157 Damon Davis
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/157
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adopteeson.com/partner.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Episode 157, Damon Davis. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I'm excited to welcome a fellow podcaster, Damon Davis, creator and host of the Who Am I Really? podcast. Damon gets a turn to share his story of search, reunion, and loss.
We also chat about why reunions get held up as this mythical gold standard of heartwarming six o'clock news bait and what we've learned from talking to hundreds of adoptees over the past few years. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
[00:01:00] I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Damon Davis. Welcome, Damon.
Damon Davis: Thank you so much, Haley. How are you?
Haley Radke: Good. Podcasters unite. I got a chance to be on your show. I don't know, it was your big episode 100, which is a huge milestone and now you're well past that. And anyway, it was time. It was time. I would love to introduce you to my listeners and to have you share your story with us.
Damon Davis: Thank you so much. It was such an honor to have you on. When I started my show, I started looking around for other podcasts and you were one of maybe two that I found. So I thought it was really appropriate to have you on for show 100, so thank you for being my guest. I appreciate it.
Haley Radke: Absolutely.
Damon Davis: To start my own story in terms of being an adoptee in reunion, I began my search after several things happened, and it was a confluence of about three different things. The first of which was, well, I should probably start back at the beginning and just talk a little bit about myself as a child. [00:02:00]
I was perfectly comfortable in adoption. I had no worries, issues or complaints. My parents were great people. I'm African American in descent, and my mother is lighter skinned black than I am. My dad is darker skinned than I am, and I'm in the middle. So for all intents and purposes, we looked like we could have been family if you had mixed their genes together and produced someone in the middle.
So I had a great upbringing in Columbia, Maryland, and I really didn't have any issues with adoption. And I was told I was adopted from an early age and I came to accept it. So I could speak very openly and freely about it with other people, which is something one of my guests said was eye-opening for him.
This is my best friend Andre, who was my very first show. He said, you were like the first dude that I knew that would speak openly about adoption and that was freeing for me. So just as a sidebar, I think that's why part of our shows are important because it allows other people to speak [00:03:00] out and it's freeing for a further network of adoptees.
Haley Radke: Totally.
Damon Davis: I didn't really have any desire to search. People would ask me about it from time to time and I was like, nah, I'm good. I've got parents. I don't need two more parents. I'm fine. But the birth of my son was a real eye-opening experience for me because this little person that we created out of love and after some challenges, we tried to do in-vitro fertilization and assisted conception.
And it didn't work and he was conceived naturally. And so I, I abbreviate that piece of the story, but you can imagine the breadth of emotion that probably happened for us as we traversed that whole assisted conception sort of path. Then for him to be conceived naturally thereafter was just magical.
And then, you stop and you think, wait, this is the first biological relative I've ever known in person and I made him. It was really, really impactful.
Haley Radke: How old were you?
Damon Davis: I was in my early thirties, so he's 12. I was about 36. [00:04:00]
Haley Radke: Okay.
Damon Davis: And, just being at home with him, I was, I like to say fortunate to have been laid off. So I was lucky to be at home with him as an infant and I bonded with him tremendously, both, as my first born, but for the importance of who he was as a biological child. It was just unbelievable. That was one factor.
The second factor was my father-in-law came to town from the Caribbean and he would come into town and he would sometimes stop and sometimes he wouldn't stop by and this particular time he said he wanted to go see one of his relatives in Baltimore. And this guy was really into family and really into sort of the connections that you can make around the world. He's a very big philanthropist in every way.
But he was also a family person in terms of holding the family together. So we go see this person whom I've never met before, and this elderly woman answers the door, greets us, brings us into her home, and as she's sitting there, she's spreading out all kinds of artifacts [00:05:00] from their lives, my wife's life and his life, and other members of the family.
And it was just this stark moment of realization that there's a historian in my family, someone who knows all the facts, all the stories, all the pieces that I don't know in my biological family I'm referring to. And I say, if that person, my family historian in my biological family is elderly, like this person who by the way is dragging an oxygen tank behind her, like she's clearly in the autumn of her years, I might miss out on these kinds of stories being spread out on the table before me if I don't look and search.
So that was thing two. Thing three was I was going through some challenges with my adoptive mom. My adoptive mother was starting to show signs of mental deterioration. She was hallucinating things, accusing me of things. We had a very tumultuous relationship around the time that my son was born, and it was really difficult for me.
And one of my best friends, [00:06:00] Kelly said, maybe you should search for your biological mother. And I wrote it off like why would I insert someone else into this position when I'm trying to fix this relationship over here? But she told me later, I asked her why she recommended that course, and she said, because I just felt like you were lost. Like you were looking for something and you needed some grounding and that potentially finding this other woman and some answers might be helpful for you.
So that was the third thing. So with all of those things coming together and having the knowledge that I was born in Baltimore, I reached out to Baltimore’s city social services and I asked, how do I go about search and reunion? I was connected with a lovely social worker. Her name was Lee Burress, and Lee was able to help me down the path of what it takes to do a search, and she set expectations for me, which I thought was really important.
