WEBVTT
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(gentle music)
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Adoption, the practice of raising someone else's child
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as one's own has existed since the beginning of time.
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Throughout human history,
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people have always shared responsibility for childrearing.
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In many cultures, taking children in was informal,
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a natural response to children who needed families,
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or families that needed help.
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In 20th century America, government stepped in.
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By the 1920s, in the interest of child protection,
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The U.S. Children's Bureau began to regulate
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child welfare and adoption practice.
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In the name of confidentiality,
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most states sealed adoption records
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and issued brand new birth certificates
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for adopted children,
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naming the adopting couple as their parents.
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The thinking was adoptive families could make believe
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that the baby had been born to them,
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birth parents could pretend that it never happened,
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and the children didn't even have to know they were adopted.
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There was very little danger
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that the two sets of parents would ever cross paths.
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It was well intended.
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And we disarm people a little bit
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when we recognize their honorable intentions.
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But if you go back far enough in time,
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to be an illegitimate child, a bastard child,
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was to really, even in the land of opportunity,
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have all doors closed to you.
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And the effort with secrecy then was to help children pass,
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you know, to act as if they were children
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who had been born into their families,
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and that would create more opportunity.
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Also it was designed, I think, to give some cover
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to birth families,
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because too that was just outrageous and full of shame
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to have a child outside of marriage, just unthinkable.
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And so the secrecy was intended
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to help them disappear into the woodwork.
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Even for adoptive families,
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the secrecy seemed to spare them the shame or chagrin
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that might be attached to infertility.
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But what those early child welfare workers
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did not recognize was the remarkable connection
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between mother and child,
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a connection that cannot be broken.
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And practitioners did not anticipate
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that every member of the adoption triangle,
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the birth parents, the adoptive parents and the child
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would experience profound loss.
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With secrecy accepted as the norm,
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no one ever talked about that loss,
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and therefore few people ever resolved it.
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For many, adoption became the family's dirty little secret.
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I think that what was wrong with adoption
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was that there were all of these secrets,
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and that led to a feeling of shame.
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I think that there was no way
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for people to talk about anything.
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So it felt like there was something very wrong.
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I think that birth parents felt very ashamed
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of an untimely pregnancy or a situation
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that led to their not being able to parent.
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I think that adoptive parents
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who had been dealing with infertility
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felt a great deal of shame, and often secrecy
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about the fact that they weren't able to conceive.
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And then I think children of adoption
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were not really told very much.
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And if they were, the other people around them
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would say things that made it seem
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like this was something very wrong.
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(gentle music)
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Everything about the adoption was shame-based,
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starting with discovering I was pregnant and not married,
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added to by my parents' reaction
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and added to again by being whisked out of town
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away 180 miles to the woods,
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where for the the summer I wore a fake wedding band.
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Secrecy, secrecy, lies,
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covering up, shame,
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and then signing a paper that was a legal document
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that I would never attempt
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to interfere in this child's life.
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What would happen would be that we would find her
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a maternity home to live in.
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We would help her make up a story.
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We would get mail delivered to friends of hers
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from cities around the country.
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We would help her to return to her community,
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and I've used the word before, to re-virginize her.
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They were certainly ostracized, isolated, depressed.
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Their parents handled it in a way which said,
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okay it's over with, and now let's not talk about it.
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If we don't talk about it, we won't think about it.
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And you're our same little girl.
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Come back to finish high school now.
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And be virginal again, be pure.
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My family did not know.
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So they couldn't have a reaction because I didn't tell them.
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I was a very small lady then (chuckles).
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And so I hid it well.
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I was away at school, so I didn't see them that often.
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And then when I went away
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to have the baby,
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I told them I was going up to this camp
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to help to be a counselor.
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And so they just didn't know; no one knew.
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So when I found myself pregnant,
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I told the birth father and he wanted nothing to do with it.
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And he called an adoption agency,
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and he took me down there, and it was already decided
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that that was the plan that I was going to do.
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I was young. I was weak.
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I didn't know that I had options.
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But it all happened really fast.
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I lived in a small town in Southeast Michigan, Tecumseh.
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Within like three days, I was in Toledo
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in this home for unwed mothers,
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because that's what you did back then.
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You either had an abortion illegally,
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went away and had the baby somewhere and gave it up,
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or you got married.
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You did not keep your baby
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and be a teenage unwed mother,
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at least not in the town that I grew up in.
