What a long strange trip it’s been ... through roller-coaster of emotions and indescribable feelings, ranging from frustration through elation, curiosity and wonder. This is my journey down the long and rocky road of being an adoptee and the “adventures” of being a searcher.

Being adopted has many meanings and evokes many feelings. I always knew I was adopted. I was constantly curious and wondered about my birth parents. Who were they; what were they like? My adoptive parents told me they were both college students (true) and some other vague non-identifying information virtually useless and mostly untrue. My adoptive parents were never interested in, or the least bit helpful with, my search for my birth mother.

I never felt resentment toward my birth mother about being placed for adoption, even when the situation in my adopted family deteriorated because of my adoptive father’s mental illness. Matters became worse because my adoptive mother did nothing to protect me or my adoptive siblings from him. Still, I felt no resentment toward my birth mother, only love. I always felt like an outsider in that family; I didn’t belong. I felt then, as I always would, a sense of belonging to my birth mother. My adoptive parents were only taking care of me for a time until I could find my “real” mother and feel whole again. Even then, I knew searching would be quite a ride. I wasn’t disappointed.

I always told anyone who would listen (there weren’t many) that as soon as I turned 18 I was going to look for my “real” family. As a child and adolescent. I was discouraged from looking because it didn’t fit in with the Mormon philosophy of family and adoption. The “party line” in that respect is, once adopted into a “good Mormon family,” that is the family you are going to have “for time and all eternity” (quoted from Mormon doctrine). The adopted child is “sealed” to the adopting family and the birth parents cease to exist for the child. That doctrine set the tone and drew the battle lines for me when I started to search in earnest.

l left the care of that family when I was 13, due largely to my adopted father’s mental illness and his inability to deal with a very bright, precocious teenager. I was thrust into the state foster care system and was placed in a foster home that was an immediate success. My foster mother was an older, single woman (widowed, I believe) whose children were grown and gone. This worked out well until she had to move outside of the county’s jurisdiction because of her work. The county officials wouldn’t let me go with her to the adjacent county so I was thrust once again into the “system.” I was placed with a foster family whose only interest was having a teenager to care for their own three small children. Dismal failure. I was running out of options; my social worker was running out of patience. I approached a couple I knew casually and, with the help of my only ally, a state-appointed psychologist, I asked them if they would take me in. They agreed and went through the certification program to become licensed foster parents. I was their first, but not the last, foster child. I never really knew why they agreed to help me, except that Rob, my foster father, said he saw a lot of himself in me. I’m grateful to him no matter what his reasons were.

This was a very successful home for me and is still the one that I consider “home.” When I refer to my “Folks,” this is the family that I refer to. My foster parents, Rob and Mary, were the first to support me in anything I wanted to do. They encouraged me to always follow my heart and do what I thought was right. Just when it seemed I’d found happiness my world collapsed.

Rob and Mary began to experience marital problems. Since they were official foster parents, the state was able to stick its fingers into all our lives at will. The state was through dealing with me by now and decided not to place me with another family. They gave me two options: marry the guy I was dating at the time or enter a state-operated facility until I turned eighteen. I was sixteen years old. I had no intention of entering a “facility.” I got married.

My marriage lasted only 91 days, but I was finally free. The state no longer had me under its bureaucratic thumb. I left Utah for Texas to begin life on my own. I began to have some health problems. Nothing serious, but nonetheless disturbing. All my doctors wanted family medical histories, but I had no history to give them. While I had always been interested in finding my birth mother, this made things more immediate. Thus began my first attempt at searching.

In 1981, I contacted LDS Social Services (LDS SS) in Dallas, who wouldn’t help me because I had to go through a local contact. Since I was living in Austin, they directed me to a bishop there. I explained to him I was adopted through LDS SS and wanted to obtain my medical history. I also told him I didn’t intend to “interfere” with my birth parents’ lives, but I needed all available information that might help in diagnosing my medical problems. I was received rather coldly, but was informed he would “see what he could find.”

I got a phone call a few days later from the bishop, who asked me to meet him at his office. He informed me that the information in my adoption records was not releasable to me, and that my adoptive parents had received a copy of the information in my records at the time of my placement. He told me he had taken the liberty of contacting my adoptive parents and would be happy to arrange bus transportation so I could “go home like a good little girl.” He completely ignored the fact that I hadn’t lived with them for over four years and was emancipated. That ended my first attempt at getting infomation from the Mormons. They threw up the first of many stone walls.

