to my birth family.

I always had this notion that if I’d find my birth family, I’d immediately fit in and life would go on as if I had always known them. But alas, that’s not the case,  they are strangers to me.  They have all led vastly different lives than me and that brings me to ask the question, “would I be the same person I am today if I had grown up in my birth family?

There’s a large part of me that wishes I had the chance to live with the family I was born into but that thought comes with feelings of guilt, guilt for wishing it in the first place and disrespecting my adopted family.

Not meeting my birth parents weighs heavily on me.  I’m grateful I uncovered their identifies and I can’t help but ponder the questions “would they have liked me?”, “would they have embraced me?”  The more I learn about my birth parents the more I realise how different I am to them and the lives they led.  My mother appears to have been an adventurer, moving to the US after I was born, ending up in Alaska with an American husband and regularly travelling abroad for  holidays.  I’m a home body.  My father was a very hard man on his children, so I’m told. He was a great cook and entertainer.  As for me, I’m a compassionate parent who hates cooking.  It begs the question, “Are environmental factors what make us who we are?

So who am I?  I’m an adoptee whose born identity was denied and who had to adopt an identity that doesn’t quite fit, leaving me continually searching for a sense of belonging, a journey that has no end, so it seems.

Thank the ‘Lord’!

Oh dear, I couldn’t resist commenting on a closed Ancestry DNA Facebook group especially when the story I was commenting on combined two topics I’m passionate about  – adoption and atheism.

I try hard not to sprout my atheistic thoughts outside atheist groups and generally I don’t mix atheism with adoption but I couldn’t hold back this time, and it goes like this….

A well meaning Christian woman posted a link to a story she felt very touched by. Check it out here before you read on, just so you understand what ticked me off – Chloe – A Story of Infertility, Adoption, and God’s Love

The positive comments flooded in from “Beautiful, can’t stop crying” to “Made me cry. Her story is my story…” and my all time fav “God is great”. I just wanted to throw up, instead I provided my perspective via a comment:

I’m sorry this story makes me slightly nauseous for a number of reasons:

Firstly they seem to be incapable of realising they alone had all these thoughts.

Secondly, through some genetic makeup issue they couldn’t have kids so adoption was their last and only option.

Thirdly they are borrowing someone else’s baby to bring up and they will never be the birth parents and saying otherwise doesn’t make it true even if their ‘god’ tells them so – did he send his message by text or a tweet?  They didn’t say.

Forth and by no means last, that poor baby had to go through a separation from the moment she was born and now has to learn to adapt into unfamiliar territory.

And lastly,  the baby will be expected to conform to an unrelated and genetically different family and their religious beliefs otherwise she could face her second abandonment.

So let’s go through this at a high level:

  1. A kid who talks to God – I prayed to God as a little girl and as much as I waited for a response or some measure that my prayers were met, they weren’t.  Christians will say that God wasn’t in my heart even back then so of course my prayers weren’t met – to which I say ‘bollocks’.
  2. A kid has a premonition about having a little girl – I remember dressing my cat up as a little girl because I didn’t like little boys.
  3. Both of them coming up with the name Chloe – this is amazing – NOT.  Chloe was one of the most popular girl names in the 90s when the parents in this story were kids.  My name was popular in the early 60s and there were 4 girls in my class with my name for the duration of my schooling.
  4. After 4 years she was struggling with God’s goodness – let’s just pretend for a second there’s a God.  God’s an arsehole for not allowing her to have a baby since it appears to be one of her main goals in life.
  5. And of course claiming it all a miracle!  Let’s be clear, there is NO evidence that miracles happen – NONE!   However, a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances do,  these are known as ‘coincidences’.

The only other time I couldn’t keep thoughts to myself was after a birth family member thanked the ‘Lord’ that I was found.  I couldn’t hold back my thoughts and told her, nicely, that I thought the ‘Lord’ was an fucking arsehole as he watched me search for over 35 years and let me solve the mystery AFTER BOTH BIRTH PARENTS WERE DEAD!

Oh yeah, thank the fucking Lord!

They did take my remarks very well and told me that at the end of my birth mother’s life she too had doubts about ‘God’.  I love her for saying that!

