10 Landric
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/10
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 1, episode 10: Landric.
I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today we'll be talking to Landric, a fellow adoptee who was found by his natural mother just last year.
Listen in while Landric tells us his relinquishment story, his feelings about reunion, and about the one big lesson he's taken away from counseling so far. We'll wrap up with some recommended resources for you.
I'd like to welcome our guest Landric to the show today.
Landric: Hi, how are you?
Haley Radke: Great. Thank you so much for being willing to share your story with us. Why don't you just start at the beginning?
Landric: I was born in 1973 in Durham, North Carolina. I was relinquished right at birth. I was actually about six to seven weeks early.
I'm not exactly sure how early, because I was later to find out that my natural mother didn't realize she was pregnant until she was five or six months along. So we're not entirely sure of exactly how early I was. So I was in an incubator for a couple of weeks and I was released from the hospital about two weeks after I was born.
So, there was actually some question when I was first born as to whether I was gonna live or not. She never got to hold me. She saw me once when I was in the incubator. She came back a couple of weeks later to see me again (after she had signed the papers), but while I was still in the hospital. And kind of got packed off to another state by her mother.
That was kind of the end of it at that point. I didn't know any of this at the time, of course. When I was growing up, I had no idea of any of this story. It's just all stuff I found out fairly recently. So, yeah, once I was released from the hospital, I was in a foster home for about three months. And then I was adopted at three and a half months old by my adoptive parents.
Haley Radke: And did your adoptive parents have any other children?
Landric: No, they did not. I grew up as an only child. My adoptive mother always told me that she only ever wanted one child. And as far as I know, they never tried to adopt any others. The reason they didn't have any biological children is that she was infertile.
And I know they tried to have children before they adopted me and didn't have any success. So far as I know, there was never any effort past that and past my adoption.
Haley Radke: So did you decide to search when you were older?
Landric: No, I was one of those people that would've told you— Up until this time last year, if I talked to you, I would've told you that it wasn't a big deal being adopted and didn't bother me at all, and I didn't have any interest.
And I think I really believed that, at least to a certain extent. It was not a comfortable subject for me. And I've had, you know, had thoughts about it over the years, and I was curious. But I just kind of bought into that whole line about how my natural mother would've had to go on with her life and forget about me, in order to move on.
And so I didn't feel like just my curiosity was a good enough reason to disrupt whatever life she had. I never made any effort at all. And in fact, I'm not sure that I ever would have. I've really thought about that a lot in the last nine months or so, as to whether I ever would have. And you know, I think maybe someday would've come, and I hope that day wouldn't have been too late.
But as it turned out, she found me, so…
Haley Radke: Oh, wow. So that was nine months ago?
Landric: Yeah, it was actually kind of a funny story. Well, funny's the wrong word, but it's a comedy of errors. A story filled with a comedy of errors. I got a letter in the mail from an adoption agency called the Children's Home Society, which I'd never heard of.
I was adopted through the County Social Services in the county I was given up in North Carolina. And no adoption agency was ever involved. Well, in 2008 or 2010, the law in North Carolina changed very slightly. It's still pretty much the Dark Ages there as far as adoption laws go, but allowing intermediaries to make contact with adoptees for members of the biological family to pass along medical information.
And then once contact is made, that intermediary is allowed to find out if they'd like additional contact other than just the medical information. So I got this letter from the Children's Home Society, and I almost threw it away without opening it, because I thought it was a solicitation for money.
And it was a really busy week for me at work. So I didn't even go through this big stack of mail I had sitting on my desk until the weekend. It was a Saturday, and I actually put the letter in the stack of stuff to throw away. And then I looked at it again and thought, You know, that envelope just looks too nice for a money solicitation.
So I moved it to the other stack, and I started opening the mail. And when I opened it, it was this really incredibly vague letter that basically said, “We've received some updated medical information from a member of your biological family. Please call this number for more information.” And I thought that was interesting because I'd never heard anything from any member of my biological family.
So, “updated medical information”? Well, I had no medical information. You know, I was one of those people who’d gone my entire life, every time I'd been to the doctor and they wanted me to fill out a form with my past medical history, I always put, “I'm adopted. I have no idea.” So I thought, Okay, I guess I'll call these people on Monday, (except that I didn't get a chance because I was so busy at work).
It was literally impossible for me to make a phone call that entire week during business hours. So the letter sat in my car for a week and I never called because, you know, it was really vague. It didn't say, “Your mom's looking for you.” And I’d just made it for—at the time I was 42 years old.
I'd made it for 42 years without this information; I really wasn't that concerned about it. And so I drove around for a week with this in my car, and then another weekend came and went. And I had a whole bunch of stuff in my car from work the previous week, because I hadn't been in my office. I had been out working and just, you know, had collected all this paperwork and I carried it all in and dropped it on my desk. And the letter was at the bottom of the stack and it sat on my desk for another week, without me even remembering it was there.
Well, the following Monday, I was sorting through all this stuff on my desk and found this letter. Now this, at this point–I got this letter at the beginning of November, you know, first week in November. At this point, it's the week of Thanksgiving, it's a Monday. So I called, I finally called this number.
I'm like, I've gotta call these people. I'm gonna forget. So I called the number, and I got this lady's voicemail who sent me the letter. And it said that she only worked until noon on Mondays. But she was in the office all day on Tuesday. Well, it was, you know, afternoon on Monday when I called.
So I thought, Well, I won't leave a message, I'll just call back tomorrow. Well, I called back on Tuesday morning and her message had changed. And this was early Tuesday morning, so it's obvious she had still been there on Monday, and I probably should have just left a message, but it had changed to say she was out the rest of the week for Thanksgiving.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness.
Landric:. So I thought, Well, fantastic. And I know me, I'm really terrible about making and returning phone calls, and I thought If I don't leave a message for this woman, I am probably never gonna call her. So I left a message. I left my cell phone number instead of my office number.