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And nobody wanted to talk to them about the pregnancy.
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Put it behind you.
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Get on with your life was the way in which we talked to them
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and their parents talked to them.
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There was never any discussion.
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Once I came home from the home for unwed mothers,
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that it was never talked about again.
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It was a done deal
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and I was expected to get on with my life.
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A lot of people don't realize as a birth parent
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you may have had to relinquish your right
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to parent your child,
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but you never relinquished your right to care for them,
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to love them, to be concerned about them.
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Instead of liberating those parents,
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secrecy left them stuck.
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They lived with an ache they could not name.
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Today we know its name.
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It's called loss.
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It was lonely.
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There were a lot of times when I felt like
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it was similar to dealing with a death in the family.
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It was like losing
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someone very close to you,
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a lot of pain, a lot of tears.
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And unfortunately, really Kim and I
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were the only ones at that point.
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Friends had kind of backed away.
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Nobody really talked about it again.
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It's a difficult thing for people to talk about.
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I wanted to die.
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It was very hard.
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It was very, very hard.
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I think that the pain and the loss that we both felt
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played a role in the demise of our relationship.
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I went through about two or three years
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of crazy, crazy alcohol abuse,
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you know, going to bars and coming home
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with men that I didn't even know.
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And then I decided it was time to move on.
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So I got married as quickly as I could
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and had a baby as quickly as I could
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to make up for it.
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The lingering pain, the lingering guilt,
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the lingering remorse over that,
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we weren't very happy people.
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Neither of us were by the time that we split up.
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Most birth parents did get on with their lives.
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They finished school, went to work, married,
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had other children, but they never forgot.
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And the secrecy of the adoption followed them,
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often haunted them throughout their lives.
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I mean, of course I went on with my life.
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And, you know, I went on to do different things.
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I have two other children.
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My life moved on, but I never forgot
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that I had another child, and wondered very often
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where she was in life and how she was doing.
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It's like I never stopped thinking about this child.
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And I mean, he was just there.
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He was part of my life
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from the time I got pregnant
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until, and continues to be now.
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Well, definitely on his birthday every year,
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I would think about him and think about how old he was
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and what he might be doing,
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hoping that he had a good life,
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that I had done the right thing.
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I mean, I absolutely thought about him at other times too,
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but particularly on his birthday every year.
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Kim and I had a tradition of celebrating his birthday,
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and we got together and did that.
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That one act alone
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I think was a healing thing for us.
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It was something that made us talk about what had happened.
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It made us talk about, you know, he's five years old now.
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What would he be doing at five?
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He's 10 years old now.
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What would he be doing at 10?
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I'd be on the elevator or something
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and I'd look at people, young girls,
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and I'd say, wonder if that could be her (chuckles)
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or wonder if she looks sort of like that.
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You're always looking at children and thinking,
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hmm, red hair, looks a little bit like me,
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looks a little bit like Kim.
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Could that be the kid?
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35 years I felt like there's a little piece of me
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that had been placed over here somewhere.
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And so, yeah, there was a little piece of me
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that was missing,
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but I went on with my life, not gonna say.
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I had a good life, and it sounds as though she did too.
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It wasn't that I was unhappy
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or that I was missing anything.
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I guess it's just a piece of me
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or a part of me that I didn't have answers to.
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(gentle music)
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Adopted children struggle too.
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If adoption was such a positive thing, why all the secrecy?
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Ever since I was a teenager,
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there's just still unanswered questions.
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There's still kind of a gray area in my life.
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And it's just like anything else in life.
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I think that if you don't know the past,
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it's a little bit difficult getting to the future.
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The secret system created a situation
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where kids really couldn't get their bearings.
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Growing up, I felt like, gosh, I'm not really,
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I don't feel like part of this family, even though I am.
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I just feel like my temperament's a little different
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or my personality's a little bit different.
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And even my parents have commented,
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like, "Oh where did that come from?
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You know, that's not part of our temperament
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or our personality."
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No, I knew that other family members
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look like someone else or have mannerisms like someone else.
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And I didn't have any of that.
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So I just sort of wondered,
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is there somebody somewhere that I look like?
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Do I have mannerisms?
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Or, you know are there certain things
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that I'm predisposed to, or have a greater propensity for?
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When you don't have good information,
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you manufacture it, you, you fantasize it.
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And fantasy never runs down the middle.
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It's either hot or cold.