By 1983, I had seen several doctors and still had no diagnosis for the medical problems that were, by this time, a constant annoyance. I again contacted LDS Social Services, this time by phone to Salt Lake City, and was again told there was nothing in the record that would be of any use to me. Stone wall number two.

In 1986, I traveled to Tooele County, Utah, where I grew up, on my way to Washington State, where I was going to get married. I needed a copy of my birth certificate for that. Rather than go to vital statistics in Salt Lake City, I went to the county courthouse where the adoption was filed because I’d tried several years ago to get one from them without success. I explained I had contacted vital statistics and sent in my money but never received a copy of my birth certificate. By luck and good grace (and certainly the sympathy of a deputy county clerk, who knew most of the situation from my foster father), they opened the adoption record to get the filing/registry number for a duplicate birth certificate and left the file open on the counter in front of me. Reading upside down, I was able to get my birth mother’s name and place of residence from a facing page. My mother was no longer nameless. I finally knew who she was—Jeanne Gross. I also had a place to start looking—Carter County, Montana. I didn’t know if that was her birth place or her place of legal residence at the time of my birth, but it was a beginning.

For the first time I had something tangible to use in my search. I consulted my atlas and found out that Carter County, Montana, is sparsely populated. Unfortunately, there were no phone listings for Gross in Carter County. I didn’t know where to go from there. Even though I asked everyone I knew for advice on how to proceed, no one knew how to help me. I was lost.

During that same trip, I went to LDS SS (make that LDS Unsocial Disservices) in Salt Lake City. I again attempted to get medical history information. I was treated very badly by the staff there and got the impression, although I’m sure there’s no official policy to the effect, that the staff thought I was something worse than a leper, and that I had no business searching, or even trying to get information that could be critical to my continued health and well-being. Stone wall number three.

For a long time I had my mother’s name, and looked in phone books wherever I traveled for listings for Jeanne Gross. I had no reason to believe she would still be using her maiden name, but I didn’t have any other recourse. I found several listings for Jeanne Gross—and actually got the courage to call a couple of them—but found the wrong people. Not knowing what else I could do to find her I gave up searching.

In 1989 I moved to Albuquerque and, shortly after arriving, read an article in the paper about something called “Search Triad.” Sally File was the coordinator and I called her. She gave me some tips for searching through LDS genealogical records. My interest was sparked again because I had someone who could explain what I should do next. I contacted the LDS library locally and was told that all the information I wanted was on microfiche, not on computer—yet—and they would forward a request to Salt Lake City for me to see what they could find. After my experience with the people in Salt Lake a couple of years earlier, I was discouraged enough that I didn’t feel like going through all that again, so I didn’t go through the song-and-dance of requesting copies of records from Salt Lake, which I was convinced would not be complete or accurate anyway.

At this time, I also contacted the doctor that delivered me, who was still living and practicing in Salt Lake City. He told me that he handled a lot of cases from LDS SS at the time and didn’t remember one from another. He also told me that he always told his patients from social services to “lie, lie, lie” on every document they could and to deny everything if ever questioned by anyone about it. He also said that he had an adopted daughter, and that he “would be appalled” if she ever even considered searching for her birth parents. He was vehemently against adoptees knowing anything about their own parents. I was as much appalled at his attitude (one I had encountered before) as I was by him, a medical doctor, who encouraged lying and the falsification of records just to keep information from adoptees. What kind of person thinks that way? Why do people like him think it’s vitally important to keep us from our birthright?

By this time, I was so completely discouraged I really gave up. I didn’t know where to go from there, and no one I knew could even remotely understand what I was feeling. One of my adopted siblings had no interest in searching, and the other did want to search, but didn’t have any more resources or support than I did (and at the time, we were in different parts of the country). Sally File told me about Operation Identity (OI) and suggested I go to their meetings. I couldn’t get to the OI meetings because they were held on a night when I was teaching a class. My “significant other” at the time was not at all supportive of my search, because he just “couldn’t understand what the big deal was.” He said, “You know who you are right now and that’s all that matters anyway.” His statement is indicative of the attitudes of most people outside the triad. Without any support from the home front, l just gave up for a long time.

In I993 I received a clipping of an article from the local paper in the town where I grew up featuring a couple who were both adopted and who had both searched. The man found his birth mother and had developed a relationship with her. The woman found out that her birth mother died two or three years before. I knew both of those people personally. They were a couple of years younger than I and we attended the same schools. That clipping really affected me—I spent an hour just crying—and really reinforced to me that now was the time to search. My adoptive siblings contacted the independent investigator the couple used, and both found their birth mothers last year. My adoptive sister established contact with her birth mother, half-brother and half-sister. Her relationship with them isn’t close, but they are talking. My adoptive brother wrote his birth mother a letter, letting her know how he was doing and so forth, but hasn’t pursued other contact by his choice. It might be interesting to note he has three adopted daughters, only one of which was adopted through an open adoption. There’s another story in that better left to another article.