And then I just promptly kind of forgot about it and, you know, went on to work the rest of the week, and went on, did Thanksgiving with my family. And I came back to work on Monday, and I was working; I hadn't even thought anything about this letter. Because, again, this was not something I had really thought about a lot, you know, the last probably 15 or 20 years.
I mean, it was just part of my life and it wasn't something I had really thought a lot about. And then my cell phone rings and it's a (you know, I don't live in North Carolina anymore), and it's a North Carolina phone number. And then I remembered this phone call, so I answered it and it was this woman from the Children's Home Society. And she started kind of explaining to me what they had received about this updated medical information.
And I could tell she was feeling me out to see how I felt about being adopted. I had never had any, you know, interest in (I thought, at the time) in looking for anybody. But I always had this idea in the back of my head, that if anybody ever came looking for me, I'd be open to it. Because I never had any anger or anything about it.
So she's kind of feeling me out and she's telling me she's got this medical information, and then she says, “And if you're interested, I got this from your biological mother. And she'd like to get in contact with you.”
And I just didn't even know what to say. I was at a loss for words. So I just sat there for about 30 seconds and she asked me if I was still there, and I said yes. And she said, “Was that something you might be interested in?” I said, “It is.” I said, “Can you tell me anything else?” And so she started talking and spent the next 30 minutes basically telling me this whole story, some of which I've already told you, and more of which I'll probably talk about here in the next few minutes.
And that was November the 30th of 2015. And I'll probably remember that day for the rest of my life.
Haley Radke: What were you feeling in that, in those minutes when she's talking to you?
Landric: It's really hard to describe. I went from thinking that I didn't want to know this stuff to not being able to learn enough. I don't even know if I can even explain it.
I didn't realize that there was anything missing until I started hearing these things. And then I started feeling like I had to know more, and I had to know more. You know, she's going on and she's telling me all this stuff, and then she tells me that my mom's got four younger children. And, you know, I grew up an only child and I always wondered if I had any siblings out there.
And suddenly there's four of them. And she tells me they all know about me and they've all known about me for a long time.
Haley Radke: Wow.
Landric: And, you know, I've now known about them for 30 seconds. And the first thing that went through my head is, I've gotta meet these people.
Haley Radke: That's amazing. Landric. I'm just you know…I grew up as an only child, too. And I had a similar reaction when I found out I had siblings.
Mine didn't know about me, because they were still minors at the time. So, but all the feelings…I promised I wasn't gonna cry, but yeah. Wow.
Landric: Yeah. Well, I’m having a hard time myself and I know the story, because I've been living it since November of last year.
Haley Radke: Yeah. So what was the next–what were the next steps, next contact, all of those things?
Landric: Well, you know, she told me a whole bunch more information about her and then she said, “Well, the next thing that we do (if you're interested) is that she writes you a letter and she sends it to me and then I forward it on to you.” Because apparently the way North Carolina's fantastic laws are written, is that she's gotta make sure there's nothing in the letter that could be considered identifying information. Until we've both signed affidavits saying that we are agreed to have our information released to each other, they can't do anything that would make it so that we could identify each other.
So I said, “Well, okay, I'm interested in that.” And you know, this conversation had gone on (at this point) for about 45 minutes. And she said, “Okay, well I'll get off the phone with you and I'll call her and tell her. And then I'll be back in touch with you once I've heard something, and once I have some more information for you.”
So then I'm just sitting there. This was, you know, I'd been at work for maybe half an hour when this phone call happens, and I got literally no work done the rest of that day. The first thing I did when I got off the phone with her is I called my wife and told her this whole story. And it's funny, she told me that, you know, when we had first met, I mean one of the first things I told her about me was I was adopted.
And she had always wanted me to search for my family. But I had told her, you know, when we met that I wasn't interested. And I really just needed somebody to tell me that it was okay to do it. And it's so funny because I didn't, you know, (I'm certainly not blaming her for it ,because I told her I wasn't interested)... But if she had pushed me to do it, I probably would've done it.
Haley Radke: Really? Okay.
Landric: Yeah. I just didn't, you know…I didn't have anybody that had ever— I didn't know anybody who was adopted. You know, I didn't have that experience. And it was just one of those subjects that you just could not bring up with my adoptive parents.
Haley Radke: Oh. And that's super common, right? You know, so many adoptive parents just wanna pretend like you're not adopted.
Landric: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And you know, so I'm just sitting there and– I mean, for a living, I'm an investigator for the State Public Defender's office. I was a police officer for 16 years before that. So I've kind of got a lot of experience in dealing with high stress stuff, and I just didn't know what to do with this. So what I did is I fell back on what I do. I started trying to figure out who she was.
Haley Radke: Well, I guess you've got the good skill set for that!
Landric: Because I didn't know what else to do. I mean, I just, I couldn't focus on my actual work at all, and I couldn't just sit there; I had to do something. So I had a first name and I knew where I had been born, and I knew what county if she—I wasn't born in the same county where she lived, but I knew what county she had lived in.
So I spent a lot of time looking. It's actually kind of funny. I came up with a bunch of possibilities, none of whom turned out to be right. But I would have found her, I would've figured it out if she had gone to her high school graduation. Unfortunately, her father died about two weeks before her high school graduation, and she didn't go.
But yeah, if she had gone, I found an article that listed every person that went to their high school graduation in the year she graduated from high school (which was 1972), in the county she lived in North Carolina. So yeah, if she had gone, I would've found her.
Haley Radke:. Oh, that's so cool. Wow.
Landric:. But yeah, I spent a lot of time and then when I got done with that and finally figured out, Look, I've got some possibilities, but there's no way I'm gonna know for sure if any of these people are right until I get this, you know, till I have further contact.
And I still hadn't heard anything back from the Children's Home Society, and I still wasn't getting anything accomplished with my real job. And luckily, that particular time of year (between Thanksgiving and Christmas), even in the court system, there's not a lot going on. I just started reading up on adoption related issues, specifically from the perspective of birth parents, because that's not something I'd ever thought about.
You know, I thought I knew how I felt about it. I turned out to be— I was wrong. I didn't have any idea how I felt about it, but I thought I did at that time. So I wanted to see if I could figure out maybe how she felt about it.
