What It Really Feels Like Finding Your Birth Family

I have always known that I was adopted. My parents told me when I was very young. It didn’t really matter that much to me, mum was mum, dad was dad, and that was that. We were all a little different anyway, my older brother Michael is Māori and his dark skin is a stark contrast to my younger brother, Quintin’s pasty white skin. I’m in the middle, not as dark as Michael, but not as white as Quintin.

It never really bothered us kids, we loved each other regardless and the only time that I can remember it being an issue with Quintin didn’t end up so well for him. He wasn’t getting something that he wanted, something wasn’t going his way, so in retaliation, he screamed at me that ‘she wasn’t my real mother anyway’. He only said that once. The smack across the mouth that he received from my backhand, stopped any future idea of making such hurtful statements.

I knew where I was born, but not much else.

I knew I had been born in Auckland, New Zealand. My mum and dad adopted me when I was nine days old and they had told me that I was part Māori, but they didn’t know any more than that. They didn’t know from what part of New Zealand, no clue about tribe or people and I don’t think that my birth mother knew either. Mum had met my birth mother when she handed me to her. I had been born at the beginning of December and by mid-December, as the adoption agencies were due to close for the holidays, she found foster parents to look after me until she could sort things out with the adoption agency.

I had a great relationship with my dad, when I was young I asked him many times to tell about when he adopted me. He would go to great lengths describing the day he went to the hospital and out of the hundreds of babies he chose me. Of course, this story made me very happy at the time, but gradually it changed through the years. He had actually come home from work one day and found me in a bassinet on the kitchen table. Mum had decided and that was that. He, of course, described how he looked into the bassinet and saw this little baby so incredibly beautiful that he just had to keep her, he couldn’t give me back.

Being adopted felt like I had been thrown away.

These endearing stories, however pleasant when I was little, did not stop the deep wound of rejection that grew over time and gnawed away at my identity and self-worth. My personal belief is that feelings of rejection are the baggage we carry as adopted people, regardless of how great our adopted parents are. I think it is what we receive in our development within the womb. Feelings of ‘I don’t want you’, ‘you are a nuisance to my life’ seep into our subconscious from the woman carrying us into the world. By the time I was born, I already believed that I was not enough.

I carried this belief all my life. I was an angry teenager, drinking way too much and masking my pain with drugs and sex. It is a common enough story. Then I found Jesus and the theology of a universal plan appealed to me. I had a purpose, my life had meaning and I could appease, to a certain extent, the gnawing pain that I had been discarded, thrown away, unwanted. I no longer cared to know about my birth family or where I had come from. I definitely wasn’t going to go looking for them. In my mind, I was not going to give someone an opportunity to reject me a second time. Then Alison decided it was time for me to find my heritage and to actually find my family.

It was all Alison’s fault.

I had lived my whole life in Australia. My parents moved there when I was two years old. After they divorced, my dad returned to New Zealand and I visited him every few years or so, but I didn’t really know anything about the country of my birth.

I met Alison in 2007, she lived 7 minutes from my house. When I met her, to be honest, I had found her to be rather a little irritating, but we ended up becoming great mates, best friends. She was the kind of friend that would come around after dinner in PJs for either a cup of tea or a glass of wine (depending on how the week was going). Our kids got along, at least enough not to kill each other and then after seven years, Alison decided to return home, to head back to Christchurch, stupid idea really and she left me crying at the airport.

As it goes with true friends and modern technology, we still stayed close. Alison was living in New Zealand now and decided one day, that it was time for me to ‘find my people’. My first response was, “buzz off and find your own people!”. I didn’t need to, I wasn’t interested and didn’t want to bother, but if you knew Alison however, you would know that she doesn’t deter easily and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She had watched one of those stupid TV shows.

First of all, she sent me a link to one of those ‘Find My Family’ shows, you know the one on TV with everybody crying and hugging? Alison had been watching one of those shows and was sure they would help. I have only seen the ads, I haven’t even watched a whole show. Just to stop Alison’s endless and insistent nagging, I emailed them my story. I sent them all the information I knew from what my mum had told me. It was actually quite remarkable that mum had met my birth mother because, in those days, no one was allowed to know the birth parents when adopting.

It only happened this way because they had been foster parents and I was placed with them as a temporary measure. Mum had told me that my birth mother was pale-skinned with blond hair, attractive, with long legs, not really much to go on. She had told mum that she was unwed, my father was Māori and her family would never understand or accept the baby. She was Pākehā and being unmarried, with a mixed-race baby was greatly frowned upon, a socially unacceptable situation. She had intended to continue on with her nursing career, I would be adopted out and she didn’t want any contact.

Now what?

Alison was not impressed that the ‘Find My Family’ TV show had not replied. Clearly, I reasoned with her, this was a sign and we did not need to proceed with this stupid idea. I had got along just fine all my life, not knowing, so why bother now? Unperturbed, Alison then sent me a link to a website for a pre-adoption birth certificate.