She said, look, this thing doesn't always go fast. It's not a rapid process. It could take some time. [00:07:00] And she asked me some questions about why I was searching to make sure that there weren't any, for lack of better words, red flags for her about what my expectations might be, what I thought I needed out of the process.
And I was able to tell her, thankfully, look, I'm good, like I've got two great parents. I admit my mom and I are going through some challenges, but I'm not doing that, for any reason. I don't have any medical issue, thankfully. I just want these answers.
And so she helped me to go down the path of writing an introductory letter that so many of us have done, and really crafting a message to my biological mother that would help me introduce myself. And I went to work. I tell you, I joked in my book, I was working for the federal government at the time and I went to work that day and I spent the entire afternoon writing this letter. And I feel like I owe the American public a couple of dollars back because y'all paid me to write my letter at my desk. I did not do your [00:08:00] work that day but I tell you I made up for it in spades, by the way.
But I crafted a letter, sent it off to Lee. Lee held it for a while. Lee sent it off. And then, I'm walking through the building that I worked in, the Department of Health and Human Services, downtown and I get this call on my phone. I'm looking at the caller ID and it's Lee, and I was like, that's weird. Why would she be calling me unless she had news?
And sure enough, she said, I found her. And I was just flabbergasted. I just could not believe the news I was getting. It was really unbelievable. And so through a series of back and forth with Lee, we ended up coming to Ann, my birth mother, writing an introductory letter back to me.
And then after she received that letter back at her desk, she read it to me over the phone and I remember I sat on a park bench in the park outside of the building I was working in, and I just cried as I listened to this sweet [00:09:00] voice of Lee reading my mother's words to me for the first time.
And it was as if she was a surrogate for my biological mother, and she was just so kind in reading that letter. And I'm hearing her name for the first time, I'm hearing about her history. For the first time I'm hearing her express herself. I heard the words that she used and it just all felt really good.
After she finished reading the letter, Lee said, look, I can connect you guys, and then it's up to you. And so I sent her a text at that moment, and I wanted my biological mother to know that was the moment that we were in touch, that I knew who she was and that we were ready to move forward.
And she called me that night and, it was funny, I missed the call initially, but I got a message from her because I missed the call and it was so sweet. She says, this is your birth mother Ann. [00:10:00] She said, I don't know what to say to you, but I'm so excited to get in touch with you and you can call me any hour of the day or night, which was really cute.
And she was like, you could hear her holding back tears of joy and confusion and excitement at the same time. It's just the sweetest little message.
Haley Radke: I love that and I love that you texted her so she can have like concrete, this is from Damon and then you have this voicemail that, I don't know, maybe you played it more than once, I'm guessing.
Damon Davis: Yeah, it was a really great moment. I wanted her to know right then, you and I are now connected. And it worked out in spades. We had a great conversation after I called her back and, it was funny, I picked up on some of the nature in that conversation. We talked about our dispositions in life.
Like I told you before we started the show, I'm a glass half full, like more than half full kind of person, and I'll do little random acts of [00:11:00] anonymous kindness for people. Things like that. And we talked about some of that stuff in that very first call and it all resonated and it was just amazing to hear what her disposition in life was as it compared to mine.
So we maintained our own individual relationship at first. So we talked by phone that night. I texted her the next morning because I’d learned in that first letter that her birthday was the next day after I was being read that letter by Lee Burress.
So Lee is reading me my mother's words, and she's telling me in that letter, tomorrow's my birthday. So I called her the next morning as I went to work and I said, happy birthday. And she was like, oh my gosh, the best birthday ever. And it was just so cute because I literally hadn't done anything but shown up. And my presence back in her life was a gift that she [00:12:00] appreciated and I thought that was so cool.
But what she didn't know was that she had told me the night before that basically she worked around the corner from me also as a federal government employee. She was two blocks away and we were sharing the same metro station when I chose to get off at that station from time to time.
So she didn't know, but I was planning to surprise her at her office that day, and that's exactly what I did. I left a meeting, jumped in a cab, went over to her building, and I cleared building security. And it was so funny. I'll never forget, I told the security guard. She says, who are you here to see?
And I said, Ann Sullivan. And she says, and what's her number? And I was like I don't know. I've never met her before. I'm in my own head. I'm thinking, I'm here to reunite with my biological mother, and I thought to myself, I've never met her before. That sounds weird. You should tell her what you mean by that. Don't be a weirdo.
So I said, it might interest you to know that she's my biological mother and I'm [00:13:00] meeting her for the first time right now. And the guard, this person who's like churning people through these turnstiles with zero emotion, looks at me with bright eyes, smiles and looks her up in the computer and dials the phone. Like her whole demeanor changed and she points me to where I'm going through the turnstile and wished me luck.