DNA test recommendations

I’m always asked by friends and family what DNA testing company to use.  There are many sites with their own recommendations but predominately they are US based sites, so he’s one from an Australian Adoptee Genetic Genealogist’s point of view in order of preference:

  1. AncestryDNA – I’ve been using Ancestry.com to trace my adopted family’s ancestry and everyone I know uses Ancestry.com.  So when I saw posts fly past my Facebook wall with stories of adoptees finding family using AncestryDNA, I was 100% on board and ordered my kit immediately.  The DNA tests had only just become available in Australia so I was an early adopter, pun intended.
    Ancestry as well as all the DNA testing companies listed below offer Autosomal DNA tests. Autosomal DNA tests can confirm relationships between other members who have submitted their DNA. This test can tell parent/child relationships and up to second cousin level with a great deal of accuracy.Since first submitting my DNA to Ancestry, they have introduced some very cool features, at least I think they are cool.  They are:

    • Shared Ancestor Hints –  show you how you’re related to cousins who have also submitted their DNA and who has an extensive family tree that include your most recent common ancestors – I love this feature.
    • Genetic Community – show you where many of your cousins originate from because they descend from a population of common ancestors.
    • DNA Circles – if you and other cousins have the same ancestor in your family trees the circles will identify the common ancestor.
  2. FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA)– This site has the 2nd largest database.  What FTDNA does offer over AncestryDNA is additional testing other than Autosomal DNA tests, they include:
    • Mitochondrial DNA testing (mtDNA) – provides information about the direct female ancestral line as it preserves information about our female ancestors that may be lost from the records because of the way surnames are often passed down.
    • Y chromosome testing (yDNA)  can be used to explore ancestry in the direct male line. This test can only be done on males because only they have a Y chromosome.

The best feature FTDNA offer is you can upload your DNA results from Ancestry, 23&me to FTDNA and just recently from National Geographic where you will see any relatives who have either uploaded their results or taken the FTDNA test.  I had a 3rd cousin pop up on this site.  Other features I found helpful during my 18 months of trying to find common cousins include the:

    • Chromosome browser – allows you to compare your matching DNA segments with your genetic matches
    • In common with – this tool was far better than Ancestry’s cousin matching.
  1. 23andMe – after almost 18 months I decided to take the plunge and order a kit.  23&me has predominantly Americans on the database but all the adoption groups suggested to test with all three major companies.  23&me’s ethnicity report is more extensive than Ancestry and it tells if you have Neanderthal DNA, which all the research suggests everyone who lives out of Africa probably does, at least <1%.   Had I not had my 1st cousin match using AncestryDNA, I may have cracked the mystery with the  2nd cousin match I had on 23andMe.  So if you’re adopted do this test too so you cover all bases.
  2. Gedmatch – provides DNA and genealogical analysis tools for amateur and professional researchers and genealogists. Most tools are free, but they do provide some premium tools for an small cost.
    Gedmatch doesn’t provide the kits for testing your DNA but it does allow you to upload your DNA results from all of the above recommended sites and also MyHeritage.  The beauty of Gedmatch is you can do far more analysis on your DNA.  Using Gedmatch will require a bit of a learning curve but nothing you won’t handle if you’ve managed to upload your results in the first place.

Me and support groups

In the 35 years before my adoption confirmation I’ve only been to two support groups. First one in 1986 just after the confirmation phone call.  The session was held in the Parramatta Town Hall.  The second session was in 2007.  It was held in the State Library of NSW and was just up the road from where I was working at the time.

The first meeting in Parramatta was held on a weekday afternoon and a two hour drive from my home town. I had to take the kids along because asking Mum to babysit would involve me conjuring up a story and I wasn’t a good liar especially to Mum.  The hall was in a small square which was a closed off section of street.  There were a few people hanging around the square and on the most part they looked like a bunch I’d would avoid in a dark allay.  I assumed there was a homeless shelter nearby or a methadone clinic. But as it turned out they were waiting for the adoption session to start.  I remember thinking I must have been brought up in the bubble if this what adopted people look like – I was slightly horrified but we made the journey and I was going in.

The attendees turned the discussion into a whinge fest, at least I thought they did.  They complained how being adopted affected their health and prosperity.  Up until that point and for many years after I never thought for a moment I was affected by being adopted but that was before my search started and before I was old enough to start making all the mistakes I did in life and many I can attribute to having an identify problem.