I didn’t even know anything like this existed, not that I had ever looked. I knew enough about my birth parents to know I was unwanted and that was enough to not want to initiate a search. Alison harassed me until I filled out the form and then I completely forgot about it. The form was so simple, not much expense and I didn’t really believe that anything would come of it. Only a few weeks later, I held an envelope in my hands. It was an official document from a New Zealand government department.

I couldn’t believe what I held in my hands.

I couldn’t believe that it had come so fast, after so long, I would know actual information about my birth, my origin, my identity. I opened the envelope slowly, so terrified about what I would find. The birth certificate stated my mother’s name, the name she had registered me at birth and the stamp that officiated my adoption to my parents. It also stated the name that they registered me. I looked at the information and cried.

Leah Marie Davison, that was the name my birth mother had put on my birth certificate. Although she hardly had time to call me anything in the eight days she actually had me in her arms, but here it was in black and white. Froyle Marie Davies, that is the name my new parents gave me. Then I cried, in fact, I cried for two days solid. I can’t even tell you why I was crying, but it came from deep within me. This knowledge of my identity, that I knew nothing about. The hurt, the rejection from people I didn’t even know. It was deep and it was messy.

Do I really want to dig up the past?

My birth certificate did not reveal much more information. My mother’s name, her age, and place of birth, but my father’s information was all ‘Not Recorded’. Which meant if I wanted to know who my father was, where he was from, which tribe or iwi I belonged to, I would have to find my birth mother and ask her. This would not be easy. That meant I would have to find her and I would have to face all of the issues I had buried years ago, the anger and the pain of feeling abandoned. All the issues that I had finally resolved in my life would be brought to the surface again, to be faced in the flesh. Not an easy venture.

In a time of abundant resources, I did what anyone would do, I looked up her name on Facebook. But that didn’t help, so I googled, nope, nothing. I found nothing. I couldn’t believe she had no electronic footprint. Then I employed the help of my son because he has greater skills than me for internet searches, but he didn’t find anything concrete. There were a few maybes, one person could have been a possibility, but nothing that was absolute or definite. We hadn’t found her or even any clue to who she was. So I shelved the whole thing. I parked the idea on my shelf of ‘no thanks, don’t want to go there’.

It really wasn’t very hard to find her.

In October 2016, I went to visit my friend, Alison, in Christchurch. I had abandoned the whole idea of finding my family and foolish me, I had thought Alison would have let it go as well. But no, that wasn’t the case, Alison had a whole plan in place. Starting with the Christchurch library, we searched through public records. Alison had made an appointment with the Births, Deaths & Marriage office and so off we went to get my mother’s birth certificate.

We were then armed with more information, her name, her parent’s names, where she lived, when I was born, age, the whole thing. At the library, the team included myself, Alison, Treena, (my beautiful friend from Auckland), Marcia, (who was one of the librarian staff that we managed to enlist help from) and also a lovely elderly gentleman, Collin. He had experience in such searches and he wanted to make sure we didn’t get it wrong. “It never works out well, when you knock on the door of the wrong person”, he told us.

Public records.

Here we were scanning microfiche film, going through electoral roles and any other form of public information. Alison thought there was a pretty good chance that either grandparent had died, so we even combed through death notices. What helped us was knowing exact names, we were looking for a George Guildford Davison, not exactly common, so that was to our advantage. When we found his death notice, this gave us the information about his daughter (my birth mum), her husband, son and what looked liked sisters and their families. Truly Alison missed her calling, she could have been a detective. It was our thinking that my grandmother could be in a nursing home, so Treena was set the task of ringing nursing homes in the local area.

As she looked up the white pages, she looked through the names that coincided with my birth mother and her husband and found a number. This was 5 minutes before the library was closing. Treena, quite unaccustomed to acts of bravery, dialled the number. The conversation went something like this, “Hi, are you Carole Ann Davison?” Answer: “Yes”. Question: “Is your father George Guilford Davison?” Answer: “Yes, why?” Question: “My friend is looking for her birth mother, did you adopt out a child?” Answer: “What year?” Question: “1967?” Answer: “Yes”, then there was a long pause, as Treena almost dropped the phone in a panic, “I think it is her”, Treena stammered.

Just like that, I was sitting opposite her in a cafe.

Alison took over the conversation. She had been studying social work and began this project thinking that in the least, the experience would make a great essay for her studies. She knew how to approach this conversation and she was the only one that wasn’t terrified. Alison shifted into ‘safe communication’ mode, putting each side at ease while making sure all the relevant information was double-checked. The right dates, places, names, people, yes, it all added up. As she was talking with Carole, I was thinking, holy crap this could actually be her and it sent a shiver up my spine. This could be my mother, the one who actually gave birth to me.

After Carole got over the initial shock of this unexpected call and had been reassured repeatedly that this was not some kind of scam, she stated straight away that she wanted to meet. Alison arranged a meeting for two days time. The meeting needed to take place straight away, as I was about to fly up to Auckland to visit with Treena. Alison arranged for us to meet at a coffee shop in-between her place and Carole’s house. It was only 5 minutes away from Alison’s house and now I was really scared. What would I say? What if we were wrong and it wasn’t her? What if she backed out and didn’t show up at all, I was totally stressing out. Blast Alison, this was all her fault.