And I'll just never forget that day. I stood there on that elevator going down and I'm looking in the reflection of the elevator doors and I'm fixing my tie. I am tugging at my suit. I'm trying to look my absolute best. And the door opened and this woman is standing in front of me and she looks at me, like holy….. And I said, oh my God, that's gotta be her.
So she had gotten up from her desk to come receive me at reception. Meanwhile, I'm coming downstairs to go to her desk. And a piece that I left out, I had put [00:14:00] in my introductory letter, a photo of myself, my son, and my wife so she knew what I looked like. I had no idea who I was looking for. So when she saw me, her jaw dropped, and it was just a jaw drop that was unmistakable, like we are here in this moment together.
And I practically dove out of that elevator onto her shoulders. I wrapped her in a big, huge hug and I cried on her shoulder and she cried on me. And it was just an amazing moment. And I whispered in her ear, happy birthday. And it was just. I'll never have a moment like that again. It was just absolutely incredible and it was so fulfilling to then build a relationship based on what I feel is a very fortunate unfolding of my own reunion story.
Because as you and I both know, having interviewed hundreds of people, they do not always go that well. And so I feel extremely fortunate for her receptivity, her close proximity, for her openness in telling my story to me about how it was that I was conceived, who she thought my birth father was, and the whole shebang. [00:15:00]
I was very, very fortunate in how that all went down.
Haley Radke: Can I pause you there? Because I saw that you had even some news coverage about your reunion and we've all seen those stories and Damon's was like that. It was the happy reunion, the picture-perfect kind of thing. The heartwarming one that gets shared across social media.
And I don't know if it was shared on socials, it was a few years ago now, but you know what I'm talking about. And I am curious what your thoughts are now, knowing what you do and having talked to so many people, what do you think is going through that security guard's mind when she hears that story and the people that read that article and have that heartwarming oh my goodness, this is like so beautiful?
Thinking of the reunion moment, what do you think is going on [00:16:00] in their mind subconsciously that this is such a heartwarming thing?
Damon Davis: Yeah. I think they have, you know, we make the joke about Hallmark made for TV movies that are intended to tear you down and build you back up with heart-wrenching stories that end in bright lights and roses and all kinds of warm, heartwarming stories.
And I think that this is the challenge with that kind of publicity for a story like mine and others is that it perpetuates the narrative that adoption reunions are awesome, and you and I and our listeners know they are not always awesome. Even mine did not have ultimate awesomeness all throughout it.
They all have their ups and downs, and I think that this is part of the value of your and my show, is that it's real, it's reality. It's stories told by the adoptees about [00:17:00] how it perhaps didn't go so well. You'll never see a story on the news that played as much as mine did. Mine was on the next morning at 7, 9, 11, 12, 5 and 7 o’clock. They played it the whole next 24-hour news cycle.
Now, if my story had been, I reached out to try to find my biological mother and my social worker Lee found an obituary or reached out and she said she was summarily uninterested in speaking with me. That's not gonna make the news, but that is, I think, a significant portion of the stories that you and I help to tell that don't get told more broadly on the news, on social media and stuff like that.
I've never seen a tweet that says, hey, I just reached out for my biological mother and I wanted to share the story of finding her obituary. I mean, you do, but it's not in a celebratory manner.
Haley Radke: That's not going viral.
Damon Davis: Exactly. That's not the [00:18:00] positive news story that gets shared broadly. You're right, you've helped me to articulate what I was trying to say.
Haley Radke: I always struggle with words for this part. Like deep down those people that are reading it and thinking this is just super heartwarming. There's gotta be something underneath that's like, huh, I don't know if this was the way it was originally supposed to be and now they're back together. There's some kind of hint of that.
Like what's so heartwarming about reconnecting if there wasn't a brokenness in being disconnected in the first place?
Damon Davis: Yeah, that's a really good point and it's a great question, and I think that also is part of the value of the platform that you and I have chosen is it helps people to understand everything that happened up until that moment of reunion, right?
So you and I, we've had guests on our shows that have expressed true gratitude, immense love and appreciation for the adoptive [00:19:00] parents that they were reared with. And many of us will often say, I can't imagine my life a different way than what I went through. However, there's a great many people who before that reunion moment went through immense adversity, almost inhumane treatment.
Some stories that we've covered just make you look at other humans and go, how could you be like that to a child, another person? Even if it was an adult, how could you treat somebody that way? And that's the part that doesn't get covered in the five o'clock news heartwarming story. And it's the kind of thing, like what's the documentary that many of us saw? Three Identical Strangers.
That is a classic example of that kind of thing because on the outside, people across New York and that whole area up there, we're seeing these three brothers brought together starting a restaurant and bar and hanging out all the time and joking and [00:20:00] living it up. But it wasn't until more recently when these stories started to come out in their entirety that you start to see that those brothers were actually pretty troubled by the fact that they were separated at birth as part of an experiment.
They were challenged to make some of their successes continue, and challenged to think through what would it have been like had I lived with my brothers, of which there were two others that I didn't know until I was an adult. These are the kinds of things that have an initial wave of warm feeling when you only get the headline. But it's not until you get to dive into the entirety of the story, which you and I facilitate, that you really get to see the full picture.