So I spent a lot of time just, you know, every resource I could find, reading on that stuff, because I wanted to be prepared. And I had actually started writing a letter to her almost immediately after talking to this woman from the Children's Home Society, because I just couldn't wait. You know, it was, I guess, so long of not having thought about this. And it was just all of a sudden, it's all I could think about.
And by the time we actually got to the point, it was almost two weeks later before I actually got the letter. By the time I actually got the letter from her, I had already written my letter. And then I had done so much research on adoption and adoption related issues and, you know, and specifically on birth mothers’ reactions to having given up their children (which I had never really thought about), I had actually changed my letter some.
Because I had changed how I felt. I had originally just signed it at the end with my name. By the time I got to the point where I was ready to send it along, I actually added, I changed it to “Your son,” and then my name, because that's how I felt at that point (thankfully).
So I, you know, I didn't realize I was very open to this, but I was. And when I got the letter from her, it just kind of reinforced everything that I was already thinking. And it progressed very quickly from there.
Haley Radke: I'm sure you've read about the honeymoon stage.
Landric: Oh, absolutely, I have. And we certainly did that for a while.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Landric: And you know, I was very positive about my whole experience of being adopted at first with her, because I didn't want her to feel bad. And I didn't wanna scare her off. And, you know, as it turned out, that probably wasn't necessary (but I didn't know that at the time). So I just, you know, at first I told her, “Oh, it was great. You made the right decision.”
I just said all the stuff you hear everybody say in those situations. Just because I didn't want her to feel like she had done something, you know, that had screwed up my life. Which really, I mean, it didn't, but it didn't make it any easier.
Haley Radke: Did you have a difficult adoptive situation with your adoptive parents?
Landric: You know, that's all relative. That's not intended to be a pun.
Haley Radke: Okay. (laughs)
Landric: I guess it kind of is. It was not great; it was not terrible. I've seen terrible. I didn't have terrible. I know people that have had great, and I didn't have that either. Somewhere in the middle.
Mostly, it was just lonely. I was just not compatible with them (and I'm still not really). I mean, they're both still alive, and I still have contact with them, and we still have a relationship, but I'm still not compatible with them. And I fake it a lot because that's just, you know, that's who I am. That's just part of being adopted.
You know, I'm a people pleaser. I pretend that everything is just great and I don't feel that way at all, but what's the point in…. There's nothing to be solved, because there's no way to solve it. It's—I'm never gonna be okay with it.
Haley Radke: What's your relationship like now with your mom?
Landric: I don't know. I mean, it may sound like we're still in the honeymoon stage–I don't think we are. I mean, we had that kind of period where everything was great and we, you know, it was like a new relationship. You know, like people who are dating for—when you first get together, when you're dating somebody.
But even so, I mean, we got past it where everything, we're both perfect and everything's perfect. We've gotten past all that, but we still talk every day, whether it's emails, or phone calls, or text messages, or whatever... We still have some kind of communication every day and we talk about real stuff, as opposed to with my adoptive mother (I never talk to her about anything real).
And it's few and far between, when I actually have any contact. Once a week would be a lot with my adoptive mother; it's more like a couple times a month. It's very much the kind of relationship that my wife has with her mother, which I never understood. Until I met my mom, I didn't understand at all how somebody could actually miss their parents.
Haley Radke: So it sounds like you feel a very deep connection with her. Do you have lots of similarities, different quality traits that you share?
Landric: We do, and it's not just the two of us. You know, we haven't really talked about this, but when I met my four siblings, it's all the– There are a lot of traits that are simpler between the four of us also (or the four of them and me, I guess I should say).
It was all kind of spooky because you know, other than my two sons, I had never met anybody who I was related to, you know, biologically before I met my mom in, actually in person in February of this year. And then I met my two brothers and two sisters in April, for the first time. My twin sons were born when I was 36, so that was the first time I had ever met anybody who I was related to.
And it was— I don't know any word other than spooky, how similar we were. All five of us have the same sense of humor. And I'm one of those people that has kind of a weird sense of humor that I always have to explain to people. And it's not funny if you have to explain it to people. Every single one of them gets it. Everybody in that family gets it.
Haley Radke: What does it feel like to be finally included, and just like you're a part of something?
Landric: You know, it was something that I didn't know was missing until I found it. And when this first started, I just thought it was great. I'm like, Oh, this is fantastic, you know, when I was first communicating with her, primarily. And even when we first met (she came here in February to meet me)--Actually, she came on my birthday, and I was still just very much like, Wow, this is great. This couldn't be any better. I didn't have a sense of any kind of loss or anything at that point. And I'm not really sure why, because I mean, you know, we had this relationship that I'd never had with either of my adoptive parents already.
Even before we met, it had already started. You know, the first conversation we had on the phone lasted for three hours. And if I talk on the phone for three minutes to somebody, that's usually a long time for me. I just couldn't believe that we had so many things in common and so many things we could talk about, but it just didn't— I didn't feel like anything was, you know, was missing or I had lost anything.
And maybe it was just because it was so new and I hadn't really had time to think about it. And then when I went out there in April and met all of them (and it was really the second day I was there that this happened)... We were just sitting in the living room and it was, you know, it was my mom and all four of my siblings (and my two sisters both have children)... All the children were in there, too. There's five of them, four nieces and a nephew on that side. So there's three generations of people that I'm related to sitting in there.
And I mean, I just felt like I was a part of something, and I'd never felt that before. I felt like I belonged. And I realized that I was missing this feeling my entire life and didn't even realize, you know? I knew something was missing, but I didn't know what was until I had experienced it sitting in there with all these people, and just having these conversations and just feeling like, you know, These are my people.
