'I carried a stigma of always being different throughout my life'

Editor's note: This is one in an ongoing series of posts spotlighting support for our continued effort to provide adult adoptees born in Connecticut access to their original birth certificates. The testimony featured in this series was submitted to the state Legislature earlier this year in support of proposed legislation that would have restored the right of adult adoptees adopted before Oct. 1, 1983, to access their original birth certificate. (Post-1983 adoptees had this right restored in 2014.) The letters are published with the authors' permission. Sign up for our newsletter at www.accessconnecticut.org if you want to help us end discrimination against adoptees.

My Name is Gail Silvester Pillarella and I was adopted in 1947 by two wonderful parents. They never told me I was adopted and kept all information about my birth a secret. I found out as an innocent child by one of my aunts (she had a drinking problem) when she told me and my cousins a bedtime story. The bedtime story was
about me being adopted. She never gave any details other than what I wore when she and my Mom picked me up from the orphanage to take me home. I was probably around 8 years old when this bedtime story was told and I just knew it was a bad thing to be adopted because none of my other cousins were adopted. I could never ask my Mother any questions about this story because I was too frightened and we never talked about it. I carried a stigma of always being different throughout my life.

Fast forward many years later when I finally met my Birth Mother. Because she was still carrying the shame of having a child out of wedlock she was very secretive about how I came to be and would only tell me bits and pieces of what she did when I was born.

She would clam up whenever I asked her questions about my Birth Father and she never even told me what she named me at birth or how much I weighed or what I looked like before she gave me up and they took me away.

Many years have passed and I will be turning 70 in July. Both my adoptive parents and my birth parents are deceased and I still don't know what my birth name is.

A very dear childhood friend of mine who studies and prepares genealogy reports prepared one on me which includes detailed reports on my adoptive family and my birth family. It is so beautifully done with so much detail and it is so very special to be able to pass this down to my children and grandchildren, but I still don't know what my birth name is because it's in a sealed record that I have no right to obtain. I have met my maternal half siblings and they have been very kind and loving to me. They all know what their birth names are and how much they weighed at birth and they even have pictures of each them at their birth. I wasn't adopted until I was 10 months old and there are no pictures of me before that time.

Each and every adoptee has a right to obtain our original Birth Certificates and we have a right to know what our biological parents names are and exactly where we were born.

Please help me get the final puzzle piece so my genealogy history report will be complete and one day maybe one of my great grandchildren will be given my birth name.

Thank you for taking the time to read this request.

Gail Silvester Pillarella