And it's just like so many other stories, they have their ups and downs. It's like a marriage; it's like raising a child. It's like trying to navigate your professional life. It has its ups and downs. And adoption is a prime example of how you [00:21:00] can start off on one end of the spectrum and potentially end up on the other. You could have a great adoption and a terrible reunion. You could have an awful adoption and amazing reunions.
You just never know how any of this stuff is gonna unfold. And I talk about that a lot. I did a blog post where I talked about the adoption journey, almost like you know the control board that you have there for your sound, your mixer thing, and it's got all these dials on it, right? You could turn any one of those dials on the adoption board and get a completely different story, right?
You could take myself and put me into a family, a white family, and put me in the Midwest. So you change locality and you change the ethnicity of the parents. And I have a totally different story. You take me and you put me in South America or Africa, and you adopt me internationally into a new name, the family type, and you change the dial on the geographic area and you've got a totally different [00:22:00] story.
And I think, that's one of the things that I enjoy about being the host of a show that allows for the cultivation and the extraction of those stories, is that you get to hear the richness of what happens to a variety of people, of different religions, of different socioeconomic backgrounds, from different geographic areas, etc., telling their story about how it unfolded for them.
So it's just, it's really fascinating. But you're right, they don't all make the news in a heartwarming way.
Haley Radke: Okay. I am gonna dig some more. Damon. You've said you're a really positive person. You exude gratitude even in your book you're expressing some of that right at the beginning. And you do talk about coming out of the fog, and I know you know what that lingo is. I'm wondering if your perspective on adoption has shifted over the course of doing more and [00:23:00] more interviews with adoptees?
I don't know if a lot of people know you are actually an adoptive parent yourself in an in-family circumstance. And I don't know, there's a lot of things in adoptee land where we have big feelings about lots of different topics, but I'm curious for you how things have morphed and changed if they have.
Damon Davis: It's a great question because I'm influenced by multiple different factors. As you've said, I am an adoptee myself. I have adopted two children within my in-law family, so I raised two kids from their preteen years. Each of them came to us when they were nine years old, respectively, and we've raised them through adulthood.
I will admit that they have struggled. There are reasons why children are in need of a home and that was how they came to live with us. They had needs that the family wasn't entirely able to fulfill. And [00:24:00] we were in a strategic position to do that. And we took on the challenge gratefully, willingly, because I'm an adoptee and I was open to it anyway.
However, I will admit that I've heard stories from some of my guests and I just think to myself, geez, I wish that person could have stayed with their biological mother or father, right? But on the flip side, I'll admit that personally, one of my kids has a child and the child, my child, is not doing that great.
And it's now putting their child in a really tough position. And so adoption is on the table and I can now see why a parent who is in a bad place and is not able to care appropriately for a child, might need to place them somewhere else for that child's welfare. So I will admit, I remain very confused by the whole thing because [00:25:00] I'm just being honest with you, I can see why there are some people who are very fervent in our community that are like, no adoption. Never, ever.
And I respect the position that they come from and the experiences that they have. But I will say on the opposite end of the spectrum, I think there are some children out there who will be in grave danger if they are not extracted from the places where they currently live to potentially have a better or alternative chance at their life in a different place.
So I don't think there's any one answer. I think it's literally case by case and it should be devoid of opinion. It should be based on facts. It should be based on what is in the best interest of the child and that child's safety. And those are the only blanket statements I'm willing to make about it because it's just too hard. It's too hard.
Haley Radke: It's so complicated. I totally get that. And I've heard recently [00:26:00], I was watching a discussion about adoption versus legal guardianship and how that can impact and all the complexities in the foster care system and how systemic issues of racism and injustices keep being perpetuated.
So it is terribly complex and it's very hard to make a blanket determination, I think. But I appreciate you addressing that because I think some people like yourself will be stigmatized by other adoptees who are not grateful whatsoever, and nor do they need to be, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that.
Damon Davis: Yeah, I appreciate it.
Haley Radke: Okay. I paused you. We took a detour. Let's go back to your story.
Damon Davis: Yeah, no problem. So we've talked a lot about my biological mother, and I think it's only fair to speak about my biological father too, because there's a fascinating story on that side. And that's kind of the interesting piece of all of these [00:27:00] biological reunion journeys is that they don't necessarily unfold the way you think.
I'll have guests on the show and I'll think to myself, I know where this is going. This person found their biological mother and then they found their father and blah, blah, blah. And they will throw a curve ball, and I'm just like, oh my God. That's what you get for settling in and getting comfortable and thinking you know everything, genius, 'cause you don't.
Haley Radke: I've made some similar assumptions, just so you know.
Damon Davis: Yeah, and I'm glad you can admit that too. It's just crazy. You start to settle in and you think, I can see where this is going, and they just take a hard left turn and you're like, whoa.