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And so I think without good information,
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adopted children construct really exaggerated versions
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of their birth families, and build some of their identity
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on these exaggerated, misguided perceptions.
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My parents always told me
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that my mom loved me enough to give me up.
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00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:39.380 line:15%
And unfortunately, what I took from that
263
00:13:40.220 --> 00:13:44.900
was that, oh, okay, so she loved me enough to give me up.
264
00:13:44.900 --> 00:13:48.713
And that means that love is not necessarily a good thing.
265
00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:54.673
Okay. That means that they say they love me,
266
00:13:55.640 --> 00:13:58.320
which there's a possibility
267
00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:00.070
that they could give me up as well.
268
00:14:01.770 --> 00:14:05.220
And because I didn't quite know why I was given up,
269
00:14:05.220 --> 00:14:06.735
I thought, well, I must have been,
270
00:14:06.735 --> 00:14:10.130
there must have been something wrong with me, you know?
271
00:14:10.130 --> 00:14:13.130
And so then I think when I was very young
272
00:14:13.130 --> 00:14:17.070
I started to develop this real need for protection.
273
00:14:17.070 --> 00:14:20.460
I needed to be perfect to stay in this family.
274
00:14:20.460 --> 00:14:22.713
I needed to be the best,
275
00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:25.733
brightest little girl that I could possibly be
276
00:14:25.733 --> 00:14:27.550
to stay in this family.
277
00:14:27.550 --> 00:14:30.113
I remember when I was probably about,
278
00:14:30.974 --> 00:14:34.210
I wanna say 15, I think it was,
279
00:14:34.210 --> 00:14:37.200
is where I got up enough nerve to ask my parents
280
00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:39.290
'cause basically it was almost like an underlying thing
281
00:14:39.290 --> 00:14:41.650
in my family, adaption was talked about
282
00:14:41.650 --> 00:14:44.530
but there was a fine line that you talked about it.
283
00:14:44.530 --> 00:14:46.100
You'd only get so much information.
284
00:14:46.100 --> 00:14:47.147
They'd tell me, and then they'd say,
285
00:14:47.147 --> 00:14:47.980
"Well, when you're 18,
286
00:14:47.980 --> 00:14:49.440
you can have the rest of the information,"
287
00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:51.680
which I thought did nothing but make me more curious
288
00:14:51.680 --> 00:14:55.340
and more like thinking this is a bad thing or whatever,
289
00:14:55.340 --> 00:14:57.170
as if they're trying to save me from something
290
00:14:57.170 --> 00:14:58.360
and I couldn't handle it.
291
00:14:58.360 --> 00:14:59.630
My family really didn't talk
292
00:14:59.630 --> 00:15:02.170
about the fact that I was adopted.
293
00:15:02.170 --> 00:15:04.770
And by the way, the secrecy also implies
294
00:15:04.770 --> 00:15:06.800
that there's a rugged story there.
295
00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:08.490
There's something unacceptable.
296
00:15:08.490 --> 00:15:10.740
And that kind of rubs off on the children,
297
00:15:10.740 --> 00:15:15.030
and they end up feeling some sort of shame, I think,
298
00:15:15.030 --> 00:15:16.670
attached to the secrecy.
299
00:15:16.670 --> 00:15:19.620
If the story was good, if the people were wholesome,
300
00:15:19.620 --> 00:15:22.640
would there be any call for secrecy?
301
00:15:22.640 --> 00:15:23.473
I think not.
302
00:15:23.473 --> 00:15:27.460
'Cause I prepared myself for everything possible
303
00:15:27.460 --> 00:15:28.800
in finding my birth parents.
304
00:15:28.800 --> 00:15:30.810
You know, I could be anything.
305
00:15:30.810 --> 00:15:35.030
I could be a product of a rape, a product of incest.
306
00:15:35.030 --> 00:15:38.160
I could be a product of two people that hated each other,
307
00:15:38.160 --> 00:15:40.300
or it could be just this flowering.
308
00:15:40.300 --> 00:15:41.510
You know, it could be two people
309
00:15:41.510 --> 00:15:43.060
that really loved each other
310
00:15:43.060 --> 00:15:44.370
and did the best thing for their child.
311
00:15:44.370 --> 00:15:46.120
It's just that you don't know.
312
00:15:46.120 --> 00:15:48.410
And those are the kind of questions I'd like answered.
313
00:15:48.410 --> 00:15:51.790
So I still wanna know, regardless of what the answers are.