One positive outcome from that session was I learnt that adoptions before 1965 included the mother’s name on the adoption order.  Well that was it for me, I had a duty to perform and that was to ask Mum for my adoption papers. At least after I tell her I know I’m adopted and how I achieved that is a whole other story!

I didn’t go back to Parramatta for another group hug!

The second meeting in the Library was with a group of people who like me worked in the city and this venue was handy and they looked more like my type of people.  However, the story lines in this group was around successful and not so successful reunions.  At this point in time I was a bit over twenty years into my search and had come to the conclusion the name Watkins was false. It was also this realisation that I may never have a reunion so this group session just made me feel depressed.  I left the session early,  finished work for the day all the while holding off from crying until I got home where no one could see me.  MOTH was playing squash so not even he knew how painful that session was.

As the years rolled on and the chances of meeting my birth parents grew slimmer by the year, I was veering into the depths of depression.  I had recently dealt with an adoption search agency who suggested I attend a group session they were organising and I thought I’d give the group sessions another try. If nothing else I might get some tips on searching.

There were six sessions in total over successive weeks.  I was prepared going in to be a minority within this minority group.  There were 8 of us in total. Seven women and one man.  At the first meeting one of the women told us she was meeting her birth mother the next day. Oh great,  would this mean we’d have to listen to this women’s reunion story for the next six weeks?  As it turned out no. Four others besides me hadn’t met their birth family but unlike me they hadn’t applied for their paperwork to kick off the search.

Two women of the group were slightly scary and fucking crazy to say it bluntly. One was a large disabled women with mad eyes that wouldn’t stay still in her sockets.  Her adoptive parents were mongrels and I felt sorry she drew the short straw but she interjected to every discussion with a terrible story from her own experience.  I know I might be sounding a bit harsh but we’ve all got our own battles, adopted or not, and they can’t be overshadowed by who’s got the saddest story. She annoyed me from the gate post and over the next few weeks we discovered that she had found her birthmother who suffered from physiological issues, which didn’t surprise me.

The other women was large, loud, and rough as guts with tattoos and bright blue coloured hair.  She was a recovering drug addict who found her birth mother who was also a recovering drug addict, again not surprising. She was disruptive in the sessions and could turn nasty if she didn’t like the topic of conversation especially if the view didn’t fit hers.

By the third week I had had enough of these crazy bitches.  They had way too many issues and both obviously needed one-on-one therapy and not look for free counselling in a ‘group’ session.  The disabled women didn’t come back after the 4th week, for that I was thankful and I’m sure everyone else was. The blue haired women missed one week and we all got to tell another part of our story without interruption.

After each session I’d cry on the way home. My tears were out of frustration because I couldn’t find another adoptee I could relate to.  They were either crazy or had met their birth family or hadn’t started searching.  I’d tell MOTH about the sessions, he said if I felt that way not to go back but when I start something I tend to stick it out and this was no exception, so I completed the six weeks not really achieving much.

And then there is now

All my previous group sessions were before I found my family and I was in the middle of a long drawn out search that I was convinced had no end. Now I have a beginning, a middle and an end to my story.  But maybe, just maybe, my adverse reaction to group sessions was more about me and where I thought I belonged or didn’t belong.  Because I did belong in this group with all the different stories, experiences and where we were in our adoption journey.  We all share one fundamental thing, we were separated at birth from our true birth family and by being separated from our family meant we all had to muddle along on our life path not knowing where we came from or where we were going.

Bloodlines

Now I’ve found my birth family a couple of questions that I’ve been bouncing around my head: should I go through the rigmarole to change my pre-adoption birth record to reflect the correct details of my birth family or do I go one step further and change my legal birth certificate and more importantly, can I?

I realise changing my legal birth record would be a controversial especially with my adopted family as many would say I’d be dishonouring them and to a degree I guess they’d be right but when I look at my pre-adoption birth certificate it’s predominately a falsified document. The surname of Watkins isn’t my birth mother’s surname, she wasn’t born in Portland Victoria although she was brought up there, and my father’s details are no where to be seen. The only piece of truthful information is her firstname, Anne.

What I think is astonishing is no one asked my birth mother for identification when she went through the adoption process and then subsequently deliver me. By today’s standards this it outrageous but it was acceptable back then but should yesterday’s low standard not be rectified today? I certainly think it should be rectified!