So mine had an interesting story along those lines as well. So I had a phenomenal relationship with my biological mother. We were in reunion for six years before she passed away, sadly. She bought a house, retired from the federal government, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And, I'm not even kidding you, within several months she was gone.
So it was an interesting time for me because [00:28:00] obviously the woman who carried me, brought me into this world, had passed on and we had only just had several years of relationship. We hadn't even gotten into double digits. So it was sad to have lost her, but it was phenomenal to have ever known her in the first place, which is something that many adoptees don't get.
And I feel incredibly fortunate for having ever spoken to her, come face to face with her, gotten a chance to hug her and talk to her about my story. It was just amazing. But what happened after she passed was I realized I have an opportunity here to seek out this biological father whom when I would speak with her about my story, I could sense the pain in her voice of how it unfolded.
So I said, you know what? While she was alive, I said, I'm not looking for this guy right now. I'm good. She's good, I'm good. This is good. Let me just stay right here. But after she passed away, I said, I can't hurt her if I find this guy. And I decided to do it. So I did the classic thing. I [00:29:00] started internet searching and trying to find this guy's name, and he had a very basic name that brought back thousands of guys across all social media platforms and stuff.
And I was just like, I'm never gonna find this dude. So I was finally able to track him down based on some characteristics that she told me about him, that he was a Detroit police officer. I think she gave me his name. So I was finally able to find some archives about a police officer with this guy's name. And I tracked him down and I wrote him a letter and I said, I think you might be the guy.
And it was such a weird experience because I gave him all my contact information and he called me on the phone and it's this loud, booming voice. He is very dramatic in his speech and all this other stuff, and he's really overbearing. And I was just like, ugh, this doesn't feel right at all. I just [00:30:00] couldn't feel any of the same kind of connection that I had when I spoke with Ann.
And so I was immediately standoffish with him and through a series of different phone conversations it just got weirder and weirder. And I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna let this die. I don't really feel like I need to meet this guy at all. And probably a year or two went by and it just hit me. You know what, man, if you don't see your biological father face to face, he could pass and you will have lost this opportunity.
You might not like him, but you might have to suck it up and go out there and meet 'em. And you meet 'em one time and you don't have to ever meet 'em again. And right about the time that I made that decision, I texted him and we talked about it for a minute, and he was like, are you sure I'm the right guy?
And I said I know how this whole thing works and she said you were there. So I have an eye-witness to your presence. And so he said [00:31:00] have you seen my name on anything? And it started to put questions in my head like, you're right, it's possible that we're not right.
And so he suggested that we do a blood test, and he called me back and he said, I got a great idea. Let's do it on the Maury Povich show and do a big reveal. And I was just like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.
Haley Radke: Yikes.
Damon Davis: So shortly after that little exchange he sent me a note in the mail and it was very definitive. I'm sorry Mr. Davis. I'm not the guy. And I was like, how does he know this and how can he reject me? I said he was the guy. How could you? That's not cool. And I had some feelings about it for a while, and then I just said, you know what? I didn't really like that dude anyway, so I just have to try to get over this and let it go.
And it was in that moment that my immediate family was doing some DNA testing of our own, because my wife's [00:32:00] mother, my mother-in-law, is also an adoptee from Canada. And she never had any desire to search for her story at all. And so we are now in this era of a lot of very easily accessible, consumer-friendly DNA testing.
And so we were like, hey, let's spit in some tubes and find out about some people. And I'm thinking to myself, it's also gonna give me some additional information about Seth, my son, because I only know a piece of my family tree and so I only know an even smaller piece of his. Therefore, knowing something about my mother-in-law and her lineage is going to help me fill out his story and beyond.
So we submitted our Ancestry DNA tests, and they came back. Mine came back first and I didn't even really pay that much attention to it because when I met Ann, my biological mother, I had already done 23andMe with her. So the whole gravitas and [00:33:00] surprise and deep interest in what the DNA test was revealing had already washed away six years ago when I first met her.
So when I got my Ancestry DNA test, I didn't pay two seconds of attention to it. I was more interested in my wife's and my son’s because they had pieces that I didn't know at all. When theirs came back. I saw some really cool stuff that Ancestry did, like global migration patterns and this is where your people come from.
And it was just so fascinating that I decided to dig into ancestor DNA on my own record, and it was there, where one night I'm sitting in bed digging into my own record, not even thinking about any of the relationships that I wanted, because again, over on 23andMe I had four or five sixth cousins, whatever, reaching out, saying, hey, and it just was too far off in the distance to really build any meaningful relationships.
So I started getting those relationship connections again, and I didn't look at it at all on Ancestry DNA, but then [00:34:00] I just peeked in on it and I had a very close match and it said parent-child relationship. And my jaw dropped and I'm staring at the screen like, you gotta be kidding me. Who?
So I'm clicking on this thing and it says, extremely high confidence. Parent-child relationship, this person is your father. It doesn't say anything like you might wanna check into this 'cause this seems pretty interesting, in print, like close. They were definitive in their proclamation that the person I was connected to was my father.