314
00:15:51.790 --> 00:15:53.743
Whether they're good or bad,
315
00:15:55.320 --> 00:15:57.328
I wanna know, you know.
316
00:15:57.328 --> 00:15:59.330
I would rather know something bad
317
00:15:59.330 --> 00:16:01.750
than to not know anything at all.
318
00:16:01.750 --> 00:16:04.730
And so children kind of do the arithmetic on that
319
00:16:04.730 --> 00:16:06.860
and conclude, wow,
320
00:16:06.860 --> 00:16:10.380
I must come from a pretty tough, unacceptable background.
321
00:16:10.380 --> 00:16:11.460
Anytime they got mad at me,
322
00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:14.010 line:15%
they said they feel on me in a garbage dump, you know?
323
00:16:14.010 --> 00:16:15.930 line:15%
And that wasn't very good.
324
00:16:15.930 --> 00:16:18.630 line:15%
It was like, why would you tell a child that?
325
00:16:18.630 --> 00:16:19.463
They would always tell me
326
00:16:19.463 --> 00:16:21.720
that, "Oh yeah, your mother threw you away."
327
00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:24.190
So I was told by my grandmother, whom I love dearly.
328
00:16:24.190 --> 00:16:28.210
And she was just being like any other normal person.
329
00:16:28.210 --> 00:16:29.610
She told me how lucky I was.
330
00:16:31.367 --> 00:16:34.343
I was never told that my parents were lucky to have me.
331
00:16:35.210 --> 00:16:38.130
I was only told that I was the one that was lucky.
332
00:16:38.130 --> 00:16:40.340
And one of the things we've always been concerned about is
333
00:16:40.340 --> 00:16:44.140
that children who are relinquished
334
00:16:44.140 --> 00:16:45.850
feel there's something wrong with them,
335
00:16:45.850 --> 00:16:49.530
and that's why they were dumped, why they were relinquished.
336
00:16:49.530 --> 00:16:51.420
So all these little bits and pieces
337
00:16:51.420 --> 00:16:54.630
sort of gave me the understanding
338
00:16:55.720 --> 00:16:58.750
sort of subconsciously
339
00:16:58.750 --> 00:17:00.770
that there was something wrong with me,
340
00:17:00.770 --> 00:17:02.910
and that I needed to make sure
341
00:17:02.910 --> 00:17:05.370
that I wouldn't be abandoned again.
342
00:17:05.370 --> 00:17:07.067
I remember every time I was naughty, you know,
343
00:17:07.067 --> 00:17:08.835
"We're gonna put you back in the garbage dump,
344
00:17:08.835 --> 00:17:12.020
or "We're gonna, you know, your mother threw you away.
345
00:17:12.020 --> 00:17:13.430
She didn't want you anymore."
346
00:17:13.430 --> 00:17:15.620
When I got a little older, I thought,
347
00:17:15.620 --> 00:17:17.670
well, there's another meaning to this.
348
00:17:17.670 --> 00:17:18.610
If I was given away, well,
349
00:17:18.610 --> 00:17:20.660
someone must have given me away, and why?
350
00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:22.833
Why?
351
00:17:26.250 --> 00:17:29.460
Yeah, just why, and I guess that there's a lot of whys.
352
00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:31.160
Why did she give me up for adoption?
353
00:17:31.160 --> 00:17:35.573
Why didn't she look for me sooner? Why?
354
00:17:37.170 --> 00:17:38.639
There's a million whys.
355
00:17:38.639 --> 00:17:41.222
(gentle music)
356
00:17:46.520 --> 00:17:49.280
Adoptive parents, for all their outward gains,
357
00:17:49.280 --> 00:17:51.580
had their own losses to bear,
358
00:17:51.580 --> 00:17:54.503
and in the closed system, to deny.
359
00:17:55.550 --> 00:17:57.650
I was very young, 24 years old,
360
00:17:57.650 --> 00:18:01.093
and I was faced with having a hysterectomy.
361
00:18:02.330 --> 00:18:03.520
And we were very young.
362
00:18:03.520 --> 00:18:06.930 line:15%
So we actually started talking adoption
363
00:18:06.930 --> 00:18:09.110 line:15%
almost at the very beginning.
364
00:18:09.110 --> 00:18:11.830
We never considered not having children.
365
00:18:11.830 --> 00:18:13.820
We had always thought of ourselves
366
00:18:13.820 --> 00:18:16.950
as a couple with children.
