Frozen in Time
Born in The Shadows, Living in The Light: My Adoptee Epiphanies, The Fight of My Life - A Serialized Memoir on Substack By Pamela A. Karanova
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” ― Desmond Tutu.
Consider Reading Chapter 6. First:
“It was obvious I was headed down yet another destructive path, fast and without brakes. I had no self-love, no boundaries, no real goals or dreams. I was moving through life without direction, powered mostly by adrenaline and numbness. I truly had nothing to live for. Not even myself. That is a hard sentence for people to hear, but it was the truth. I did not care whether I lived or died.” - The Day My Life Became Worth Saving
Find the full archive of chapters here: Index
Content Notice and Reader Discretion
This chapter may contain firsthand accounts of adoption and separation trauma, emotional abuse, religious coercion, childhood sexual abuse, substance use, self-harm ideation, and interactions with the juvenile justice system. These experiences are described from the author’s lived perspective and may be distressing for some readers. This work is a serialized memoir. It reflects personal memories, perceptions, and experiences and is not intended to serve as clinical, legal, or medical advice. Names and identifying details may be altered to protect privacy. Reader discretion is advised. Please proceed only if you feel emotionally safe and supported. If this content brings up thoughts of self-harm or suicide, consider reaching out to a trusted person or a professional support resource in your area before continuing.
This Substack is a supportive space. You do not have to agree with everyone here, but you do need to show up with respect. If you are not here to engage with kindness toward me and others on this platform, this will not be the place for you, and anything less will be removed. By continuing to read, you acknowledge and accept responsibility for your own emotional well-being.
Chapter 7.
Frozen in Time
“Your emotional history isn’t just a set of memories. There are imprints in your subconscious, habit patterns, and blockages caused by how you reacted to what you felt in the past. Healing is the unbinding and unloading of your emotional history through acceptance and letting go.” - Yung Pueblo
I will never forget Anita’s exact words.
“When we signed the adoption paperwork, the attorney gave us the wrong forms. Stanley saw your birth mother’s name. If you call him, he might remember it.”
At that moment, the full weight of it landed on me. Trust was gone. Completely gone. Whatever fragile thread of belief I had left in Anita’s words snapped right there in the room. Part of me wanted to scream at her. The realization hit with brutal clarity. She had known something all along. She had been holding a piece of the truth in her hands while watching me search for it my entire life. Not just watching me search, but watching me suffer. She saw the agony. She saw the torment that lived inside me, the relentless ache of not knowing who I came from or where I belonged in the world. She heard the questions that never stopped circling my mind and witnessed the desperate hunger I carried for even the smallest piece of truth.
And still, she lied.
The betrayal tore through me like a lightning strike. Years of pleading, questioning, and hoping flashed through my memory all at once. All the times she looked me straight in the eye and told me there was nothing to find. Nothing to know. Rage rose up hot and sharp inside my chest. Part of me felt shattered, as the foundation of my entire childhood had just cracked open to reveal a lie running straight through the middle of it. But beneath the anger, something else pushed through the wreckage. A flicker of relief. Because for the first time in my life, I was no longer wandering through complete darkness. I finally had a clue.
If Stanley had really seen my birth mother’s name, if he could remember it after all those years, this could change everything. My entire life, I had been standing in front of a locked door with no key, pressing my ear against it, hoping to hear something on the other side. Suddenly, someone was telling me there might be a crack in the frame.
My hands shook as I reached for the phone. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it was echoing through the room. Twenty-one years of questions pressed against my chest as I dialed his number, each ring stretching out like an eternity.
When he answered, I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Hi, Daddy. Mom said that when you were adopting me, the attorney gave you the wrong paperwork, and you saw my birth mother’s name. Do you remember it?”
Stanley did not miss a beat.
“Yes, her name was Eileen Ward. She lived at 512 Rhey Street in Waterloo.”
Just like that.
Twenty-one years of mystery, secrecy, and locked doors cracked open in a single sentence. The answer I had chased my entire life arrived so quickly that it almost stole the air from my lungs.