I called Sally File again—having kept her number in my little black book for all those years—to find out when and where the OI meetings were being held. She also gave me the name and number of a searcher in Salt Lake City who she thought might be able to help, since I’d been really stonewalled by the Mormons in the past. I contacted the searcher, who advised me to go to the local LDS Social Service office and try, once again, to get the “non-identifying” information they had. She assured me the Mormons were becoming somewhat more “reasonable.” When I had that information combined with my mother’s name she would almost certainly be able to help me find my mother.

I went to my first OI meeting during that same couple of weeks without the support of my “significant other.” All I could do throughout the entire meeting was cry. I’d finally found people who knew how I felt, knew the emptiness, the loneliness. People who understood and were supportive. I still couldn’t describe my feelings to people outside the triad, like my “significant other,” but it no longer mattered. I had help.

My need to search was truly rekindled after just a few OI meetings. All I ever needed was people to talk to who supported me and could offer real advice on methods and overcoming obstacles. Some of the OI members I spoke with advised me to be very careful when I contacted LDS SS in Albuquerque, as I was told to do by the Salt Lake City searcher. I was told not to tell LDS I was searching or I would surely be stonewalled again. Forewarned, I decided to contact the local office.

It took a great deal of effort to cut through the red tape, but I finally managed to get an audience with the person in charge of the local LDS SS office. I explained what I was looking for, specifically medical information on both birth parents. He demanded a great deal of personal information from me none of which was any of his business and of no earthly use to him. For instance, he demanded to know what kinds of medical conditions I had and why I thought the information in my adoption file would be useful. I gave him enough information to satisfy him—never letting on that I knew my birth mother’s name, or that I intended to use the information to actively search for her. He said he would request the files from Salt Lake City (beginning to sound like a broken record, isn’t it?) and, after reviewing the file. would see what information he was “authorized to release” to me.

Weeks went by without contact from social services. I went to a few more OI meetings and was actually able to tell my story without breaking out in fits of crying.

I finally heard from LDS SS, Albuquerque. The man I spoke to earlier asked me to make an appointment with him at his office to review the records he received from Salt Lake City. I did, but when I got there, I discovered he had nothing in writing for me. He had a note pad on which he’d written some notes. He referred to that when he told me about the social history of my birth mother as it appeared in the record and the odd bits of anecdotal information. One of those bits was the key that I needed to finally track my mother down—and he gave it to me without realizing, I’m sure. He refused to give me any information on my birth father, saying the information in the record was “contradictory” and so he “wasn’t comfortable giving me any of it.” In the ensuing discussion, I told him that his comfort was not an issue; the information sent from Salt Lake was. He still refused to give me any of that information, saying he would check with his superiors and send me a written report once they reviewed the record. I left his office with one gem and a great feeling of satisfaction for having told him, in astonishingly diplomatic terms, exactly what I thought of him and his organization for being perpetrators of lies and their great conspiracy of silence.

The gem of that meeting was that my birth mother had “gone on to” Brigham Young University after I was born. About two months went by before I got the written report as promised. It contained only the barest medical history (not even a blood type) and a brief sketch on my birth father, mostly useless trivia.

I continued to go to the OI meetings, now with someone who, while he doesn’t understand, does support me and other adoptees and birth parents in their searches. I attempted to contact the searcher in Salt Lake City when I got all the information that she said she’d need, and after about six unreturned phone calls gave up on her. Through an OI member I got a listing of all the Grosses listed in Montana, as well as all the listings for Jeanne Gross nationwide (twenty three of them).

Another OI member offered to help search, so I gave her all the information I had to date. She encouraged (more like the proverbial kick in the pants) me to start calling the Grosses listed in Montana. Bill, my loving and supporting partner, started making those calls starting in the counties nearest Carter County and working out in increasingly larger circles using a scam he worked out. He called several without success before deciding to stop for the night since it was getting a bit late. We found out later we stopped one name short of finding my grandfather’s cousin. The lesson there is never give up. You might be one call from finding your entire past.