When I got home, my wife told me I'd found my tribe. But you know, I just… When I got on the plane to leave (I was there for, I think, four days?)... When I got on the plane to leave, I didn't feel like I was coming home. I felt like I was leaving home. And, you know, I made it back to the airport and I'd left my car. I'd driven myself to the airport and left my car in the long-term parking, and I got back to my car and I just, I couldn't even move the car. I just sat in the car and cried for like 15 minutes before I could even pull out of the parking lot. Because I felt like I’d just left all my people behind. And it's just something I had never experienced before.
Haley Radke: When I first had to say goodbye to my dad and my siblings at the airport, I just cried and cried and cried and I felt like I was never gonna see them again.
Landric: Yeah. And that's exactly how I felt, too. It's not rational, but, you know, I feel like that about a lot of relationships. I have a lot of issues with abandonment, and feeling like people are gonna be gone for my life forever. So that didn't help.
Haley Radke: That's traditional adoptee problems.
Landric: Yeah, I'm good. I'm good for that. I have several of those traditional adoptee problems.
Haley Radke: Me, too. Me, too. You said, “I didn't think I was gonna ever look. It wasn't really something I thought about.” What would you say to fellow adoptees who are in that place?
Landric: I think that it's normal and natural to want to know where you come from and you know, for lack of better words, who your people are. And just because maybe you think it'll make people uncomfortable (or even if it makes you uncomfortable), it's natural to want to know those things. And waiting doesn't really serve any purpose, other than potentially putting you in a position where you might not find anybody.
I could have very easily kept sitting around for another 10, or 15, or 20 years and then suddenly had this epiphany where, I've gotta find these people. And who knows if I would have? I'm grateful that my mom finally decided that she was in a place where she could look for me. And a lot of the reasons she didn't look sooner, is she didn't feel like she had a right.
So we're both sitting there for years, thinking we didn't have a right to look for each other. That's ridiculous. You know, the entire situation is ridiculous. The fact that we were in the situation to begin with is ridiculous. But nothing is gained by putting it off.
You know, as long as you're in a position where you're emotionally ready to handle whatever the answer is (which, you know, only you can decide that for yourself)... But as long as you're in that position to be able to handle whatever you find, there's no sense in putting it off, because time goes by. People die. People move on, people move away, things happen. I would've been devastated if in 25, or 30 years I had finally decided I was ready to look and all I found was graves, you know?
Haley Radke: Yeah. I mean, that does happen for many adoptees. Do you know the circumstances of why your mom relinquished?
Landric: Yeah. I do now, obviously from conversations with her, and actually just this (not this past weekend, but the weekend before last), I actually went out there again. And we were talking about it some more and she showed me her diary from that time. So not only have I talked to her about it, but I've actually gotten to read the diary entries that she made around the time of, and within the couple of years after. Which was very powerful, and very hard to read a lot of it, but it really, you know, reinforced everything that she had told me, you know.
And I believed everything she had told me before that, but it's one thing to have somebody tell you something, and it's another thing to read their words when they were writing them and feeling those things at the time. I'm very grateful that she felt like she could show me that stuff, you know? It was very brave of her to do that. And it was hard to read, but…
Haley Radke: Well, that's an insider's view. Oh my goodness.
Landric: Yeah. But the basic story was she was 18 when she met my biological father. He was really her first real boyfriend. He was older, he was 22. He'd just come back from Vietnam. And he was–he told her he was divorced. He was actually not divorced yet; he was separated from his first wife. And his first wife, he married her when she was still in high school.
So it's kind of his modus operandi, if you will, of picking out these much younger girls. He already had a daughter at that time, who was less than two years old. And he basically told my mom that he'd had a vasectomy when he was in Vietnam (and was just basically trying to convince her to sleep with him, and she wouldn't go for it). So he proposed to her, and they went and picked out a ring and he put it on layaway (supposedly, he was gonna make payments on it). It was this whole, long drawn out story of “How I'm Going to Get What I Want.”
And then her father died in May of 1972. She had several older siblings. Her sisters were married; they’d moved away. And they were coming back for the funeral, and had to stay at her house with her mother. So her mother told her, “Go stay with one of your friends.” Well, none of her friends had any space for her. So she ended up staying with this guy and his parents, because he was living with his parents since he was separated from his wife. And that's when the real relationship started and she decided she was gonna marry him. And then about a month later is–I mean (she didn't know at the time), but about a month later is when she got pregnant.
She didn't realize for quite some time that she was pregnant. This happened probably sometime–I think in June/very early July. She went off to college in August, and they kind of still were sort of seeing each other, but it was kind of hit and miss. She kind of started suspecting that she was pregnant while she was in college (the first semester), but she wasn't really sure.
She didn't have any, you know, she didn't have any morning sickness. She hadn't gained any weight. I mean, nothing that would really suggest for sure. So finally over Christmas break, she went and saw a doctor and the doctor told her she was pregnant. So she went and told him and he told her basically that he didn't wanna marry her because he would feel trapped, because he'd only be marrying her because she was pregnant.
And so she went and told her mother, and her mother wanted her to have an abortion (which was not legal quite yet, in 1972). Yeah. Roe versus Wade happened in January of ‘73. So it was right there on the edge of that. But her mother knew a doctor that would do it, so she didn't actually know that's why they were going to the doctor until they went to the doctor.
But the doctor said she was too far along, and wouldn't do it. And her mother got very angry about that. But the doctor said, “No, she's too far along. We're not gonna do that.” So her mother arranged for her to go to an unwed mother's home in Durham, North Carolina. And she was supposed to be there on Monday, the 12th of February of ‘73 (which was, you know, a little bit down the road from when all this stuff happened, because all this stuff happened over Christmas of ‘72). But she was supposed to be due around the end of March, so they were gonna have her come in, you know, middle of February and stay there until the end of March.
And then she was going to relinquish the baby and go back about her business. Her mother told her that no man would ever want her if they found out that she had a baby. So she was never supposed to speak about it again. I mean, it was very much, “This is what you're going to do. There's no choice.”
Her mother told her that she couldn't bring the baby back to the house or she'd throw her out. It was very, you know, “We don't want anybody to know about this.” You know, very early ‘70s kind of mentality. So her mother made her drop out of school and made her lie to the dean of students (who was actually a friend of her dad's). And she made (her mother made) her go and lie and say that she was sick and she couldn't come for the spring semester. But, you know, not tell the real reason why she was dropping out. So she dropped out of school for that semester.