“Thank you!” I blurted, hanging up the phone almost immediately. My mind was already racing ahead of the conversation. A surge of purpose rushed through my body, the kind that makes your hands tremble, and your thoughts sprint faster than you can keep up with them. For the first time in my life, I was holding a real piece of information about where I came from.
Now the question was what to do with it.
It was 1994. No cell phones. No internet. No search engines. No adoptee support system or groups. No quick way to type a name and have a life story appear on a glowing screen on Google or the internet. All I had was a name, an address from twenty years earlier, and a determination that had been building inside me my entire life.
I was in Kentucky. She was in Iowa.
But distance was not going to stop me now.
I picked up the phone again and called the library in Waterloo, the city where I was born. My voice must have carried the urgency I was feeling because the receptionist, bless her soul, was willing to help a complete stranger chasing a thread of her own history. She dug through the records and pulled out the 1974 Waterloo city directory.
My heart pounded as I asked her to look up Eileen Ward on Rhey Street.
After a moment, she found the listing.
But there was more.
Along with Eileen Ward, another Ward was listed at the same address.
Josie.
Suddenly, the story of my beginning felt like it might be hiding in more than one name.
I asked if she could check the 1995 directory. Eileen was no longer listed, but Josie Ward still was. The receptionist read me Josie’s phone number, and I thanked her over and over, feeling like she had just handed me a piece of my own missing history.
Without giving myself time to think it over, I dialed the number.
When Josie answered, I explained why I was calling. My voice felt fragile, like one wrong word might cause the whole moment to collapse.
“Hi, I’m Pamela. Do you know Eileen Ward?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Eileen was married to my brother, John. They divorced. How can I help you?”
The next words felt enormous as they left my mouth.
“I just found out Eileen is my biological mother.”
There was a pause on the line before she spoke again.
“Wow. What year were you born?” she asked, curiosity rising in her voice.
“Nineteen seventy four.”
Her response came with a tone that suggested pieces of a long-buried family mystery falling into place.
“We suspected something was going on. Eileen disappeared for a while, then came back wearing baggy overalls, as if she were trying to hide a pregnancy. She must have worked right up until the day she had you, then went back to work the next day. She and John had already divorced in seventy two.”
My heart pounded harder with every word.
“Do you have her contact information?” I asked, barely able to contain the urgency in my voice.
“Well,” Josie said gently, “you have an older sister named Joanna. And Eileen remarried a man named Keith.”
Then she gave me the number.
“Here’s her phone number. Good luck, honey.”
Just like that, after twenty-one years of wondering, I was suddenly holding the phone number of my biological mother in my hands.
With shaking hands, I dialed the number Josie had given me. My mind raced in every direction at once, a storm of hopes, fears, and impossible what-ifs colliding inside my head. Was this the moment everything would change? Would she be happy to hear from me? Would she welcome me with open arms after all these years? Part of me was already imagining the impossible. Lost time is being made up. Questions finally answered. A mother and daughter find their way back to each other.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each ring stretched longer than the last, like time itself had slowed down.
Finally, a soft voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Eileen, my name is Pamela. I was born on August 13, 1974, at St. Frances Hospital in Waterloo, Iowa. Does that date mean anything to you?”
Silence.
A long, heavy silence.
Then a click.
The dial tone buzzed in my ear.
My heart dropped straight into my stomach. For a moment, I sat there frozen, staring at the phone as it had just betrayed me. This had to be a mistake. The woman who had carried me, the woman I had imagined loving me from afar all these years, would not just hang up the phone… would she?
I hit redial.
Determined.
When the line picked up again, I spoke quickly before fear could choke the words out of me.
“Eileen, I don’t want anything from you. I just want to know you. I have questions. Please… can we talk?”
There was a pause.
Then she said quietly, “I am the woman you are looking for.”
My heart pounded as I realized what was happening. After twenty-one years of wondering, imagining, and searching, I was finally speaking to the woman who gave birth to me. The phantom figure who had lived in my dreams and questions for as long as I could remember was suddenly real, breathing on the other end of the line.
