Becoming Foster Children

That's my birth mother behind the table.
This is the only photo I have of her. That's Jason in the middle 

When I was 23, I became a mother. My daughter Madyson was born and I was thrilled. I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I was feeling emotions I had never felt before. I looked at her and felt a closeness and unconditional love that I never had before, not with any person. All mothers can relate to that. But for me, being a mother also came with a lot of questions. For the first time in my life, I realized that my childhood was not normal. I couldn't understand why a mother couldn't take care of her children. I couldn't wrap my head around that. How could that happen? Why would God allow it? Where was God when all of this was happening? Something had to have been terribly wrong. I realized that I didn't know that much about my birth parents and I wanted to know if my birth father was still alive. I wanted to meet him. My birth mother had committed suicide (drug overdose) in 1983, roughly two years after we were adopted. But, my birth father was still a mystery, so much of it was a mystery. All we knew was what was in a blue, coffee stained folder.

Left to Right, my birth Father, his mother and his brother

When we were adopted, my new parents were given a blue folder with 5 sheets of paper in it. On those 5 sheets of paper was the story of how we came to be foster children . The story explained that my birth mother was very sick and couldn't really take care of us. It revealed that Jason, born prematurely, had been seen in and out of the hospital for "bumps and bruises" throughout his early childhood. It described a mother who was married three times, to each of our father's, and had a lot of "sadness" in her life. It read on that Jason "had tried so hard to take care of his little sisters, and was such a good little boy, but it was too much for him to do at his young age." It exposed what our father's did for a living and what our mother looked like. Later in the story, it talked about my father and his desire to get help for us kids. He was instrumental in placing us out of harms way. His name was Stephen, he was a cab driver, and he knew that he and my mother "couldn't take care of us". There was not much information about Jason's or Lauren's fathers except that Jason's dad, Raymond, was Native American and Lauren's dad, Lawrence, was a pipe fitter.

My adopted mother kept this folder and every now and again when I had questions, she would bring it out and reread it to me. Lauren didn't ask much, she remembered a lot more than I did, but didn't and wouldn't talk about it. I on the other hand, had this thirst for the truth, the whole truth. And when I become a mother, that thirst became almost an obsession. I had to know what happened, what really happened. I knew if I could understand the circumstances then I could also understand finally why Jason had to leave us. He was much older than Lauren and I, and I had to know what he went through while living in the house with my birth mother and sometimes her mother. I wanted to know everything because I knew that would explain the hard time my sister had adjusting and it might explain why she was also so sad and angry growing up.

I began a search that would answer all my questions.