Well, on the early morning hours of the 12th of February, (which, you know, Sunday night into Monday morning) before she was supposed to leave for this unwed mother's home, she went into labor. So that's, you know, significantly early, especially in the early ‘70s. She went to the hospital in town, and her mother was just losing her mind, because she was afraid people were gonna find out. You know, because it's not a very big town and word's gonna get around. So she insisted that they transfer her to Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina.
And I know for a fact that this was not the reason that her mother wanted this. Her mother wanted this because she didn't want people to know. But as it happened, that decision is probably why I'm here talking to you. Because that hospital had a neonatal intensive care unit, and the hospital they were at in this little town in North Carolina did not.
Haley Radke: That's amazing.
Landric: The ambulance drove her, you know, 40 some odd miles to Duke Hospital, and she was actually in labor for almost 24 hours before she gave birth. And I was born on the 13th at like 3:15 in the morning, which is not something I knew until very recently. I had no idea what time I was born.
So then of course, because there was a lot of question as to whether I was going to survive or not, she very briefly got to see me, but she didn't get to touch me or anything. And they whisked me off to the intensive care unit, and stuck me in an incubator. She saw me again very briefly while she was in the hospital before she was released. And then a couple of weeks later, she came back. Her mother actually sent her off to stay with her sister in another state for awhile, and then she came back, and she came to the hospital and saw me again.
She never got to–she didn't get to hold me, but she came and saw me in the hospital shortly before I was released. I wasn't in the incubator anymore at that point. And she'd already signed the papers at that point. And then she–that was the last time she ever saw me. And there's actually a very sad part of the story, where on the last day they had– She had 30 days to change her mind.
On the very last day, she tried to call the social worker and revoke her consent, and she could never get in touch with her. And that, you know, that's one of those things that sounds like, Oh, that's convenient that you're remembering that now. But that stuff's actually in the diary that she wrote at the time.
So, yeah, I mean, I believed her when she told me, because she's just that kind of person. But you know, she's not gonna make something like that up. But it, you know, it really did happen. She really did try and that was in the day before anybody had voicemail. And you know, people don't answer the phone and you can't leave a message. And I wouldn't be surprised at all, given the history of this sort of thing, if they purposely weren't available on that last day. So that's how I ended up where I ended up.
Haley Radke: And have you tried to find your biological father?
Landric: I have. In fact, I know who he is. I know where he lives, got his address, phone number. I wasn't sure at first, just based on this story, if I wanted to try and contact him. But I eventually decided (about May of this year) that it was probably better to see if, you know, he wanted to have contact, than to wish later if I had. I don't put a lot of stock in people changing, but I figure it can happen sometimes.
So in May of this year, I sent him a letter basically telling him who I was. And you know, “I don't really want anything from you. I'm just curious to find out about my past and kind of hear your story. And, you know, I'm not angry. I just wanna see if we can have some contact and maybe talk.”
I never got any response. And at that point, you know, my mom and I had a pretty well-developed relationship and she told me she'd just, since he hadn't responded, she would just call him (if I was okay with that). And I said, “If you're okay with it, I'm okay with it.” So she called and talked to him. She hadn't talked to him in 40-some-odd years, but you know, he still lives in the same town that they lived in. He was not hard to track down.
And he said he got the letter. And he was very vague about whether he was ever going to contact me, but she got the impression that he was not. He tried to blame his behavior on PTSD from Vietnam and basically just said he was a regular guy and wasn't very interesting.
It was very–and then he started ranting about the government. It was very– you know, just much of a letdown compared to everything that happened with her. But I figured I gave him a chance and I may, at some point in the future, give him another chance. But I doubt that I'll get any better response than I did the first time. One of the things he told her was that he thought things happened the way they were supposed to.
Haley Radke: Well, that doesn't feel very nice.
Landric: No. I'm glad he feels like that it was convenient for him, but it wasn't really for me or for her. So…
Haley Radke: And you said that he had another daughter that's just a little older than you?
Landric: Yes. So, you know, after that whole experience (I mean, I knew she existed), but after that whole experience with him, I wasn't really sure how to handle that. We had at least an idea that he had given up his parental rights to her also, because we knew her mother had remarried. And we thought that he hadn't had any real involvement in her life since then.
And she was only like 18 months old when they had gotten divorced. So I found, actually found online their divorce record from later in 1972. Then subsequently, her mother's remarriage, like three weeks later. Yeah, so I waited for a while and then started playing Internet detective again.
It took me about a weekend, but I figured out who she was and where she was, and she was only like a county away from where my biological father lives. Now, I don't have any idea what she does or doesn't know, because she was only 18 months old when all this happened. I'm sure she doesn't know about me. Just because, why would she?
I happened after all that. I don't know, as best I could tell because of some of the records I found, it appears that she was adopted by the guy that her mother married after she divorced my biological father. So I'm not entirely sure that she knew that he wasn't her real father, because as young as she was, you never know what people have been told.
I guess she probably knows now though, because about a month ago, I sent her a letter basically telling her who I was and, you know, with some information about what I had found out. And some copies of things that I had discovered, just so she knew I wasn't a flake and, you know, “This is how I got this information, this is how I figured it out.”
And I have not heard anything back. I figure, either she's like our biological father, or she's completely floored by this and has not decided how to respond yet. It hasn't been that long. I'm just–at this point, I'm not gonna pester her again and just gonna give it some time.
Haley Radke: It sounds like you have so many things going on. Is there anything that you've done to take care of yourself? Or all the feelings and everything?
Landric: Yeah, I just recently started going to counseling. It's probably something I've needed to do for a long time, but it took me a long time to acknowledge that I needed to do it. And then, just since meeting everybody in April, I've had a lot of very up and down kind of moods. And a lot of trouble dealing with kind of everything that I missed, you know, having been adopted and...