“I think of you every year on your birthday and hope you’ve had a wonderful life,” she said calmly. “What would you like to know?”
Her voice was smooth, steady, almost polished, like a well-aged whiskey poured slowly into a glass.
“I’d love to learn more about you and your life,” I said, trying to steady the tremor in my voice. “Do I have any siblings?”
“Well,” she replied casually, “I’m a huge Rod Stewart fan. I collect Garfield memorabilia, and I have one daughter. But she doesn’t know anything about you, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
The words landed softly but heavily at the same time.
“Thank you for sharing,” I said, doing my best to stay composed. “Can you tell me who my biological father is?”
Her response came quickly, firm, and final.
“He didn’t know anything about you, and trust me, he wouldn’t want to.”
The sentence dropped like a judge’s gavel.
Still, I pushed forward. I was not ready to lose this moment. Not after waiting my entire life to have it.
We talked for another few minutes before the question that had been circling in my mind finally slipped out.
“If I sent you some pictures and a letter, would you write back and maybe send me a photo of yourself?”
The curiosity inside me was unbearable. I needed to know. Did I have her eyes? Her smile? Did I look like someone?
“Yes, that would be fine,” she said. “I look forward to that.”
She said it casually, almost like we had just agreed to exchange cookie recipes.
But to me, it felt monumental.
When we hung up, I was floating on cloud nine. Completely overwhelmed with emotion. After a lifetime of wondering, I had spoken to my biological mother. The fact that I was a secret from my biological sister and the mystery surrounding my biological father could not dampen the surge of excitement rushing through me.
I immediately began gathering photographs of myself from every stage of my life. Newborn. Toddler. Awkward teenager. A young adult trying to find her way in the world.
And of course, I included photos of my daughter.
Her biological granddaughter.
I also wrote her a poem.
“Dear Eileen, You have been in my thoughts every single day, ever since the day I realized and we went our separate ways. I wish I could let you know how much I thought of you all throughout the years with nothing else to do. Not knowing who I was, not knowing where I came from. Wondering who I looked like, I’m sure you wondered the same. Never have bad feelings about the arrangements that were made. No matter what has happened, I love you just the same. My prayers were answered, and my dreams finally came true. All of this occurred the day that I found you. Love, Pamela.”
It was a little cheesy, maybe even a little naïve, but it came straight from my heart. I bundled the poem, my letter, and photographs from every stage of my life into a neat package and mailed it the very next day.
Then the waiting began.
Every day, I found myself watching the road through the window, waiting for the mail truck like a lovesick teenager waiting for a prom date. The moment I saw it turn down the street, my whole body would light up with anticipation. I would bolt for the door before the mail carrier even made it to the box, my excitement building from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
One week passed.
Then two.
Maybe she was busy.
Three weeks turned into a month. Then two months. Then three.
The excitement that had once carried me began to drain away, replaced by a heavy weariness that settled deep in my chest. Had she received the letter? Were the pictures sitting somewhere on a table? Did she look at them and see pieces of herself staring back? Or had my package been tossed aside like something that never mattered?
Finally, I picked up the phone and called her. It rang and rang until the voicemail picked up. I left a message asking her to call me back, trying to keep the hope alive in my voice.
But the call never came.
Three months turned into six.
Eileen was not going to keep her word.
The realization crushed me. I found myself wondering why she did not love me enough to write back. No one prepares you for that kind of heartbreak. There is no handbook for what it feels like when the person who gave you life chooses silence.
Eventually, I realized I had a choice to make. I could disappear quietly and protect Eileen’s secret as if I had never existed, or I could reach out to the one other person who might hold a connection to my beginnings.
My sister.
Joanna.
I decided I had nothing left to lose.
I wrote her a short letter introducing myself and explaining who I was. Then I mailed it and returned to my now familiar ritual of watching the mailbox.
Day after day brought the same disappointment.
Until one Saturday afternoon, when my phone rang with an Oregon area code.
I answered quickly.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Pam. It’s your sister, Joanna. I got your letter today!”