367
00:18:16.950 --> 00:18:20.650
We would've preferred to have biological children,
368
00:18:20.650 --> 00:18:23.840
but given the fact that this was not possible,
369
00:18:23.840 --> 00:18:25.640
that we then pursued
370
00:18:27.237 --> 00:18:29.120
the option of adoption.
371
00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:31.020
At that time, babies were available.
372
00:18:31.020 --> 00:18:33.933 line:15%
So it was much easier than it is now.
373
00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:38.250 line:15%
At that time, it was really like a romance.
374
00:18:38.250 --> 00:18:40.460
You know, there was a mystique to it,
375
00:18:40.460 --> 00:18:43.150
and everything was presented to us
376
00:18:43.150 --> 00:18:46.360
that except the way that we received the baby,
377
00:18:46.360 --> 00:18:48.110
nothing else was different.
378
00:18:48.110 --> 00:18:52.150
So we had really beautiful expectations.
379
00:18:52.150 --> 00:18:55.060
I think that even from the beginning,
380
00:18:55.060 --> 00:18:58.120
we had whispers within ourselves of the differences,
381
00:18:58.120 --> 00:19:00.800
perhaps that we didn't even share much with each other,
382
00:19:00.800 --> 00:19:03.850
because the process of adopting children
383
00:19:03.850 --> 00:19:05.540
was not what our friends
384
00:19:05.540 --> 00:19:08.180
who gave birth to babies were experiencing.
385
00:19:08.180 --> 00:19:11.250
We just simply wanted to be like all of our friends
386
00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:13.430
and have babies.
with babies and families.
387
00:19:13.430 --> 00:19:15.190
And even though they didn't have
388
00:19:15.190 --> 00:19:19.107
the same hair color as us, family members even said,
389
00:19:19.107 --> 00:19:21.167
"Oh, well, they do kind of resemble you."
390
00:19:21.167 --> 00:19:22.000
And they look alike.
391
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:25.820
And they look alike, so oftentimes we could kind of pass.
392
00:19:25.820 --> 00:19:28.640
So we didn't have any appearance of being
393
00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:29.473
an adoptive family.
Right.
394
00:19:29.473 --> 00:19:33.673
We had adopted our children so soon after my illness,
395
00:19:35.067 --> 00:19:37.000
at that time, the whole idea
396
00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:40.180
of grief and loss and separation,
397
00:19:40.180 --> 00:19:41.883
that wasn't even a concept.
398
00:19:43.260 --> 00:19:46.600
So the fact that I had lost
399
00:19:46.600 --> 00:19:49.440
the ability to biologically have children
400
00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.310
was really set aside
401
00:19:51.310 --> 00:19:53.860
so that any of those feelings of disappointment,
402
00:19:53.860 --> 00:19:57.150
those feelings of sadness, those feelings of anger,
403
00:19:57.150 --> 00:20:01.250
you know, why me, that was pushed aside.
404
00:20:01.250 --> 00:20:03.690
We received no help with that.
405
00:20:03.690 --> 00:20:05.650
The only help the hospital gave us
406
00:20:05.650 --> 00:20:07.810
after she had her hysterectomy
407
00:20:07.810 --> 00:20:09.470
was simply to come in and give us
408
00:20:09.470 --> 00:20:11.254
a list of adoption agencies.
409
00:20:11.254 --> 00:20:13.180
(gentle music)
410
00:20:13.180 --> 00:20:17.440
By the 1960s and '70s in the era of civil rights,
411
00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:20.030
child welfare advocates began to question
412
00:20:20.030 --> 00:20:22.693
the wisdom of so much secrecy in adoption.
413
00:20:23.560 --> 00:20:25.890
Agencies placing older children
414
00:20:25.890 --> 00:20:29.990
could not deny the significance of their attachments.
415
00:20:29.990 --> 00:20:32.600
Helping children preserve those attachments
416
00:20:32.600 --> 00:20:34.920
made solid clinical sense.
417
00:20:34.920 --> 00:20:38.530
In the early 1970s, a few child-placing agencies
418
00:20:38.530 --> 00:20:42.100
took steps toward opening infant adoptions.
419
00:20:42.100 --> 00:20:44.470
Meanwhile, birth mothers and adopted children
420
00:20:44.470 --> 00:20:47.800
began searching for each other by the tens of thousands.