I had such a connection with all of my siblings and with my mom, and that's when I realized everything that I had missed out on, (you know, so I could be an only child and be lonely all the time). And that's really when I started having a lot of trouble dealing with this.
And it took me a little while. I didn't start going to counseling until…yeah, I don't know, the beginning of July. So it took me from April to July to finally make myself do it. But yeah, it's already helped some. I mean, it's not gonna be a short process, but just having somebody to talk to about it has already helped some.
And I started writing a blog about my experiences also, not because I really expected anybody to read it, but just because I needed to get it out. And I've never been one for really keeping journals or anything like that. So I figured, you know, I like the internet, I'll just do it on the internet and…
Haley Radke: That's how so many of us have started blogs, I'm sure. So is there anything that you've already learned in counseling that you'd be comfortable sharing with us?
Landric: You know, it seems really obvious that the biggest thing is: that there's really nothing to be done about the past. That seems like, Of course there's nothing to be done about the past.
But, you know, it's one thing to know that logically, and it's another thing to accept it. And I haven't accepted it yet, but I at least know it logically, that at some point I have got to accept that I can't do anything about what's already happened. But I can do something about what has yet to happen, and what's going on now.
And you know, being really sad about what I missed is not doing anything for me or for my family. It hasn't kept me from feeling that way a lot of the time, but I at least understand that's something that I've got to deal with, because it's not going to get me anywhere. It might get me a little bit of pity every once in a while, but that's not gonna be any good either, you know?
But it is very… yeah, that's really what caused me the biggest problem. And there's been some other things that we haven't talked about that made that even more difficult. Like, for instance, I live in Missouri now, and they're in Virginia, so I'm like 1100 miles away.
For a lot of my adult life, I lived also in Virginia. And I was less than 150 miles away from where they lived. And we didn't live there at the same time, but my mom and I both lived in the same little tiny town in Virginia, and knew some of the same people. So it is very weird, kind of, you know? Like, “we could have crossed paths” sort of situation and it just, you know, it makes it that much harder that we didn't.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Landric: And then it took me moving 1100 miles away and then finding this relationship. And then now I have to, every time I wanna see them, I've gotta get plane tickets and travel 1100 miles. And you know, it's gotta be planned a month or more in advance. And, you know, when three years ago, I could have gotten in the car and seen him in an hour and a half or two hours. You know, I mean…
Haley Radke: I think reunion is filled with a lot of, “if only…” thinking.
Landric: Yeah, and I have a—I'm very bad about that.
Haley Radke: But that's, you know, those are— it's really wise words, you know, that there's nothing that you can do about the past.
I'm really curious what you would say about— Is there anything that your adoptive family could have done differently for you? Anything that you think they could have said or done, or ways they could have treated you differently to maybe reduce some of those classic issues that we adoptees often have?
Landric: You know, I think that they could have acknowledged that I was different than they were. There was a lot of this, like pretending that I was the same. Maybe that's not the right way to put it, but there was a lot of this like, “Let's pretend like he's not adopted.” And sometimes I think that my adoptive mother really believed that she'd given birth to me.
We were just so very different. It was just like none of that was acknowledged and nobody ever asked me how I felt about being adopted. It was all very much that they didn't care. “It doesn't bother us.”
Okay. Well that's great that it doesn't bother you, but is anybody interested in how I feel about it? No, nobody's interested. It was one of those things that if you ask them, they would say, “Oh yeah, it was fine to talk about it,” But it really wasn't. It's one of those things. You say one thing; think something else.
They'd say that it was okay to talk about it, but if I tried to talk about it, you could tell that it was not okay to talk about it. And the only other time I've ever had any sort of counseling in my entire life, was when I was 16. And I guess for whatever reason, my adoptive mother then suddenly decides that I need counseling.
Now I'm not really sure why when I was 16 that became an issue, when I had probably needed it for several years before that. And then just magically when I'm 16, “Oh, hey, let's send him to counseling.” So she sends me to this clinical social worker, which–Okay, not a bad idea. The problem was that it was the clinical social worker that worked in the office where she was an office manager.
Okay. I have no confidence at all that anything I tell this woman is not gonna go right back to my mother. So I basically just (I don't remember how many times I went, it was probably at least a dozen)... I basically just sat in there and like, looked at her. And she would talk to me and I would like, you know, answer with very short yes and no’s, and not really tell her anything.
And she kept trying to get me to talk about being adopted. And I kept telling her it didn't bother me, and I didn't care. And I think I really believed that, but at the same time, if I had been somewhere where I felt comfortable talking to the person (and didn't think that everything I said would go immediately back to my mother), maybe we could have talked about it. And maybe I would've figured out when I was 16 (instead of when I was 42), that I had some issues related to this.
If you're an adoptive parent and you think your child needs counseling, do not send them to a counselor who is then going to tell you what they said. Because they're not gonna tell the counselor anything that's going to be helpful to them.
I think something that adoptive parents (and it's certainly not all of them. I mean, there's certainly some fantastic ones out there, I would guess. I've certainly heard stories about fantastic ones)...
But it's true for all parents. When you become a parent, it's no longer about you. You know, it's supposed to be about your kids, and if you can't make it about your kids and not about you, then you need to not adopt any children. My mother, especially, had a very hard time making it about me and not about her, and she still does.
Haley Radke: Well, speaking of being a parent, how is it parenting as an adoptee?
Landric: You know, I spent a lot of time trying to create this family that I never had. And I was really unsuccessful, amazingly enough. One of the other things that I've done in my life, that adoptees are famous for, is this whole love addiction thing.
I had my first real girlfriend when I was 16. And from the time I was 16 until now, there's probably a grand total of about nine months where I wasn't either married or involved in a really serious relationship. And they never overlapped. You know, I wasn't like dating three women at the same time or anything. But every time one would end, I'd somehow find myself in another one within like less than a month.
Oftentimes, it would be like two weeks. I would stay in relationships that were bad. I would break off relationships that were good for no particular reason, because I was afraid that they were going to end. And I was just trying to create this family that I didn't ever have. And I didn't actually succeed in doing that until I was 36 (Somehow. I don't know how).
