'We all need to know who we are in this world and this 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 below will be submitted to the state Legislature this year in support of proposed legislation to restore 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.

PLEASE FIND ME: I have loved you and missed you my entire life!
In 1967 at the age of 20 years old I became pregnant in an era when contraception was illegal, Roe v. Wade had not been litigated and when sex education was nonexistent. Of course teenagers at that time, as teenagers of all times were having sex, I got caught. The mores of the times dictated that I run off in shame and put myself in the hands of a system that was a well run machine. There were doctors and nurses and agencies and social workers and attorneys.....everyone geared towards one solution. I was to give up my baby to a "loving and deserving" couple who could take care of my child much better than me. I was to forget this ever happened and get on with my life.

Over the 9 months I carried my son I bonded with him and wanted desperately to keep him. I had nowhere to turn for support with this decision. My family refused me support. My prospects to take care of him on my own were slim to none. An unwed mother at that time had no support. I could not even make a living, smart and educated and determined as I was. The societal shame was pervasive. I had to wear a fake wedding ring in public so as not to be stared at. So I relinquished him, gave him up, adopted him out and abandoned him to a fate I prayed was the best for him. I loved him with my whole being.

My son was adopted by a nice family and he was lucky to have a loving adoptive Mother who adored him. In spite of all this he had a huge hole in him. He was told that he was adopted and special but someone was missing in his life. The Mother who gave birth to him was not there to nurture and protect him. He grew up always wondering who was my real Mother? Why did she leave me? Who do I look like? Who am I really? He pined for me and felt alienated from his true self.

Meanwhile I could not forget the beautiful baby boy I gave birth to. Where was he? Was he alright? Did he need me? I missed him with my whole body and soul. Every year on his birthday I went into a deep depression. I missed him every day but particularly on the holidays. Finally I could not take it any longer and I wrote him a letter on his 25th birthday and had my lawyer send it to the agency that handled his adoption. I told them to give this letter to him if he ever sought me out. By doing that I hoped that he would look for me and get the letter and find me. I felt that it is his absolute right to know who I am and who he is.

Of course he did go looking for me and asked the agency for information. They never gave him that letter. It took him years to eventually find me with no help from public records. It is so wrong and heartbreaking that human beings abandoned at birth have no legal access to their birth records. He could have found me years before as he wanted to do. Instead he had to rely on some "angel" on the internet who was able to find his original birth certificate that named me as his Mother.

The day he found me was the best day of my life. I waited years and years for him to find me. I am 70 and he is 50. I literally cry because of all the lost years between us. We reunited and bonded instantly and the reconnection of the love between us is profound.

Us Mothers are getting older. Our children are living with incomplete self images and deep doubts and insecurities. They need to know that Mom is OK. That she did love me after all. They need to meet the person and people who look like them, talk like them and scratch their heads like them. They need to know their original family...their tribe, their sense of place in the world...and oh yea, medical histories. It is no fluke that millions upon millions are searching for their roots through ancestry.com. We all need to know who we are in this world and this life. It gives us a sense of identity and purpose and strength. Please as a Mother who abandoned her child I implore you to open records for adoptees who are searching for their Mothers and Fathers. It is only fair. It is only right. The current situation discriminates against adoptees who already have had to cope with profound loss and do not need the state to exacerbate or perpetuate that loss and make it difficult if not impossible to know their true selves.

Ellen Grusse