Through my online research there’s nothing that resembles the information I’m after. The only links Google searches return are to the NSW Births Deaths and Marriage website and on this site it only lists two reasons allowable for changing birth records, they are: “only the biological parents of a child may add a father’s details to a birth registered in NSW” but “both women in a same sex de factor relationship may now be recognised on their child’s birth certificate”. Well that’s a lot of help!

However, the website did have a section for adoptees to apply for unamended birth certificates and it included an email address so I sent the following email:

Hi,

I was adopted immediately after birth on 9 January 1961 and I have recently reunited with by birth family, however both birth parents are deceased.

On my original (unamended) birth certificate my birth mother gave a false surname and no name for my birth father.  I would like to know if it’s possible for me, with the permission of my birth parents closest relatives, to change my legal birth certificate to include my birth parents and also change my surname to include my birthfather’s surname?

Regards
Kitty Leigh

A quick response followed:

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately, since your birth parents are deceased you cannot change your pre-adoptive birth certificate in any way.

You mentioned a change to your post adoptive birth certificate which is in fact your legal birth certificate. To amend this you would need to have your adoption discharged for which you would need to seek legal advice. Should you succeed at this, you will then have the unamended pre-adoptive birth certificate as your legal one.

I hope this is of assistance. Kind regards,
Duty Officer

So essentially I need to go through legal channels to apply for an adoption discharge and therefore my pre-adoption birth certificate would become my legal one. My pre-adoption birth certificate has me as “Unnamed” and my birth mother as “Anne Watkins”, this is the very certificate I want changed.

Many will say this is something I should let go and the question around disrespecting my adopted parents would be raised time and time again and maybe it’s early days and I’m still in the so called ‘honeymoon’ period of finding my family and connecting to them and luckily for me it’s been a positive experience. But the driving force behind my wanting to correct my birth records is not just around connecting to my birth family but the connection to my true bloodline.

When I submitted my DNA to ancestry, no one from my adopted family appeared as a DNA match and that was the first visual evidence separating me from my adopted family. The features I have aren’t from by adopted family nor is my inherited health conditions, weird web toes, eye colour, hair colour or skin colour. Only environmental factors can be ‘inherited’ from an adopted family and there are studies that suggest environmental features can be inherited through bloodlines for up to 7 or more generations.

When I create family trees I don’t include step or adopted children which you probably think is short-sighted especially coming from me but I asked a few of my genealogy friends and they do the same which means I wouldn’t appear on any ancestral tree and that puts me right back to where I was before I found my birth family.

With my false records not even my birth family would find me so I wouldn’t appear on of my blood descendant’s family tree and I’m not happy with this outcome. I want to be relevant long after I die because I don’t believe in life after death other than the life found in family stories. It’s the research I do on my ancestors that brings them to life and I want the same to be true for me. Therefore, it’s crucial that my records reflect my bloodline.

So for me it’s not about dishonouring my family, it’s about honouring my descendants.

Dear half-sibling

I know it must have been a surprise to learn you have a secret half-sibling and I realise you must have many questions that will go unanswered because our parent is not here to answer them.  “Why didn’t I know?”  “Why didn’t they tell me? ”  “Why didn’t someone tell me?”  would be going through your mind.  Your life was going along just fine until now where this stranger turns up and blows it apart. Everything you thought you knew, you didn’t.  Your parent had a whole secret life that you didn’t know about and you question whether you knew them at all.

I get it!

What I don’t get is why you won’t reach out to me.  I too am an unwilling character in this story.  I was a wee baby with no voice and not asked what I need or want.  To be blunt I was the one abandoned by our parent not you so why are you taking it out on me?  I’m not harbouring any animosity for being given up for adoption, I too had a wonderful family who brought me up and I miss them with all my heart but I was on loan to them because they wanted to love and nurture a baby and I just so happen to be available at that time.

You might ask from ignorance “why is she bothering with a family she doesn’t know?”  “why is she turning up now and causing all this turmoil?”, “Why doesn’t she go away and leave us alone?”

Why?

Most adoptees will tell you that they grow up either knowing they are adopted or like me they didn’t  know.  Finding out blew my world apart.  “Why didn’t I know?”  “Why didn’t they tell me?”  “Why didn’t someone tell me?”.  Same questions.  The difference being is as soon as I knew I began to search for my true roots.  “Who are the people that made me?”  “Why didn’t they keep me?”  “Where are they?”  and after 10, 20 and 30 years “Why haven’t they come looking for me?”.