And I had no idea that's what I was doing. It took me a long time to figure that out, that's what I was doing. And it was not when I was 36 that I figured that out, it was more like last year I figured that out that's what I was doing. Luckily, I just happened to finally find the right person whose neuroses were compatible with mine.
And it stuck. And it's the longest relationship I've ever been in. And luckily it's also the only relationship I've ever been in that involved children. So it was something I'd absolutely no experience with. I didn't have any friends with kids. I didn't have any siblings at that point. I had no experience at all with children, but I knew I wanted them, because I wanted to have a family that I had never had.
And, you know, that's probably not a good reason, but I wasn't really thinking of it in those terms (at the time). I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow I took to it pretty well. And I think, you know, I mean, everybody thinks that they're a good parent, I guess. But, you know, I have my ups and downs, but I think my kids know that I'm here for them. And that they're the most important thing in my life. And that when it comes to me choosing between me or them, I'm gonna choose them.
And that's not something that I could have ever said about either of my adoptive parents, when it came to me. Maybe that's the best that I can do for them. I don't know. But if they can grow up and tell their therapist that, “My dad may have had issues, but I always knew that if it came down to him picking between himself and me, he'd pick me.” Then, you know, at least I've done something more.
Haley Radke: Well, it sounds like they're lucky to have you for a dad.
Landric: Oh, I hope so.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
What was it like to finally see someone that you're biologically related to?
Landric: It was really amazing. It was so strange, because people always have these conversations all the time about, “Oh, so-and-so looks like Uncle Bob,” or you know, “He’s got the same laugh as his cousin John,” or whatever.
And then, you know, those conversations always went on around me, but I never had any of those things. And I could finally look at somebody and go— You know, because I had twins, each of them had things that came from me. And I could point to them and say, “Oh, he's got my feet, and he's got my ears, and he has my eyes. But he's got my hair.”
Because my twins are fraternal. They're not identical, so they're very different looking. And you can look at one of them and see: he's kind of from my wife's side of the family, except he has my feet, and he's got my ears. And then the other one could be my clone, except he has a couple of features from her side of the family.
It's very strange, but it was just an experience I'd never had before. And then, you know, when all this happened six years later, I guess I was maybe a little bit prepared for it? Not to the extent that it—but at least I had seen it before. It had a huge impact on me.
I wasn't sure I was ever gonna get to see that, because I had made it to 36 without having any kids. And I wasn't sure I was ever gonna have any. It just didn't seem like it was gonna happen. And then it just happened all at once. My wife had a son from a previous relationship, so I went from having no children or having three, just like that. I guess maybe one of the good things that came about being adopted, is I never had any problem thinking of him as mine.
Haley Radke: So now you're happily married and you have three children and you're going to counseling. Are you feeling more settled now? Or is all of this reunion stuff just an upheaval?
Landric: It's a pretty massive upheaval, and I have days where I feel great, and days where I feel like I can't even get out of bed. Of course, I still have to, because I have kids and a job. But you know, a lot of times I feel like if this had happened a couple of years ago (when I lived so much closer), that it wouldn't have been so hard.
Because so many of my issues are related to feeling like I'm gonna be abandoned. And if I could get in the car and drive down the street and see some of these people (even for 20 minutes), I wouldn't be so worried about that. And because I can't do that, I just sit and stew.
Haley Radke: Well, one thing that my counselor (the first one I was going to when I was first in reunion with my dad), one thing that she told him and his wife was that as an adoptee, I need constant reassurance. And he’s really provided that for me. And so that's one thing I've really, really appreciated, because I do feel the same way.
Landric: And you know, I always get that from my mom. That's, you know, it's never a question. I can't remember a day that's gone by, I haven't heard something from her.
You know, some of it is just the whole sibling relationship, because I have no idea how to do that. That I don't know what's normal, so I don't know how to deal with it when I don't hear something from any of them, or one of them, or some of them for a while. I don't know if that's how it's supposed to be, or how it's not supposed to be. Because I don't know what the dynamic is, because I didn't grow up with them.
And one of my sisters—when this first started, she was the first one that I had contact with (other than my mom) from the family. And I would get, you know, sometimes two or three emails from her every day, and text messages, and all sorts of stuff. I mean, from months this went on. And then after we met— You know, we had a great time. And one of the last things she told me before I left, was that it seemed like I had always, you know, I fit in the family, like I'd always been there. And she's like, “You're my brother. It's like you've always been here.”
And I think what happened after that—because then, you know, I still hear from her. But now it's like, once a week, twice a week. And I think what happened for her is, okay, now she's comfortable, and now I hear from her as much as she talks to any of her other siblings. But for me, because I have these issues, I feel like, Oh my God, she hates me. But I know, logically, that's not what's happening.
Haley Radke: Logically, yeah. It’s normalizing for her.
Landric: Right. I mean, she's doing what she does with her other sister and her other two brothers. You know, she talks to 'em once or twice a week at the most. And she's got three kids, and a full-time job, and she has a lot on her plate. But because I was used to this huge volume of contact, and because I have no experience with having siblings, so I don't know what's normal. I take that as being this massive rejection, when it's not. All she's done is changed over to what's normal for the family.
And she even told me that, you know, “This has not gotten anything to do with you. It's all because I've got so much going on.” But hearing that is not the same thing, you know– Knowing logically and feeling it is not the same thing.
Haley Radke:Oh, for sure. And this, you know what, for us, it's just gonna be an ongoing process, right? Of what does this normal— What does relationship look like in normal light, when we've been in reunion for years and it's not so fresh anymore? Even though it's been almost a year for you, that's still really new, considering.
Landric: Yeah.
Haley Radke: And what I found too, there's only one of me. There's so many of them. So that was good and bad, because you're building relationships with all of these different people at the same time, but you only have the resources of one person (but as an adoptee). And you want all that contact, so you're getting lots of quantity. And they're not getting quite as much, because there's only one communication with you.