Her voice hit me like a surge of electricity. My biological half sister. A real, living person connected to me by blood. We began sharing pieces of our lives almost immediately, both of us trying to catch up on decades we had never shared. She told me she had always wanted a sister. Hearing those words felt like someone opening a window in a room that had been closed for years.
Before the call ended, she told me something I never expected.
She and her husband were going to fly to Kentucky the very next week, so we could meet.
I was twenty-one. She was twenty-five.
Friday could not come fast enough.
When Joanna walked through the airport terminal, we ran into each other’s arms and hugged for what felt like forever. It was one of those moments where time slows down, and everything around you disappears. For the first time in my life, I was holding someone who shared my bloodline.
Over the next few days, we talked about everything we could think of. Our childhoods. Our lives. The paths that had led us to that moment.
She also told me something difficult.
Eileen was an alcoholic, and their relationship had been strained for years.
But Joanna had always wanted a sister.
And now, she had one.
We spent those days soaking up every moment together, trying to build something new from the fragments of a shared past we had never known. Before she left, she promised me she would talk to Eileen about the possibility of meeting me.
Discovering that Eileen struggled with alcoholism felt like uncovering another hidden layer of my own story. It was as if a missing puzzle piece suddenly slid into place. I had been wrestling with alcohol myself since the age of twelve, long before I understood why it had such a grip on me. Hearing that my birth mother battled the same demon sent a chill through me. It felt like more than a coincidence. It felt genetic, like something passed quietly through bloodlines, waiting to surface. The realization settled heavily on my shoulders. Part of me wondered if I had inherited not only her features and DNA, but also her struggles. The thought lingered in the back of my mind like a warning bell I could not ignore.
At the same time, knowing this truth did not magically free me from my own battles. I was still tangled in layers of unresolved pain, trauma, and unanswered questions that had followed me for years. Separation trauma, identity confusion, abandonment wounds. They were all there, woven into the fabric of my life. Learning about Eileen’s alcoholism simply added another note in the margins of my story, another question I carried with me. It reinforced something adoptees know all too well: the deep importance of understanding our medical and genetic history. When you grow up without that information, you are often left to guess at the forces shaping your life.
Two months later, I was on a plane headed to Iowa to meet Eileen after Joanna convinced her to meet me. My stomach twisted with nerves and excitement as the plane climbed into the sky. I still had not seen a single photograph of her. My mind filled in the blanks with imagination. Was she as beautiful as I had pictured? Did I look like her? In my hopeful daydreams, she resembled Raquel Welch, the glamorous movie star I had admired growing up. In just a few hours, I would finally see her face for the first time. I carried the quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, this meeting would be the beginning of something beautiful, a chance to reclaim a relationship that had been lost before it ever began.
As Joanna’s car pulled up to the Waterloo, Iowa, airport, the crisp autumn air wrapped around me the moment I stepped outside. The cool breeze felt sharp against my skin, almost mirroring the nervous energy racing through my body. This was it. The moment I had imagined for years replayed in my mind in a thousand different ways. People often say you should prepare for moments like this, but standing there with my heart pounding in my chest, I realized there is no real way to prepare for something this emotional. Some experiences simply arrive and take hold of you, whether you are ready or not.
The drive to Eileen’s house felt endless. My mind bounced back and forth between excitement and dread, like being strapped into a rollercoaster you could not get off. I stared out the window, barely registering the streets and houses passing by, because every thought in my head kept circling back to one thing. In just a few minutes, I was going to see the face of the woman who gave birth to me. The woman whose absence had shaped so much of my life.
When we finally pulled into the driveway, my heart began pounding so hard it felt like it might burst out of my chest and run ahead of me to the front door.
Then the door opened.
Reality hit me like a bucket of cold water.
Eileen stood there, nothing like the image I had built in my mind all those years. She was not the warm, open-armed figure I had imagined greeting me with tears and relief. Instead, a thin, distant woman stood in the doorway wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, her expression guarded and unreadable.