I had a passion to find my birth family and a unrealistic notion that if they are anything like me, they’d accept me with open hearts and open arms even though I had read on almost a daily basis adoptees being shunned by birth family and I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it and I never will!

Before you close your heart and arms forever just give me a chance.  I’m a good person, a loving caring person, just ask my family and my friends.  I’m not a trouble maker, I’ve never hurt anyone intentionally and I’m kinda funny, at least my grandkids think so and my best friend Karen.  Although I think she is funnier, but don’t tell her I said that.

If you’re worried that I’m going to teleport myself into your life whether you want me or not, don’t be afraid as I’m a busy working women with 3 adult needy kids and 3 grandchildren that I need to see on a regular basis because I want them to grow up with wonderful memories of me like I do of my grandmothers.

So what do I want?

Acceptance, that’s all any adoptee wants. Someone to say “hello sister”, “I’m glad we finally get to meet”.  Then you can go about your life as is was,  albeit with the odd email or phone call to say “hello, how are you?”.

This has been a 32 year search and I know I should be happy that I found and I know I’ve had 32 years to dream about this moment but I never once questioned that my family wouldn’t accept me and I guess that was naive notion.  I just ask you to consider getting to know me because I really think you’d like me!

Your half-sister with a full heart

 

I was a wee baby with no ability to say
Don’t give me away Mummy, I want you to stay

Please watch me grow to be clever and strong
And I’ll look after you when life does you wrong

Please keep me Mummy, I want to know you
And not meet one day through a camera lens view

Seven days later

After the emotional events of the previous week that started on the Saturday with a 1st cousin match, to discovering who my birth father was on the Sunday to the rest of the week meeting the 1st of many first cousins, talking to many more on the phone, video calls, emailing and Facebook messaging, I was well and truly tired out and in much need of a day off,  so come the Sunday MOTH and I walked to our favourite harbour-side café for lunch and a few too many wines that rendered me useless in the afternoon.  After lunch we returned home to relaxed in front of the telly watching re-runs of Escape to the Sun – England or Spain.  Spain being my pick after our wonderful month-long holiday there the previous September.

I was feeling rather content with my world as it was, happy that I had broken the 35 year drought of not knowing my birth family. To finish off my relaxing day, I decided to spend the night building ‘my’ family tree, at least half of it.  I was eager to find the Watkins-Williams connection the family told me about.  Of course it wasn’t lost on me or my cousins or my Aunt, that Watkins was most certainly in reference to the Watkins-Williams family connection.  I was also keen to find connections to distant cousins that I had communicated with over the last 2 years.

I began my new Kitty tree with me, then I added my father Donald then his father Herbert and his wife, my  grand mother, Doris Catherine.  Once I included Doris I noticed more Ancestry Hint leaves.

Hints are suggested records that are likely to contain information about the people to whom they’re assigned. Hints are signified by the green leaves that appear on people in family trees.

Using these hints I added Doris’s parent’s James and Caroline, then James’s parents William and Eliza, my paternal 2nd great-grandparents.  More and more leaves appeared with hints to the next ancestral generation.  From the list of hints I saw something that blew me away, my 4th cousin Kerry from New Zealand’s tree popped up as a family connection hint.

Bingo, another mystery solved!

I had been chatting with Kerry almost immediately after doing the Ancestry DNA test and uploading it to other sites such as FamiltyTreeDNA where I met Kerry.  Although she is a 4th cousin, she was the closest in location as most of my other 4th cousin were in the US.   Kerry roped in several of her cousins to do the DNA test to help narrow the search coverage. After several cousin tested and proved not to be related to me, the ancestral lines of my search narrowed then her uncle  tested and he was my 4th cousin as well further narrowing the search to one of four possibilities.

After messaging Kerry with my findings she figured out quickly the 3rd great-grandparents we shared. Our 3rd great-grandmother’s maiden name that was also the middle name of my father.

It’s all coming together – then!

Feeling very happy with myself I set about building my Grandmother’s maternal line when I got a message through Ancestry from Stephen.

Who is Stephen?

