Lynn Grubb

photo credit:  engage.synecoretech.com Today I am writing about a collaborative approach to finding one or both of your birth parents. This is especially helpful if you have already gone down the genetic genealogy/DNA testing route but you don't have close enough cousin matches to make a connection with one of your birth parents. Keep in mind that statistically, you could get a close match any day, with the number of people testing; however, there are certain adoptees, like myself who have a parent who was a recent immigrant to the U.S. that may prevent you from getting close enough matches in a timely fashion.  For example, you will be looking in your DNA, and see all sorts of distant cousins from Italy, but you just can't pinpoint who that parent is, because you only have clues, and not cousin matches close enough to begin investigating their genealogy. But looking at your ancestry breakdown, you realize that this parent is at least 1/4 Italian, maybe even 1/2 Italia...

My car spun out of control quickly as metal on metal made a horrible noise.  I was on the Interstate in my small yellow Datsun hatchback. As others in crisis describe, many thoughts went through my mind.  It wasn’t individual thoughts, but a general sense of lack of accomplishment and things yet to do and experience.   I thought I was going to die that day as I screamed an expletive. (You can imagine what you might scream if you thought this was the last minutes of your life).  I was in my mid-twenties, single, had completed college and had good professional career path. I lived in an apartment, had a roommate and had some family in the area.   One minute I was at the gas pump, and the next I was on the interstate and the car was spinning out of control. Then I heard a loud metal noise.   I awoke in a hospital bed with the bright lights and people bustling around me.  I felt pain, but I couldn’t put i...

I love surprises.  I love when a friend comes to visit me with flowers or with a plant and surprises me. I hate secrets of any kind. I especially hate secrets when the secret is about me. A secret is never a secret long because it goes from one person to another person and this was what happened to me.   Secrets have impacted my life from the time I was a little girl, when my  mom  was telling me that my parents could not look after me and asked them if they would care for me. I heard from my mom that, "We are glad you are in our family." I asked who my parents were and the response that  I got  was "hush it is our secret." A wall came up between my parents and I because mom had told me that my adoption was a secret. I could talk to mom and dad about general life experiences but when it came to emotions and expressing myself, I was told that I needed to not be angry or I needed to stop crying. So I stuffed down my emotions until they eru...

We like to associate secrets with the bygone era of closed adoption; however, closed adoption still exists today and secrets have always been with us and will continue to be in the future so long as records can be legally hidden from adopted people. I want to talk about how and why secrets are harmful to adoptees and give you specific examples from my own life.  Then I will turn this blog over to others who have been affected by secrets in their own journeys.  If you have a story you want to share at this blog, please email it to me. 2016 is the year I decided that I would solve the mystery of who my father is. I knew I could not do this by myself.  One of my greatest challenges during the search has been that I do not live close enough to the area of my conception to do research at the library.  There are many resources at the library that you cannot get on-line. I do; however, have an active search team of friends who care and other adopted people who h...

Buck Winslow, Adoptee Extraordinaire I was adopted at six weeks. September 16, 1959, was my “Homecoming Day.” My adoptive parents were excellent parents; I’m one of the lucky adoptees. However, I always felt a desire to know my own origins. I had non-identifying information from the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina (CHSNC) but nothing else until 1998. In 1998, I gained access to one of my non-governmental birth files and discovered my birth mother’s identity. Unfortunately, my birth mother, a registered nurse, wanted no contact whatsoever, including any medical information. I was, however, able to cajole my birth father’s name from my birth mother in 1999, or so I thought. She gave me the name “Harold Erricson.” I searched for Mr. Erricson in earnest beginning in 2008. I hired SearchQuestAmerica (SQA) to locate Mr. Erricson. We kept finding false leads. I even did a Y-dna test with a man that was a supposed brother but it was not a match. Relative finder matches were ...

As National Adoption Month comes to a close, I want to address a very common question that most adoptee-activists/writers/artists endure: "Why are you so obsessed with adoption or why haven't you gotten over your adoption yet?" I can only answer for myself but I am certain others have felt the same pangs of misunderstanding every time they are asked these questions, which I suspect is often. As I have stated on this blog and to people in my life, "adoption has colored and affected almost every aspect of myself from birth onward." Adoption is not just a legal status that created a forever-family. It is an action taken upon me that changed the entire course of my life. There is no pre-adoption me that I have any conscience awareness of. Kristy Lee Unger (my alter identity) never had a chance to live or exist in this world as I became Kathryn Lynn Wetherill at age 11 months at the time of my adoption finalization. This life-altering c...