Landric: Well, and then there's this other issue of– I'm not saying that my appearance did not have an impact on their lives. Obviously, it did. But one, they knew about me for quite some time before I knew about them. And two, there were already four of them. You know, they've all had these kinds of relationships going on, so they added one person.
I went from being just me and being an only child for 42 years, to suddenly being the oldest of five. And that's such a massive change, that I have absolutely no idea how to deal with that. And I'm not, you know-– Again, I'm not saying that my appearance did not change their lives. But it did not (you know, just in my opinion), I can't see how it could possibly have been the same kind of change. Because they already are used to having three other people, so now they have four other people.
Haley Radke: Yep. Yeah.
Landric: Whereas, I went from having nobody to having four other people.
Haley Radke: Isn't that crazy? Oh my goodness. Reunion is just crazy. Wow.
Well, Landric, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story with us. It's just fascinating, and I hope that things continue to go well for you. Is there anything else you would like to say before we go on to recommended resources?
Landric: You know, I could probably talk about this for another three or four hours, but…
Haley Radke: We can talk again. We can talk again sometime.
Landric: I think we've covered the high points, at least.
Haley Radke: Okay. Well, I would love to start. I have been in touch with Karen Pickell. And she's an adoptee and she blogs on Lost Daughters, but she's got this awesome website called adopteereading.com.
I don't know if you've seen it before, but I asked her, “Is there anything you wanna share with the listeners about your website?” And I'm just gonna read a couple of sentences from the email that she sent me. She says, “Every book listed at Adoptee Reading is either written by an adoptee, or recommended by an adoptee. There are also links to book reviews posted for every title where these exist. And I specifically search for reviews that are written by adoptees.”
So she talked about creating the site because, you know, when you go on Amazon (or wherever you buy your books), and you search for “adoption” or “reunion,” there's all of these pro-adoption books that can be very triggering for some people. And so she's really created a safe space to look for any books on adoption or other things that she thinks would be beneficial for adoptees that are not about fundraising and other triggering things that… (I don't know, I've talked before on the podcast about how I get triggered by all these different things. So I don't know. I'm just a really sensitive person.)
But I really love this website. It's an awesome place to find resources. And yeah, just tons of different books and she's got different ways to search. You can search by genre, subject, author, and she's always looking to add more. So if anyone has a recommendation for her to add to this site, you can find Adoptee Reading on Twitter @adopteereading, and also, of course, through the website (which is adopteereading.com).
And Karen would love to hear from fellow adoptees to add to that awesome collection of resources. So thanks, Karen, for sending me that email and for maintaining that website. It's really great.
Landric, what did you have to share with us?
Landric: It's a book I read recently that I thought was really interesting.
It's called Identical Strangers, A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited. It's by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein. They're actually identical twins, but they were separated at birth and both adopted by different families. And neither of them was aware they were twins. And then they were reunited when they were in their thirties, because one of the two of them requested non-identifying information. And part of the information that they got when they got their information referred to the fact that they were a twin.
So then there's this whole process that they go through, of one of the sisters contacting the other, and the reunion, there. And one sister wasn't sure she really wanted to have a relationship with the other. It was all very, you know, it was all very shocking and very uncomfortable. And eventually they (obviously, because they wrote this book together), they obviously did work it out.
But there's just a whole lot of good information about going through this reunion, and then searching for their birth parents, and you know, kind of dealing with adoption agencies, and the things they had to go through. And it turned out the reason they were separated was for a twin study (that they weren't even then a part of, because one of the two of them was not developing as quickly as the other). So then they were removed from even being in the study.
Haley Radke: Come on. Okay. So this sounds like fiction, but this is a real memoir.
Landric: Yes, it is.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Okay. That sounds crazy. I'm totally gonna pick that up.
Landric: Yeah, it's definitely worth a read. I couldn't wait to pick it up again every time, after a break. It's quite something and it'll make you very angry, but it'll also— In the end, they obviously managed to build a relationship. But it's still, you know, it's— They missed an awful lot because, you know, not getting together until they were in their mid thirties.
Haley Radke: Sure. And so you're reading this as a father of twins?
Landric: Yeah. And you know, my boys are connected at the hip. And I just… And they're not even identical, they're fraternal. And I just can't imagine what it would be like to separate them. They have different classes at school (and they don't even like that), but we felt like it was in their best interest to have a little bit of time apart every day.
Yeah. I mean, they have bunk beds and most of the time they'll sleep in one of the two, usually the bottom bunk. They'll sleep together in the bottom bunk (even though they have their own beds), because that's how connected they are. And you know, I just can't imagine separating twins because you wanted to study how that would affect them.
Haley Radke: That's really something. Well, thank you so much for that recommendation. I look forward to reading it and being very angry with you.
Okay, so Landric, you said that you have a blog. What's the address? So we can find and read some of your work there.
Landric: Yeah, I do. It's anadoptedadult.blogspot.com.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I look forward to reading some of your articles there.
Landric: Sometimes it's a little bit angry, but you know, it's sometimes how I feel. And other times it's not.
Haley Radke: We'll be able to catch up on all the other missed threads from your story, maybe, from some of your posts. Oh, wow. I can't thank you enough for all of your time. You're so generous with your time tonight, and just being so open with your feelings and your story. So, I know that we're all gonna benefit so much from hearing your story. Thank you.
Landric: Well, I enjoyed it. I hope it's helpful.
Haley Radke: If you have more questions for Landric, or to thank him for sharing with us, you can find him at his blog: anadoptedadult.blogspot.com. The show notes with links to everything we've discussed today are available on our website, adopteeson.com.
You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @Adopteeson, or Facebook— just search Adoptees On podcast. I've heard from so many of you, how helpful you're finding this podcast. Thank you. I have a favor to ask: Would you tell just one person about the podcast today? You know who needs to hear Landric’s story, text them the link to the show and tell them it's a must listen. Sharing the show with your adoptee network is absolutely the best way to support us.
Thanks for listening. Let's talk again, soon.