She wanted to meet.

Two days later I was sitting opposite Carole in a coffee shop. We had arrived early and we found a table at the rear of the coffee shop. It was tense. I was very nervous. I was mostly stressing about what would happen if we had made a mistake if this woman wasn’t really my birth mother, what if we had got it wrong? I needed to know absolutely that this was her. I needed her to tell me what she had named me, that would be my sign that it was the right person. No one knew that it had only been recorded on the pre-adoption birth certificate and I hadn’t told anybody that information. Carole arrived, by herself. She was neatly dressed and I noticed she had groovy red glasses on. Like something I would wear. She was polite and sat down and it was very apparent that she was just as scared as I was.

During the course of our conversation, she asked the origin of my name Froyle, because she thought the name she had called me, Leah, was pretty. Then I knew, it was actually her, the woman who gave birth to me 49 years ago, sitting in front of me. It is a really weird feeling, quite un-describable. Very surreal. Carole’s biggest fear was that this was one of those tv shows, when there are cameras and interviews and all that public show. She was very concerned about being exposed. Well, it could have been, if the stupid tv show had got back to me, but this was not that, this was one terrified person trying to find her point of origin, wanting to know the story.

It was a very emotional first meeting with Carole. She was pleasant but cold. She wanted to know how we had found her, how did we track her down? “It was all public record”, I said. When she finally settled down and realised no one was going to jump out of the bushes with a camera, she was ready to answer my questions and willing to tell me her story. We were both very nervous, it had all been so sudden. The only question I had was, who is my father?

What do you mean I am still a secret?

Carole is Scottish, English, Irish descent, blonde hair, blue eyes, attractive. She had been born in Temuka, raised in Pleasant Point and worked as a dental nurse in Timaru. She moved to Auckland to work as a nurses aide at the Greenlane hospital when she met Dalbert King, a good looking Māori boy who had a cute smile, cheeky face and could play the guitar. Dalbert was driving buses at the time, his bus route ran straight past the Greenlane hospital. Dalbert and Carole had a fun-filled few months. He sang songs, told lots of great stories and they hung out with friends at the pub.

Then Carole moved to Dunedin to study nursing and she found that she not only had her beautiful memories of Dalbert, but she was carrying his child as well. Carole stayed on at the nursing college, working until it was time to have the baby. She then went to Auckland had the baby, adopted me out and returned to her life. She travelled overseas, met a man and got married, had one son and eventually returned to Christchurch. I was a secret, she hadn’t told anyone, not her parents, not her friends and not my father. No one knew I existed and that was why she had been so worried about being on tv.

No one knew that I existed.

Then she went on to say that she is still keeping the secret. What? I was still a secret? Her family still didn’t know that I existed? Enough with the pleasantries, that’s when I wanted to scream at her, “Are you serious?” That was almost fifty years ago, society has changed, grown, developed, people’s opinions are different now. It had been very common in the mid-sixties for girls to have babies, go away, adopt them out and return from their ‘holiday’ a little plumb from too much good food.

There are now a vast number of middle-aged adults struggling with the choice of finding family and facing the possible emotional confrontation of that reunion or to just never know where they had come from. That’s why those tv shows are so popular. Finding out where you come from, your point of origin is vital for your own sense of identity, it is what makes us human, the collective experience of life.

It didn’t end like the TV show.

However, unlike the end of the tv show which finishes with hugs and tears, real life does not always finish with such romantic reconciliation. Carole said she had her reasons for not telling her family. But really, all I could think was who would care anyway? Her father had passed away (died with the secret untold), her mother was in a nursing home and soon to follow. It’s not as if she was a famous person and all of a sudden her love child was revealed. It was a common story, it was the sixties, all the cool kids were doing it. No one would really care about a ‘passion flower’ born 49 years ago to some random person. She said she might elaborate one day about her reasoning, but by then all I could hear is ‘I still don’t want you in my life’ and I was secretly hoping I would have more success with my father, Dalbert.

But it changed my life entirely.

It had changed me, finding my birth mother and hearing her story. I was 49 years old, so I didn’t really think it would make much difference to my life, but it did and even though Carole was not going to take me home to meet her family, it really made a big difference for me to just know. Knowing the facts, the truth, the events that had led up to the decision that she made. To understand why she had given me away meant more to me than I had realised. I was no longer a forgotten moment, discarded and unwanted, I was more a product of circumstance and somehow that made me feel better. It was the power of knowledge and now I needed to find Dalbert, now I needed to find my father. I didn’t realise it at the time, but finding him would change my whole life entirely.

Froyle Davies
I’ve been a visual artist for over 25 years and now I tell my stories.
Let me inspire you with this beautiful free print, ‘Above the Stormy Waters.’

Cheers Froyle