The warm-and-fuzzy reunion stories people like to tell about adoption were nowhere to be found at that moment. My experience felt less like a heartfelt reunion and more like a strange, awkward scene from a sitcom that had gone terribly off script. I had spent years imagining that first hug, picturing an embrace that would somehow close the enormous gap between us.
But reality had other plans.
Eileen stood there flat and emotionally distant, almost like a cardboard cutout placed in the doorway. The warmth I had hoped for simply was not there. When I stepped forward and awkwardly opened my arms for that long-awaited hug, the moment felt stiff and unnatural, like trying to hug a mannequin that did not know what a hug was supposed to feel like.
The silence hung heavy between us.
No tears.
No emotional flood.
No sense of recognition.
Just an uncomfortable stillness that made the whole moment feel surreal.
The connection I had spent my life hoping for was nowhere to be found, and I stood there realizing that the reunion I had dreamed about for twenty-one years was unfolding in a way I had never imagined.
Entering her house felt like stepping into an alternate universe where everything I had imagined collided headfirst with reality. The air inside felt thick with curiosity and tension. Eileen’s sister, Nan, and her friend Barb were already sitting at the table, their eyes fixed on me as if they had been waiting for the moment I walked through the door. It felt less like a private reunion and more like an audience gathering for a performance.
Eileen was already holding a drink when I sat down. Without much ceremony, she offered me one too.
“Rum and Coke,” she said with a small smirk.
They asked how my life was, so I started telling the story of my life. The turbulent childhood. The fractured family dynamics. The chaos and confusion that had shaped so much of who I had become. I spoke openly, hoping that somewhere in the telling, there would be a bridge built between us. Some flicker of recognition. Some shared humanity that would soften the space between mother and daughter.
But instead, I felt like I had been placed on display. Like a contestant on a strange reality show, I lay out the most vulnerable chapters of my life while the room quietly watched.
Eileen’s responses were sparse and guarded. She offered small fragments about her own life, nothing that felt particularly revealing. The emotional exchange I had hoped for never materialized. The conversation stayed on the surface, polite but distant.
Meanwhile, the rum and Coke in my hand slowly became my lifeline. Each sip dulled the sharp edge of vulnerability that threatened to swallow me whole. It softened the discomfort just enough for me to keep talking, even as the realization slowly crept in that the connection I had longed for might not exist the way I had imagined.
At that point, I decided there was no point tiptoeing around the truth. If we were going to sit at that table and talk about my life, then they were going to hear the real version of it. No floaties. No shallow end. I dove straight into the deep water.
I told them about the abusive adoptive home and my adoptive parents divorcing when I was a year old. I shared about my adoptive mother’s manic depression that turned our house into a nonstop emotional rollercoaster. I told them about running away, over and over again, trying to escape a place that never felt safe. My life story was not polished or pretty. It was chaotic, painful, and complicated. For years, I had carried the quiet hope that finding my biological mother might somehow fill the empty spaces, that maybe she would offer the connection and stability I had been searching for.
But sitting there at that table, it became clear that the version of reality they expected and the one I lived in were worlds apart.
I could see it in their faces as I spoke. They had probably imagined something softer. Maybe a story that fits neatly into the feel-good adoption narrative people love to repeat. Something with happy endings, grateful adoptees, and a life wrapped up in bright ribbons of redemption.
Instead, they got the truth.
A childhood that felt more like a mud-soaked obstacle course than a fairy tale.
The expressions around the table shifted as the details unfolded. Shock. Discomfort. A kind of quiet disappointment, like someone realizing the vacation they were promised had turned into a weekend at a mosquito-infested campground.
My story did not fit the glossy narrative the world likes to sell about adoption.
And I had no intention of pretending that it did.
Telling the truth about my life mattered more to me than protecting anyone’s illusions. Every scar, every hard memory, every messy chapter had shaped who I was sitting there in that chair. Even if the room was not ready to hear it, I was not going to wrap my story in pretty packaging just to make it easier to digest.
So there we sat.
They’re grappling with the collapse of their expectations.
