Dawn’s Story – All I Want

All I Want Is My Story….

When I sat down to interview Dawn I was struck by her bright personality. She tells her story with grace and poise, even the hard stuff…she even celebrates two birthdays cheerfully despite not knowing the true day. She even joked about April being her birthday month anyway, so it just made sense to her. But her story is one of subterfuge, good intentions, and her own determination to identify the truth.

Dawn starts off by telling me that she felt like she “didn’t belong” in her family as early as age 8 or 9 because she couldn’t see herself in her family. Her parents’ complexions were much lighter than her own, and her hair was different. No piece of her face was mirrored back to her. But the truth started to come out after a visit to her grandmother’s house where boredom led her to the family bible. There, next to her name, was the word “adopted.” She immediately confronted her mother and grandmother who claimed, after terrifying her, that her uncle had simply made a mistake, it was only her cousin who was adopted. But now she knew what “adopted” meant and that it was part of her story.

When she was 16, she faced the truth again when her older brother revealed to her that she was adopted but he had no answers for her. Again, she confronted her mother, who apologized and said she would have to ask her father. Unbelievably, Dawn walked ten miles to a pay phone to call her dad who was living in another city at the time. He told her simply that he was her father and that was all she needed to know.

Several years later, while visiting her dad as an adult, they began a conversation about her biological mother and who she was. Her father told her a tale of an affair with a new nurse at a hospital he as a police officer often frequented with prisoners. He spoke of how the nurse, just beginning her career, did not want to keep the child, and how it was decided that because her adoptive mom could not have more children, they would adopt her unofficially.

Dawn lived with this version of events for many years, before a cousin confided in her that she was told they were actually sisters. The cousin told an even more convoluted story than the last version Dawn had heard—allegedly she had been born to a woman in prison who was told her baby had died and her father used his connections to claim her as his own. They decided to test on Ancestry to identify out the truth of the tale. The results revealed they were not related, and Dawn says it felt like being hit by a train. She says the most devastating part is knowing her adoptive dad won’t tell her anything. It was at this point that she began looking for answers in earnest.

She found DNAngels through Facebook. Laura took her case, and they spent a long time trying to untangle the web of lies and half-truths Dawn had been told her whole life. Dawn connected with her half sisters finally and found out her biological mother had been an addict and unfit. One of the nurses at the hospital where she was born convinced her mother to give her up, and somehow, she went home with her adoptive father. Her mother was allowed to hold her and named her Angel, but that was all. By the time she had her answers, both of her parents were gone. But she had siblings! Including her full sister, Lynn. Her oldest half sister had even tried looking for her, but they didn’t know her name had been changed.

I asked Dawn what was next for her, now that she knows the origins of her life. She is planning to celebrate her birthday in April with some of her siblings, and to continue processing her journey. She said no one in her adoptive family has supported her in identifing her story, her adoptive brother even told her that nothing could be done about the past.

But Dawn says, “I disagree! All I want is my story.”