421
00:20:47.800 --> 00:20:50.370
And the image of their tearful reunions
422
00:20:50.370 --> 00:20:53.030
became a part of popular culture.
423
00:20:53.030 --> 00:20:54.630
A movement was afoot.
424
00:20:54.630 --> 00:20:56.410
I think it grew
425
00:20:56.410 --> 00:20:59.770 line:15%
right out of a sense of consumer discomfort,
426
00:20:59.770 --> 00:21:02.580 line:15%
out of the need of people searching
427
00:21:02.580 --> 00:21:04.170 line:15%
for their early connections,
428
00:21:04.170 --> 00:21:07.120 line:15%
saying this wasn't right for me.
429
00:21:07.120 --> 00:21:08.810
I may have had a good adoption
430
00:21:08.810 --> 00:21:11.850
but I have too many puzzle pieces missing.
431
00:21:11.850 --> 00:21:13.910
Things would've been so much different
432
00:21:13.910 --> 00:21:18.280
if I was allowed to meet his parents,
433
00:21:18.280 --> 00:21:21.590
and I was allowed to see that he was okay,
434
00:21:21.590 --> 00:21:24.910
and that he was well taken care of and that he was loved.
435
00:21:24.910 --> 00:21:27.180
Things would've been so much different.
436
00:21:27.180 --> 00:21:29.880
And with the closed adoptions,
437
00:21:29.880 --> 00:21:31.900
it's like giving up a child to the universe.
438
00:21:31.900 --> 00:21:34.210
You don't have no idea where they're going.
439
00:21:34.210 --> 00:21:37.040
A lot of people tend to use the word confidentiality
440
00:21:37.040 --> 00:21:39.880
when they are dealing with adoption issues,
441
00:21:39.880 --> 00:21:42.450
but neither I or any birth parent
442
00:21:42.450 --> 00:21:46.280
that I have ever met in 22 years ever requested it.
443
00:21:46.280 --> 00:21:49.140
It's just something that was expressed
444
00:21:49.140 --> 00:21:52.430
and accepted by the system in place at that time.
445
00:21:52.430 --> 00:21:54.420
I've never met a birth mother
446
00:21:54.420 --> 00:21:56.740
that didn't want to know her children,
447
00:21:56.740 --> 00:21:59.580
know their wellbeing, if they fared well.
448
00:21:59.580 --> 00:22:03.620
In fact, open adoption ends up satisfying
449
00:22:03.620 --> 00:22:06.660
the natural interests of all the parties involved.
450
00:22:06.660 --> 00:22:08.040
So for children,
451
00:22:08.040 --> 00:22:11.840
it's just a very natural and normal thing
452
00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:14.030
that they would be interested in their origins,
453
00:22:14.030 --> 00:22:17.050
and that they would be interested in their original story.
454
00:22:17.050 --> 00:22:19.000
For birth families,
455
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:24.000
it's much more satisfying to know how the child is doing.
456
00:22:24.260 --> 00:22:25.410
In the old secret system,
457
00:22:25.410 --> 00:22:27.600
I think a lot of birth families were haunted,
458
00:22:27.600 --> 00:22:31.180
and it was as if somebody was missing in action.
459
00:22:31.180 --> 00:22:32.700
There was somebody very dear,
460
00:22:32.700 --> 00:22:34.310
somebody very important out there,
461
00:22:34.310 --> 00:22:36.690
but you couldn't get any information on them.
462
00:22:36.690 --> 00:22:40.230
And that ended up being really disconcerting.
463
00:22:40.230 --> 00:22:42.140
And even for adoptive families,
464
00:22:42.140 --> 00:22:44.670
the open system has been real satisfying.
465
00:22:44.670 --> 00:22:46.360
And it ends up of all things
466
00:22:46.360 --> 00:22:48.450
adding to their sense of security.
467
00:22:48.450 --> 00:22:50.820
They feel more entitled to their children
468
00:22:50.820 --> 00:22:54.441
when they are aware of the blessing of the original family.
469
00:22:54.441 --> 00:22:57.740
I'm not looking for family or anything like that.
470
00:22:57.740 --> 00:23:01.163
I just, like I said, I'm looking for answers.
471
00:23:03.890 --> 00:23:08.857
There's a lot that I just would like to know about myself.
472
00:23:11.610 --> 00:23:16.260
Sorry. And I think I could find that out
473
00:23:16.260 --> 00:23:19.210
by finding my birth parents, a lot of answers about myself.