And it was not the initials of the man's name who Ann had given me and I had connected with in Detroit. It was a different dude, which lent itself to even more confusion 'cause I'm like, wait. She said it was that guy, but science says it's this guy. And so I'm going round and round in my head.
So I message them, they don't [00:35:00] reply. I message again, they don't reply. I sent another message and I'm like, look, I don't want anything, but I'm an adoptee. I've got nothing. And this guy's popping up on my screen, you gotta tell me something. We don't have to say anything to anybody else in the family, but I would like to talk about this for a few minutes.
And lo and behold, a couple of days later on a Saturday, I'm driving along and I get a call from a family member who is, interestingly, this is a white descendant of mine in the South, and they were slave owners back in the day. They had done a very extensive sort of family search for all of these people that were connected to them because while doing their own Ancestry DNA.
They started to see that their DNA heritage was bringing up a lot of black people as connected to their family. So they started reaching out, trying to learn more and more about how far this went. [00:36:00] And among them was my biological father, Bill White. So to cut a story a little bit short, they finally agreed to connect me with Bill White, who lives out in Las Vegas.
And coincidentally, I spoke with him by phone the night before I'm leaving for a family trip to Los Angeles and I was like, look, I'm gonna be in your neighborhood. I'm in Los Angeles tomorrow and you're in Las Vegas. And he said, yeah, let's see about connecting. He was really receptive, which was refreshing because the other guy was very confrontational, I don't know how to put it. It wasn't like a warm, fuzzy fit.
And Bill was like, oh, wow. Huh, I had no idea. Wow. This felt like it was an interesting, cool development for him. And he was 80 plus at the time. And he's still alive. I don't mean to talk about him in the past tense, it was just the past tense of the story.
So we took a day-trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and I meet this guy, and I tell you, I looked at him and [00:37:00] I thought I looked like my biological mother when I first saw her. But then my wife took a picture of myself and Bill next to each other with Seth in the picture as well. And I'm looking at the way we smile and squint our eyes and all kinds of stuff.
And I was like, I look just like this dude. It was crazy. And we ended up developing a great relationship. It turned out he was a genealogist, which Ann had also been. So between the two of them, never having met them before in my life, within a very short time of meeting each of them, they were both able to hand me an entire family tree, full lineage with stories about every person in it, almost.
It was just astonishing to make this connection and we continue to have a good relationship. I called him a couple of weeks ago when I was in LA and we had a great chat and it's just really great to find connectivity, reach a place of peace that you didn't know you [00:38:00] were actually needing.
And to hear the stories about yourself and your own bloodline. You accept the stories of your adopted family because that's the story you grow up in. But when, as you alluded to earlier, you come out of the fog and you acknowledge what adoption actually means. That you are a child of a different family's lineage. I don't think there are that many people who don't have some level of curiosity about that.
I think the folks who don't search are likely suppressing that curiosity. And you can get really good at it, especially if all of your needs are met. If you've got a great loving home, you are not wanting for anything, you've reached to some level of what you decide is success in your life, whether that's building your own family, your own career, traveling the world, whatever those things are, and you're not really feeling like that is an answer you need. It's easy to suppress that. [00:39:00]
And I'm not saying that people have to resurrect it and dig deep to search. I'm simply saying I do think it is within everybody to some degree when you reach that realization, that adoption means you came from somewhere else. And it has been an incredible journey to find these adults that I came from, hear the story about what they were doing when they were adults and how this whole thing came to fruition to bring me into this world.
And it's been incredibly enlightening to then turn my story into a passion for hearing other people's stories, starting the podcast and writing the book. It's just been amazing.
Haley Radke: Oh, wow. Thank you for sharing your story. You go into it way more in your memoir. And I love hearing those little excerpts from your voice. It's so good. I love that you addressed that feeling that some adoptees might be suppressing that desire. Because I was [00:40:00] gonna ask you about that.
Your show really does focus on the search and reunion, or if they're finding someone, like finding a grave, or those kinds of things that happen, too, which is very sad. I was just challenged recently on asking everyone, when did you decide you wanted to search? And just being challenged on that not everybody wants to and that's okay.
So thank you for saying that. I think that acknowledges that part of our community that just doesn't have that desire for whatever reason. I think it's time for us to do recommended resources, but that is gonna give me a chance to ask you another question. So of course, I'm gonna recommend your podcast.
You have almost 130 episodes already and more coming and there's just so many different stories. I love how you've covered all kinds of different topics. And so if you like Adoptees On, you're gonna love Who am I Really? [00:41:00] because it's more adoptee stories. And you have a really beautiful way of producing the show, and I really enjoy that.
I also wanna talk about your memoir, and I bought the hard copy in my hands. And I started reading it. And here's how you know that I have listened to a number of episodes of your show because I started reading it and you were talking in my head. I was reading it in your voice, and I will admit I got a little bit irritated and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna read it in audiobook. So I bought the audiobook instead.