And I was standing firmly in the truth of a life that had never been simple, tidy, or easy.
In the middle of that emotional minefield, Joanna revealed something none of us expected. She quietly shared that she, too, had relinquished a child for adoption. The room seemed to shift again as her words settled into the space between us. It was surreal, almost disorienting, realizing that adoption had carved its way through this family story more than once. In that moment, the lines between our lives blurred in ways I never could have imagined. The very thing that had shaped so much of my existence had also shaped hers.
As the evening wound down, we gathered for a few photos, capturing a moment that felt historic and fragile all at once. I held onto a quiet hope that this meeting might be the beginning of something meaningful. Maybe the awkwardness was just the first step. Maybe relationships like this took time to grow. As the camera flashed and we stood side by side, I allowed myself to believe that a door had finally opened. What I did not yet understand was that many of the hopes I had built around this reunion were about to unravel in ways I was not prepared for.
Meeting my birth mother, Eileen, for the first time felt like stepping through a strange doorway into the past. The moment I walked into her home, I had the eerie sensation that I had traveled straight back to the 1970s. Orange carpeting stretched across the floor, avocado-green appliances hummed in the kitchen, and the wallpaper carried those bold patterns that seemed to vibrate with retro nostalgia. It was as if time had stopped the moment she relinquished me for adoption, freezing her world in the decade when our lives first separated.
I had heard adoptees and biological mothers talk about this before, the idea that a birth mother’s life can become suspended at the moment of loss, as if part of her story never fully moved forward. Seeing it in person was something else entirely. Her house felt like a living time capsule from 1974. The décor, the colors, the atmosphere all seemed locked in a moment that existed long before I ever walked through that door. There was something oddly touching about it, almost surreal. At the same time, it was a quiet reminder of how deeply adoption can shape a person’s life, forever.
The woman standing in the middle of that frozen world was not the figure I had imagined all those years. The Hollywood version I had created in my mind quietly dissolved the moment I saw her. She was not the glamorous, radiant woman I had pictured. Instead, she looked worn down by life, a woman whose body carried the visible marks of difficult years. The gap between expectation and reality hit me hard, leaving me struggling to reconcile the fantasy I had built with the person standing before me. Disappointment was an understatement.
Eileen’s health painted a complicated and unsettling picture. Her frame was so thin it almost seemed fragile, as if a strong gust of wind might knock her sideways. An oxygen tank followed her through the house, a constant companion that hinted at serious health problems. Yet at the same time, she chain-smoked cigarettes, lighting one after another with a stubborn determination that made no sense to me. Watching her was almost surreal. A cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, oxygen tubing nearby. The whole scene felt like something out of a dark, uncomfortable comedy.
But beneath the strange contradiction was something much heavier. Her struggle with COPD was not abstract or theoretical. It was right there in front of me, visible in every breath she took. The absurdity of the situation could not hide the deeper sadness of it all. Standing there in that retro house, watching the woman who had given me life struggle to breathe while refusing to give up the habits destroying her body, I was confronted with a sobering truth. Sometimes reality does not unfold like the stories we imagine. Sometimes it is far stranger and far more heartbreaking than anything we could have written ourselves.
Eileen’s house felt less like a home and more like stepping into a vampire’s lair. Every window was shut tight, sealed off from the outside world as if sunlight itself were unwelcome. The rooms sat in a dim, stale gloom that made the place feel heavy and lifeless. It carried the strange atmosphere of a low-budget horror film set, where something always felt slightly off. There were no plants, no cheerful colors, nothing that suggested warmth or vitality. Instead, the space was dominated by an odd, unsettling collection of alcohol bottles, stacks of cigarette packs, and oxygen tanks, neatly lined along two dining room walls like some strange installation. The house seemed to breathe smoke, sadness and loneliness. Even trying to laugh about the absurdity of it all, I could not shake the quiet sadness that clung to the place. It felt as if joy had once visited and decided never to return.