Stephen is the son of a 4th cousin Brian whom I’ve been in contact with just recently. Stephen is the administrator of Brian’s DNA kit. Brian popped up as my closest 4th cousin on the 17 February 2017 and I immediately sent my usual 1st message:

I noticed you popped up in my dna list today. You’re one of my closest matches. With the amount of DNA we share we probably share great great grandparents.

Just wondering if you’re interested in helping find how we’re related?

Regards

Kitty Leigh

A few emails back and forth with Stephen who was talking things over with his Dad Brian, I discovered they were from Ballarat.  At last, I finally found a connection in Victoria Australia, I feel the mystery could be unfolding but I don’t get too excited as a 4th cousin match still is a long shot chance of turning up anything concrete.

Another email from me identified a common cousin Sheryl.

Hi Kitty,

Dad and I have been discussing this tonight and he thinks that Sheryl  shares his paternal paternal great grandparents, Edmund K* and Johanna F*. They had quite a number of children in the late 1800’s. Edmund was definitely born in Australia but his father John came out from Ireland in the mid 1850’s. I’m fairly sure Johanna was born here as well but need to double check.

Stephen

More emails exchanged uncovered that Sheryl and Brian shared more DNA than I do so our common ancestor was one generation back but who will I go with, the maternal or paternal line?  I can’t remember why I picked the maternal line but I did and a large family tree emerged……..

Back to Stephen’s latest message

Hi Kitty, Stephen here. That is extraordinary after all these years, that finally you know who your father was.

I have been doing some sleuthing, and I have a possibility to offer you as to who ‘Anne’ was, assuming that it was her correct name. There is an Anne B*, who married a Michael H*, who appears on our family tree. She was born on September 1936, which would have made her 24 at the time of your birth. From what I can tell, she was also a nurse. She was not however born at Portland, however, her father was a railway employee who died in 1952 in Portland Hospital and is buried at Portland. His widow, Bridget lived in Portland at the time of her death in 1976. However, she has 6 siblings, not 2 and I also can’t find a record suggesting she has lived in Sydney. I actually can’t find any record of her at all. But I will keep digging.

In terms of the connection between Anne and Brian, Anne’s mother Bridget  was the daughter of David F* who was the son of Patrick F* and Johanna G*. Patrick and Johanna  also had a daughter called Johanna, who married Edmund K*. They had a son, Daniel who then had a son, John, who is Brian’s father, my grandfather. Sounds rather convoluted but when you draw it out it makes more sense.

Stephen

As I read through Stephen’s message several points sprung out:  Anne’s birth year, Portland, she was a nurse, her father had died before I was born and he worked on the railway – all these details Anne provided the social worker when she was going through the motion of filling out the adoption paperwork. What didn’t fit was the number of siblings she had but everything else screamed at me.

The lump in my throat and the squishiness in my stomach told me there were too many co-incidences here and this could be the end of my search.  But this was all to much, I was still reveling in the aftermath of finding my father.

Was it possible I’ve found my mother too?

I immediately entered the details Stephen gave me into the Ancestry search fields.  This Anne’s surname wasn’t Watkins but that wasn’t a surprise to me as I suspected as such for the past 20 years. There was one record that appeared, a death record of an Anne H*,  her married name. This Anne was born in Victoria in 1936 and died in the USA.  I wasn’t sure if this was the right Anne but finding out she was dead up front would be better than finding out later so I didn’t let that deter my search.

I engaged my daughter on the search.  As much as I’d like to tell you how we went from that information to our next steps but all I can say is my daughter is a great sleuth. In no time we tracked down possible links in Queensland and I was ready to make a phone call.

Many phone calls later it was confirmed that this Anne had a baby in 1961. It was also confirmed that Anne was seeing a man named Donald W* who was much older than her, in fact Anne’s sister met him on a visit to Sydney in 1959.  This meant that Donald and Anne were seeing each other one year before I was conceived.   The cream on the cake of this news was a picture sent to me of a poetry book with an inscription written by my father Donald to Anne.  Anne gave the book to her sister before she died and her sister is giving it to me and besides me, this book will be the only memento of my parents love for each other and I will treasure it forever and a day.

The circle was complete, I now know both my parents, Donald and Anne.  The 35 year search was over.

Dedicated to Stephen, a young man who took it upon himself to help me uncover my story – Forever grateful!