This all transpired on Sunday. August 21—four days before my 30th birthday. On Monday morning, I got a phone call at my office from the OI searcher who shouted, “Happy Birthday. We got her!” She assured me she’d call back at 5:30 sharp with all the particulars, since she was still at work and couldn’t talk. When the phone rang at 5:25 I already had a pen in hand and was ready for anything. I got my birth mother’s birth date and phone number and my grandfather’s name and phone number. That was, by far, the best birthday present I’ve ever had.

I’d already called Layleann from OI and made a dinner date to “discuss strategy” that evening. As soon as I had the information in my little black book, Bill and I raced over to Layleann’s for dinner. We talked about my impending initial contact during dinner (i.e., how to make contact, what to say, how to deal with possibilities, etc.). After dinner, as we were sitting out on the front porch, she suggested I make the call to my mother right then, from her house. That way if things went well we could all celebrate together, and, realistically enough, if things didn’t go well, both she and Bill would be there for support.

I’ve never been so scared and nervous in my life as when I picked up the phone and dialed my mother’s phone number for the first time. I was prepared for the conversation with my mother. I had my script and expected to hear a simple hello. To my surprise I got Georgia-Pacitic Paper company, so I dialed again and got the same thing. I didn’t have my mother’s last name. I knew she’d married, but, as far as I knew, she didn’t work at Georgia-Pacific. I came out of the bedroom and asked what I should do next. We knew that the number we had for my grandfather was a valid number, but had no way of knowing whether or not he even knew I existed.

Time to take the gamble! I called my grandfather and said all the things I’d written down (“can you talk,” “take down this number,” etc.) and got him on the phone. When I told him I had every reason to believe he was my grandfather, his response was, “Oh, is that so?” (As it turns out, he didn’t know about me.) I chatted with him for about 30 minutes. I told him why I thought he was my grandfather, giving him a sketch of all the information l’d accumulated. He is a very colorful old Montana cowboy. He asked about me, and if I was well or needed anything. He told me, “Never ask if there’s anything people want; there’s always something. Ask if there’s anything they need.” The one thing I needed at that moment was the correct phone number for my mother. As if he could read my mind, he said. “I don’t guess we need to continue this conversation. You need to get on the phone with your mom.” It was at least a tacit acknowledgment that I was his granddaughter. He gave me the right phone number for my mother. He also said, “Well, you’ve got my number. If life ever gets you down, or if you just want to chat, you know how to get a hold of me.” The way he calmed me during our conversation made it easier to make the second critical call—to my mother.

Now that some of the nerves were exhausted and I’d gotten over the initial shock, I was ready to make the second phone call. I dialed the phone and listened to the ringing. I heard a woman’s voice answer. I said all the same things (“take down this number,” etc.) and when I asked her if August 25, 1964 (my birth date) meant anything to her, she said “it might.” I then told her who I was and I had every reason to believe she was my mother. Her response was “could very well be.” She asked about me, and how I’d finally found her. When I told her about reading the name off the upside-down county documents she laughed and said that I must be her daughter, because that’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do. We talked for close to two hours, I think (the memories are still somewhat shaky). I told her a lot about myself, and found out quite a bit about her and her (my) family. She told me I was conceived on the night of JFK’s funeral (what a way to mourn). When I asked about my birth father, she told me some of the background that I already knew, and said that the rest would wait “until we meet in person.”

Her husband has known about me from very early in their relationship and has always supported her whatever her decisions have been. I have a half-brother and -sister (twins), 25 years old. She asked me how I found her, since she’s been married for years. When I told her I’d just gotten off the phone with her father who gave me her number she said, “Well, I guess it’s time to call him and explain things.” She was very surprised when I told her he’d talked to me for about 30 minutes on the phone. She said in person he’ll talk for hours, but he really doesn’t like the phone, and would just as soon not talk on it at all.

We’ve talked on the phone several times since then. She sent me a package for my birthday with lots of pictures and other neat things, like bubbles, which we both love. I’ve found out that we are a lot alike, and have many of the same interests. We’re making plans right now to get together sometime this fall.

One of the most wonderful things that she said to me was that ten or more years ago, she sent a letter to LDS SS authorizing them to release her name, address and any other information in the file that I requested if I ever contacted them. She is as furious with them as I am, since I contacted them at least three times after that letter was sent (as recently as six months ago) and they never made any of that information available.

I’m thrilled and pleased that I was finally able to find her, and that she’s always wondered about me, what I’m doing and if I’m okay. It’s an indescribable feeling to finally know who I am and where I come from. And to know about the little things, like where I got my crooked smile (from her). We’re getting to know each other, and she is as nervous about it as I am, so we’re taking little steps on this road that has been an incredible journey. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Life without memories is life without a past—or a future.