So I listened and that was such a great experience. I loved hearing your voice tell me the stories and not all adopting memoirs are available in audio. You can get it on Audible and I just really enjoyed that. And another special thing about Damon’s book in audio is you have a section where you [00:42:00] give the eulogy after your adoptive father passes, and you actually have the audio of you sharing that and it's so powerful.
Damon Davis: That was the moment, boy, I tell you. It brings me to tears right now, man. I tell you, I had the foresight to when my father passed in, I think, 2017, I knew that I was gonna be the focus as his only child of giving the speech at his celebration of life.
And so I was the final speaker and I put my phone up on the podium and I just said, you wrote it, you should record it 'cause you can't be in the audience to hear it and you're gonna want to hear it later. And I didn't listen to it for years and I'm glad that I did record it because as you've said, in doing the audio book, there was a moment when I talk about losing my father.
And it was really powerful to be able to bring back the very moment in my own words, when I laid him to rest, for all intents and [00:43:00] purposes, in front of an audience and to hear the things that I said and the expression of gratitude for his life as it applied to mine.
To put that in an audiobook is just absolutely amazing. I feel so fortunate that I had the foresight to think to put my phone up on the podium. And if you listen closely at the end of my speech, you'll hear my son say, great speech, dad. It's the cutest.
Haley Radke: Okay. I have to go re-listen for that. Okay. I did not think we were gonna have a cry today, and it wasn't me.
Damon Davis: I'm an emotional dude, man. There's no question about it. And I cry with my guests too. I don't know about you, but
Haley Radke: Oh, gimme a break. I'm a disaster half the time. Anyway, I thank you for sharing that. And again, there's something about the power of audio for me. That's of course that's what I do. But I've always been like that.
And so to [00:44:00] hear you read your words and to hear your eulogy, all of those things are just really powerful. So if you have been listening to Who Am I Really? And I'm not converting you to be a listener, then, and you haven't got Damon’s book on audio, you gotta get it. There, because you'll for sure love it.
Okay. My question for you. That was a long lead up to this question. I want you to address what the words “Who am I really?” mean to you?
Damon Davis: When I crafted the idea for the podcast, I was driving down I-95 and it just hit me that I've spoken to so many adoptees before I had even recorded a story.
They all had this thematic piece to them of the search and reunion component where the people were wondering who they actually were as it applied to their biological family, to their natural relatives, and it just jumped out at me that that was what I was asking myself. [00:45:00] Who am I really in this world of an adopted family and a family out there that I don't even know?
Who am I really as it applies to them? And so it just seemed like such a natural fit for any adoptee who may be out there wondering to themself where they fit in the entire mix. And I thought of that title and I never looked back. There was no list of titles or anything like that; it just hit me and I ran with it.
Haley Radke: I love it when that happens. Okay. Do you have a specific episode that you think you could recommend to people? Or is there a search? This is gonna sound a little bit out there, but you and I both have a lot of episodes. So sometimes to a new listener, it's a little bit overwhelming where to start.
So do you have one or two that you're like, oh, you should listen to this one, or search on my website for whatever, late discovery or something like that?
Damon Davis: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I'll tell you, for [00:46:00] folks who haven't listened, you should definitely listen to Episode 100. Haley tells her story on there, and I was grateful to her for being a guest. And it sounds like I'm playing up to the host here, but I'm being serious about that because oftentimes the person behind the camera, the person who is the writer, the person who is the interviewer or host, doesn't often get out to tell their own stories.
And so I wanted to make sure that I got to hear who Haley is and how she got to where she is doing this podcast for herself. So if you haven't listened, we're gonna exchange show guests here, and I'm gonna say definitely listen to Haley's, but there's such a breadth of stories on my show. It's hard to pinpoint them.
I will often tell the story of a recent guest. She is an Ethiopian descendant who was brought to this country, terrorized as a child, sent back to Ethiopia and came back again and found her sister. And is finding her way through adulthood after just tremendous [00:47:00] adversity. I think that her show is highly impactful.
There was a guy who tells this great story of searching for his biological mother and as he's sitting in the public library, internet searching or microfiche searching. I think it was a long time ago. This image starts to unfold very slowly on this old computer. And you can just imagine the line going up as the computer generates this image. And it was a picture of his mother in her wedding dress. And he said, I'd never seen her before. And here's this beautiful, angelic woman appearing before me for the first time. There are so many episodes: one where a woman is reunited with her biological father and she had been married in the prior years, but her father was not able to walk her down the aisle, nor do a father-daughter dance. So she invited him to do a father-daughter dance in her backyard, which was so cute to me.
And another guy who went [00:48:00] on this journey to try to find his biological family. And he ends up searching through records and he ends up contacting the hospital where he was born. And he said he slipped the lady in the records room, this is 30 years ago. He slipped the right lady in the records room a sum of money and said, I want all of the names of all of the women who gave birth on my birthday. And she slips him a list and he ends up contacting his birth mother and he decides I don't want to actually meet her and let her know who I am.