To Anne And Donald, my parents!

I may not have met you but you’ve always been
You live inside my head and my heart
I’ll try not scorn you for abandoning me
Scorn will only destroy and nothing achieved

I have a 1st cousin

I have a 1st cousin match on AncestryDNA….no tree attached and no more details. I’ve sent a message but it’s common for people not to respond if they aren’t regular users of Ancestry but let me reiterate – I HAVE A FIRST COUSIN MATCH…we share grandparents! I’m gonna die!

This is a Facebook status update I never thought in a million years I’d get to post but on Sunday 5th March 2017 I did.

Timeline of events….

Saturday  March 4 at approximately 4.35pm (or thereabouts)  

Driving home with MOTH after visiting his Mum I was chatting on and on about Ancestry and my DNA cousins knowing full well the only audience in the car was me.  What I did say to him that will be etched in my mind  forever, “if a close cousin match ever appears in my DNA list, I will scream the house down“, emotionally not literally as I’m not a screamer #innuendomuch.

Almost immediately of arriving home, I made my way to my study to check if I had new cousins and MOTH left to walk the 3.5 minutes to the nearby grocery store to get some food for dinner along with my life blood, wine.

My Chrome startup page

I sat at my desk, turned on my computer and waited for the obligatory start-up routine. Once ready to go I selected the Ancestry icon from the Google startup page which consists of Ancestry,  Hotmail, Gedmatch, FamilyTreeDNA, FindingAnneWatkins and the last search page that is generally on the topic of genealogy or the likes.

As Ancestry.com emerged ready for action, I selected the Ancestry icon, hit the DNA menu then “Your DNA Results Summary” from the drop list.  When I looked that morning I had 61 4th cousins or closer, it now showed 62. I paused and thought, please please let this be a close cousin. I selected the link waited for the list to emerge. As my eyes focused on the emerging list, I thought they were playing tricks on me, was that a 1st cousin I saw.  I blinked several times, am I tired and my mind playing tricks?  Is this my list or one of my other cousins who have shared their results with me?

My eyes darted from the list to the heading where it says “AncestryDNA Results for Kitty Leigh” and yes it certainly was my list. The realisation set in:

I have a first cousin

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Me, the one who decided I’d be the only one in the world that would never see this result. I noticed they didn’t have a family tree attached. Well of course they didn’t, I wouldn’t be so lucky!  I selected the VIEW MATCHES button.  This opens the next page that provides more details about the match.

The next page told me that the DNA kit was administered by someone with a very common name but the kit I was related to was was called J.B. A quick google search on the administrator’s name was pointless, try googling common anglo names and you’ll get the picture.  From this same page I could select a SHARED MATCHES link to see if we had any shared cousin matches, we had four:

  • my son Josh
  • my 3rd cousin Fred.  Fred was on my list as a result of his sister Mary coming up as a 2nd-3rd cousin on another site called FamilyTreeDNA. Mary has been a wonderful help trying to identify the ancestry line we share.  When she asked me what company to get her brother Fred to test at, I recommended Ancestry #unpaidadvertising
  • 2 x 4th cousins that appeared in the last 2 weeks. Both of which I’ve sent messages to through the Ancestry messaging system, and to date no reply.

I didn’t appear to be related to the administrator or they may not have taken the test. There was no indication of the country of origin, only that he was Male, 60+, had a degree and was retired.

I was in shock. I paced the room, looking at the information on the screen before me.  What should I do next?

The only option was to send a message.

I realised this message could be one of the most important I will ever send, at least up until that point in my life.  In true form I started to catastrophize:

  • they won’t reply and I’ll see them every-time I open Ancestry teasing me with the holy grail – my family identify, at least one-half of the family.
  • they’ll remove their account realising they may have opened a huge can of worms.

I knew I had to word this message carefully, without giving anything away and without scaring them.

Saturday  March 4 at approximately 5.45pm (or thereabouts)  I sent the message.  The only thing to do now was wait!

Hi,

You administer a DNA kit that has just popped up as a 1st cousin match. I’d be very interested in finding how I’m related to J.B. My name is Kitty and I live in Sydney.

Regards
Kitty

Sunday March 5 at approximately 3.30am (or thereabouts) I see I have an Ancestry message from J.B’s administrator.

I can’t breath!

