To All Adoptees: My Parents Met in 1973 When They Were Both Patients in a South Carolina Psych Hospital

Have I Got a Story For You, Especially if You are Adopted and Flailing Around in the Dark, Clueless About Your Origins

When I was 18 years old I found my birth mother after paying the forever nameless “Searcher” $2800 cash from my summer job after my first year at “Harvard.” He, “The Searcher” promised (and delivered!) to break federal laws and uncover my birth name, the names of my parents, the agency that handled my adoption, and contact information for my mother. The Searcher’s intermediary Mary Lou gave me her word that they would find out my mother’s information and they would give me the chance to reach out to my birth mother until she accepted or rejected me. If she accepted me, she would serve as the keypoint relative who would lead me to the rest of the clan, to the best of her ability.

This reveal was no mean feat because to this day adoption records are sealed in Virginia. The state issues the child a falsified birth certificate listing the names of the adoptive parents as the birth parents and the child’s name as whatever name they choose. The original, legit record is under seal and only an-impossible-to-get court order would change this for the law abiding citizen. My first foray into law breaking was the totally cool feeling of doing the forbidden– while taking none of the risk and never expecting to get caught.

My mother told the tale of meeting my birth father in her typically amusing manner. “He was in there trying to prove he was crazy when he shot his ex-girlfriend. But only in the arm! I was in there because I didn’t need to prove I was crazy to anyone.” According to documents I would later read, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. I have had over 20,000 views, which is not Amazon traffic and nothing that internet stars would ever brag about, but I am deeply honored that so many people will read my thoughts–and it is not even porn! All these visitors deserve the full story. I bet many people baffled by the turn I took from the elite upper echelons of society to the pariahs of the outcasts, now have a sense of a missing piece of the puzzle settling nicely into place.

I feel traitorous to people who struggle with mental illness when I attribute my descent into street life as a failing and not, in part, part of an illness. I have yet to do research on children conceived by two parents who are both seriously mentally ill and in need of lifelong institutionalization, but I suspect that it might be more appropriate for me to congratulate rather than self-flagellate. I want to be fair to myself so that others in my position might gain some insight about being fair to themselves.

It is impossible to tell the real story of how I went from Harvard to the street without telling the story of The Search. I want to start you, my dearly appreciated readers, with the news that I found my birth mother and I can tell you how I did it, the back story, and what I can advise for anyone interested in my recommendations. If you want the long, truly fascinating story, I am going to write it out in detail, like a book. I will still do my blog. You will have access to both stories, the autobiography and my entries about my life on as an ivy league educated addicted sex worker on the streets in downtown Honolulu far off the beaten tourist track. My readers have said they want to better understand the chronology and I want to write the quality book I have written before, sans the “quality.”