I remain deeply grateful that I had the opportunity to meet my biological mother, something many adoptees never get the chance to experience. Being able to see her face, hear her voice, and stand in the same room with the woman who gave me life was something I had dreamed about for as long as I could remember. That moment of connection, simply knowing who she was and where I came from, is something I will always carry with me. At the same time, the reality of that meeting did not unfold the way my heart had imagined it would for so many years. The disappointment I felt was real and heavy, a reminder that while some answers may finally arrive, they do not always bring the comfort or healing we hoped they would.
Looking back, I often wish I had approached that meeting differently. I was so overwhelmed by emotion and longing that I poured out far more of my heartache and heartbreak than I probably should have. I wish I had slowed down, asked more questions, taken more notes, and allowed myself more time to simply observe and absorb the moment. Even though I was over the moon to finally meet the woman who gave me life, part of me will always regret not being more grounded and curious in that space instead of trying so hard to fill it with my own story.
Even when the signs were quietly flashing all around me, I moved forward with the hopeful innocence many adoptees carry for years. I had spent my life believing the story that she “loved me so much,” and that belief fueled a powerful fantasy in my mind. I stepped into the reunion confident that it would unfold like the fairy tale I had built over decades of wondering and imagining. Nothing in those years of dreaming could have prepared me for the emotional rollercoaster that would follow over the next fifteen years of my life.
A few weeks after returning to Kentucky from meeting Eileen for the first time, I picked up the phone to call her. The phone rang and rang and rang. No answer. I left a voicemail. “Hi Eileen, I was calling to say hello and see how you were. Call me when you can. I hope you are well. – Pam.” Then I waited.
Silence.
Months passed. I called again. More voicemails. More waiting. Still nothing. Eventually, the months turned into years. I mailed a few cards and letters over time, simple notes letting her know I was thinking about her. But she remained a ghost. No response. No explanation. No sign that my words had ever reached her.
Living between my adoptive family and my biological family became one of the most painful realities of my life. With my adoptive family, I had a shared history, but never felt like I truly belonged. I was always the outsider, the one who did not quite fit. With my biological family, the problem was the opposite. We shared DNA, but we were strangers. There was no shared past to anchor us, no childhood memories or family traditions to build upon.
The split between those two worlds left me stranded in a kind of emotional limbo. I had never asked to be placed in that position. Growing up, I had no tools, no language, and no support to help me make sense of it. I was left to navigate the confusion on my own. The isolation, the questions, the constant sense of not fully belonging anywhere followed me everywhere I went.
The young woman inside me could not understand what had happened. Alcohol became an escape hatch, a way to numb the crushing realization that Eileen did not want to hear from me and had no desire to know me. Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if my sister Joanna had to twist her arm just to get her to meet me that one time, and Eileen simply played along for appearances.
But that single meeting opened wounds that never truly healed. Rejection and abandonment became tangled together inside me until it was impossible to separate them. I felt abandoned because she left me with strangers and never came back. I felt rejected because once I found her and tried to build a relationship, she shut the door.
How could I have believed that the love I had been told about all those years would lead to a relationship?
By the time I reached my forties, I began to understand how deeply those fantasies had shaped my expectations. They were born out of separation and secrecy. My story had been hidden from me for most of my life, and I had spent years placing Eileen on a pedestal because I could not imagine that she simply did not want to know me. The emotional and mental toll of that failed reunion became one of the most painful disappointments of my life.
It left me feeling profoundly alone. Inside my mind, my life split into two separate worlds that rarely touched each other. Managing that divide was exhausting, yet strangely familiar. I had been doing it quietly since childhood. My adoptive parents never knew the depth of the turmoil inside me. Adoption was never discussed in any meaningful way, and the aftermath of reunion was certainly never addressed. It remained the elephant in the room.
My single meeting with Eileen in 1995 would be the only time I ever truly saw her. After that, the door closed. It was as if she locked it and threw away the key. No matter how many times I reached out, she chose distance. No goodbye. No explanation. No letter to help me understand.
Just silence.
Joanna eventually disappeared from my life as well. Not by my choice. I reached out many times, but my calls and messages were met with the same quiet void. It took years for me to begin making sense of it all.