Hi Kitty,

I have no idea how we are connected! I have family in Australia but they are all Williams, does that help you?

Janie

Names do help but I really wanted to see a family tree as this may help me identify familiar names after all I’ve been working with hundreds of ancestry trees over the years and I have a list of re-occurring names that seem to appear over and over again but almost none I could connect to my story.  I needed to get more information so a series of messages followed.

Hi Janie

Can I ask where you are located? I do know that the relation ship is probably through the Irish family from Limerick. This is through another cousin (Fred) who you will see on their list.

Regards
Kitty

Hi Kitty

 I don’t have any Irish relatives. Williams is welsh, I also had a grandmother with Lindsay as a surname, originally from Scotland. My mother’s family were from Vienna, Austria.  I live in Canada. My uncle in Australia was Donald Williams.

Regards
Janie

Hi Janie

I don’t know where to begin but the DNA count we share indicates we are 1st cousins. That means we share grandparents.
I’m adopted, I was born in Sydney. My birth mother said her name was Watkins from Victoria Australia and that my birth father was English nationality – no name given. It’s my guess this is the connection.

I’ve been searching for over 35 years for birth family and you are the closest family to date, besides my kids and grandkids. To say this is overwhelming for me is an understatement. I do hope you’re open to helping me unlock this mystery.

Regards
Kitty

Hi Kitty,

I can only imagine how overwhelming this is for you. My uncle Donald Williams emigrated to Australia in the late 1950’s and settled in Sydney with his wife. He is the best possibility!!  He has a daughter by his first wife who lives in Brisbane and a son by his second who now lives in England. Our ancestors Were Watkins-Williams from Wales , that’s going back at least 6 generations. Another possibility is your mothers side?
I hope that might help a little,
keep me posted

Regards
Janie

Janie’s last message rang bells.  My father was 40 when I was born so I always suspected I was a result of an affair. I plugged his name into Ancestry search and 2 Census records appeared show a Donald Williams living in Double Bay 1968 and again 1972. I have full Ancestry membership so I can open the scanned version of the actual Census list.  I scrolled to the bottom of the page to the Wi’s and there it was “Donald Williams Company Director” AND he lived one street away from the boarding house where my birth mother was living.

OMG OMG OMG, I think it’s him!

Since about 1991 I knew my birth father was a Company Director, at least that’s what my birth mother Anne told the Social Worker when she was doing the paperwork to put me up for adoption.  The second Census record showed him as a Film Producer.  Now this second record really confirmed to me this was the man and I was just about to break this case wide open.  My heart was racing, my head was going over every detail I had memorised since I read the information provided me in the 90s. What Anne told the Social Worker was starting now to ring true.  I had always hoped that although giving a false name, she’d have the consideration to give me some clue as to the type of people they were.  She said my Grand Father was a Film Producer and his brother an actor.  Once I plugged Donald Williams details into google +Film Director, I was facing the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) of Donald, his father and his brother.

Hi Janie

OMG…OMG…I think it’s Donald.

Here is a link to a blog I started years ago. On this page is all the info I have on my birthmother and the info she gave me about my birth father. https://findingannewatkins.com/about-anne/

I see that Donald was a film director in Sydney and lived in the same suburb my birth mother did. 

Your forever grateful cousin.
Kitty

With the many messages that followed, Janie filled me in on the complicated family I was born into.  Three sons of a Silent Film Star who by all accounts had a rough upbringing by neglectful parents who seemed to be more interested in film and fame. There was so much more to learn and in the coming days so many more people to talk to over the phone and on the following Tuesday I meet my first cousin Andrew who is Janie’s half-brother.  Within 2 weeks I’d have a flight booked to Melbourne to meet some of Janie’s other half-siblings and their Mum who I had spoken to the day I found out, I fell in love with her immediately.  I learnt I had a half-brother and half-sister but the Aussie cousins haven’t kept in touch with them so contact was going to prove difficult.

Over the coming week or so, more confirmation of the family connection submerged wiping away any doubt.  This was a 35 year search I thought would never end and I wasn’t taking any chances that this find was going to be taken away from me.

What followed the following weekend,  not me or anyone would have guessed.

Imagine if I had given up
Imagine if I lost the will to find
No, I couldn’t imagine giving up
and I couldn’t imagine not finding.
I imagined and now it’s true
Imagine!