I just wanna meet her and not let her know who I am. So I'll cut his story short, but he knocks on her door and after a couple of conversations there, she invites him in and they're talking in her kitchen and he's freaking out. He's standing in his birth mother's kitchen and her back is turned and he reaches for the calendar on her wall. And he flips it up and he sees his own birthday circled on her calendar.
The stories are just unbelievable. And those are [00:49:00] just a couple of the ones that stand out for me. I could go on and on. So you know, I say to anybody who's listening to your or my show, just pick one, dive in. Because they're all so vastly different. All these different lives and different experiences.
Haley Radke: And it's just about hearing adoptee voices. Adoptee voices matter. And I love that you're highlighting that so, thank you. What did you wanna recommend to us?
Damon Davis: I wanna recommend a different resource. There's a guy online, his name's Greg. What's Greg's last name?
Haley Radke: Luce. L-U-C-E. Luce.
Damon Davis: Yeah. He runs the Adoptee Rights Law website and I find it to be a fascinating resource because he has all of these different maps. For one, the “United States of OBC” talking about where you can find your original birth certificate. He's got an interactive map of OBC access. So he can tell you things about whether your state has unrestricted access to your OBC, whether there are [00:50:00] some restrictions, and he calls it compromised in terms of your access, or completely restricted as in you're not getting your OBC in that state.
And I just think it's a valuable resource because there's a lot of questions about where to start in the adoptee search and reunion journey. And starting with knowing the laws for either the state where you were born or the state where you live, the state where you think you were conceived, whatever that thing is, having some kind of resource that you can go back to, I think, is incredibly valuable.
So I would highly recommend the Adoptee Rights Law Center, and it's at adopteerightslaw.com. Lots of valuable information there.
Haley Radke: Awesome. I love Greg. I met him at a conference a little while ago now and he's a great guy, a very amazing adoptee advocate, so that's a great recommendation.
Thank you so much, Damon. I just really appreciated hearing your story from your own voice and I'd love for you to share where people can hear the podcast and connect [00:51:00] with you online.
Damon Davis: Absolutely. You can find the podcast online at whoamireallypodcast.com. You can follow the show on Twitter at waireally and you can follow me there. I send out tweets with quotes from each of the shows. There's so many different ways that you can express how a show goes down and I try for getting the shows to live on in perpetuity.
I've been recording them to YouTube as well. So I now have a library, a channel on YouTube where you can listen to any one of the shows. There's nothing visual. You're not gonna see me or my guests, but it's just a straight slideshow with the audio. And you can find the podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.
They're all over Amazon, Apple, any podcast platform, it's out there. So check it out and let me know what you think of the show and feel free to reach out if you would like to be a guest. There's a form on my website: whoamireallypodcast.com/share. You can write in to [00:52:00] be a guest on the show if you would like to tell your story as well.
So, thank you so much, Haley. It's been great to be here with you today.
Haley Radke: Wonderful, my honor.
One of the best things I have found as a podcaster, an independent indie podcaster, is that there is a real spirit of community and helping share resources, education, and I have always found that to be true, that it's not necessarily this big source of competition, but it's more collaborative and I really appreciate that about Damon.
And there's other adoptee podcasters that I've had on the show before. We've recommended each other's shows. And I think that you've seen that and I really appreciate that about the adoptee podcaster space, which in itself is very niche. [00:53:00]
But, like I said, there's so many adoptee podcasts that you can listen to. There are people sharing their own personal story. There's other interview shows. Anything you can think of that is adoption related, there are some really talented adoptees leading conversations in that area, so I'd encourage you, if that's your thing, to branch out and look for some other adoptee-led podcasts. I think that you will be greatly blessed by doing that.
And the other thing is, this podcast and so many adoptee podcasts would not be possible without your support. So if you love Adoptees On, if you want it to grow and reach more adoptees, to connect to the community and do all of those things that I strive to do, be educational and entertaining and a support in your earbuds.
So we can hang out every week. I love doing that for you. If you want that to continue, one of the best ways you can do that is sharing [00:54:00] the show with one other person that you know is adopted, especially picking one episode that you think they would enjoy and showing them how to listen to it.
And the second is becoming a monthly Patreon supporter. If you go to adopteeson.com/partner, you can find out details of how to support the show. You get bonuses. There is a bonus podcast every single week that I do, mostly with my friend Carrie Cahill Mulligan, who's also an adult adoptee. And we talk adoption topics. We talk nonsense, we talk things that we would never share ever in a million years on the main feed.
But we do share them with our closest friends who have been, some of them have become close friends, supporters of the podcast. So adopteeson.com/partner has details for that. And there's a couple other levels of support where you can access a private Facebook group for adoptees only. You can schedule a call with me, which has been really fun. [00:55:00] And I've been doing Zoom calls here and there, which I'm gonna be continuing.
So if any of those things sound good to you, go to adopteeson.com/partner and sign up today. I'd love to have you as a supporter. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