In the meantime, I was unraveling. I internalized every ounce of the pain. Therapists did not help, and in many ways, I did not know how to help myself. I never stopped searching for my birth father. I wondered constantly if I had other siblings somewhere in the world, and whether finding him might bring a different kind of experience. Alcohol once again became my full time companion, dulling the ache and helping me float through the party life that masked what I was really feeling.
As long as Eileen was alive, a part of me held onto the quiet hope that one day she might change her mind and open her heart to the daughter she had given away decades earlier. I carried that hope like a fragile thread, refusing to let it snap, even when every sign pointed in the opposite direction. It kept the wound alive inside me, an ache that never fully closed because a small part of me believed that one day she might see me, recognize me, and choose me. I wrote letters, made calls, waited through long stretches of silence, and searched for any small sign that her heart might soften. I tried everything I knew to do. But in the end, that hope became its own kind of torment, keeping a door cracked open in my heart for a reunion that was never going to happen in this lifetime.
For a long time, healing felt impossible.
Then in 1997, at twenty-four years old, everything shifted.
News arrived once again, that would change the course of my life in ways I never could have predicted. For a while, once again, my adoptee reality was pushed deep into the background as something new and powerful took center stage in my world.
And that is where the next chapter begins.
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Where The Light Lands Q & A:
Chapter 7 is where a lifelong mystery finally cracks open. A name, a voice, and a face appear after years of wondering. For many adoptees, this is the moment we imagine will answer everything.
But sometimes the truth arrives without the healing we hoped for.
This chapter holds the collision between fantasy and reality. A reunion that does not unfold the way the heart imagined. It carries the complicated truth that meeting the person who gave you life does not always mean finding connection.
Where does this land for you?
If you are adopted, did reunion bring the answers or the relationship you hoped for?
And if you are not adopted, have you ever considered what it might feel like to finally meet the person you have wondered about your entire life, only to discover the story is far more complicated?
Tell me where the light lands for you.
The Light Files:
If Chapter 7 revealed the moment I finally found my birth mother, it also exposes a reality many adoptees discover the hard way. The search can begin with hope, curiosity, and a deep desire for answers, but reunion does not always bring the peace we imagine. Sometimes the pain of not knowing is replaced with a different kind of pain once the truth unfolds. Read this next. Adoptee Search & Reunion, Trading Pain for Pain
If Chapter 7 shows the emotional aftermath of finding my birth mother and realizing that reunion would not bring the connection I had hoped for, it also raises a larger truth many adoptees live with. The pain adoptees carry is often treated as a personal problem to overcome, rather than the predictable result of separation, secrecy, and systems that were never designed to support our healing. Instead of blaming adoptees for struggling, it is time to examine the structures that created the wounds in the first place. Read this next. Stop Blaming Adoptees for Their Pain: It's Time to Address the Real Systemic Barriers to Healing.
If Chapter 7 captures the moment when a lifelong fantasy about my birth mother collided with the complicated reality of reunion, it also exposes a myth that adoptees are often raised to believe. Many of us grow up hearing that we were placed for adoption because we were “loved so much,” a narrative meant to comfort but one that rarely reflects the deeper truth of separation, loss, and unanswered questions. What happens when that comforting story begins to unravel? Read this next. Illuminating the Adoption Love Myth: The Truth Behind the Trauma.
#adopteeloveforever
I’ve used #adopteeloveforever for more than a decade as both a promise and an invitation. It reflects a belief that adoptee love does not disappear when conversations get complicated or uncomfortable. It means listening without correcting, honoring lived experience, and showing up with care and curiosity.
As you read and reflect on this memoir, I invite you to use #adopteeloveforever when sharing or discussing these chapters. Whether you are adopted or not, you are welcome here. Read alongside friends, adoptee spaces, or informal book clubs. Sit with the questions. Talk openly about adoption’s complexity, loss, and humanity.
May #adopteeloveforever be the thread that keeps these conversations honest, compassionate, and moving forward.