Episode 31: Gerri Berger: Finding your birth family, closing the loop
Can there be anything more life changing than being reunited with your birth family? For the millions of people who were adopted as infants in the decades after WWII and have longed to know more about their heritage, the field of DNA testing offers great promise. Many people are finally getting the answers they've longed for all their lives. Geraldine Berger is a professional genetic genealogist who specializes in helping adult adoptees identify and locate their birth parents and other family members using DNA evidence. An adoptee herself, Gerri has cracked hundreds of cases, including her own. She is the author of the book “Living in the Know: The Adoptee's Quick Start Guide to Finding Family with DNA Testing.”
Topics include:
Helping adoptive parents understand that “no one can love you out of your need to know who you are and where you come from.
”The “Baby Scoop” era from the ‘40’s to the ‘70’s when many infants born to unwed mothers were surrendered for adoption.
Only 10 states give adoptees the right to their birth records with complete information.The first step: registering with a mutual consent registry.
Taking the DNA test and uploading results
The unexpected things we inherit from our birth parents
Gerri’s cautious approach to newly discovered birth parents
Resources:
Gerri’s website: The Genetic Genealogy Coach
Living in the Know: The Adoptees Quick-Start Guide to Finding Family with DNA Testing by Geraldine Berger
International Soundex Reunion Registry
Transcript:
Betsy Bush (00:01):
Welcome to the latest version, a podcast about change growth and reinvention. I'm your host, Betsy Bush. Maybe you are in your fifties or sixties, and you're ready for something different. Taking on a new challenge or picking up that passion you set aside in your youth. Kids out of the house? Now it's your turn to fly or maybe you've been walled with a life change. You didn't see coming. You are not alone. I'm talking to people who have been on that journey and they're sharing their insights and advice. So what's your latest version?
Gerri Berger (00:41):
It was a genuine need to know who she was, where she was from what she looked like, what were the circumstances of my birth? What's my ancestry, my heritage,, my ethnicities, and your birth mother holds the key.
Betsy Bush (00:52):
Can there be anything more life changing than being reunited with your birth family? For the millions of people who were adopted as in infants and have longed to know more about their birth parents and their heritage, the field of DNA testing offers great promise and many people are finally getting the answers they've long for all their lives. My guest today is Geraldine Berger. Gerri is a professional genetic ologist who specializes in helping adult adoptees, identify and locate their birth parents and other family members using DNA evidence and adoptee herself. Gerri has cracked hundreds of cases, including her own, and her successes have appeared in news outlets worldwide. She is the author of the book “living in the know: the adoptee's quick start guide to finding family with DNA testing.” Gerri, welcome to the latest version. It's so great to have you today. Thanks for coming.
Gerri Berger (02:00):
Thank you, Betsy. Thanks for having me,
Betsy Bush (02:02):
You know, before we start, I just wanna say to all those adoptive parents who have opened up their hearts and their homes to children who needed families, you know, we honor your work and your all that you've done to create a family. And this is not about, well, you know, Jerry, I'm not adopted, but you are tell me what it was like growing up in a wonderful family that adopted you because I wanna make sure we're not casting shade on the adoptive families on all the work, all that they've done to try to do the right thing.
Gerri Berger (02:42):
Sure. I was for in having a loving family that really wanted to have a child and my parents were married about nine years at the time I was adopted and had experienced a series of miscarriages. You bring up a really great point that I underscore in my book and frequently in conversations with adoptees birth parents, adoptive parents. And that is that no one can love you out of your need to know who you are and where you come from. Of course you have an identity. As you know, as an, you know, you're given a name, you're part of a family, you grow up in a neighborhood or neighborhoods. You have friends and teachers and later business associates, colleagues. And so you have an identity, but it's sort of like you miss the first 10 minutes of the movie of your life. You really don't know how you got here, who you look like. And those questions burn in the minds of many adoptees and other folks in other cases of unknown parentage. And you know, I talk about this a bit in my book as well, but no one can really love you out of your need to know. And so the fact that adoptees want to search want to have the opportunity to meet birth Family members has nothing to do with the love they received or the love that they feel.
And the connection they'll always have to their adoptive families growing up adopted was interesting. <laugh> and really in many ways, it wasn't much different than in my opinion of what my friends experienced, because I spent a lot of times in their homes and your friends' moms and other folks become an integral part of your life. And you see what other people's home lives are like. So in many ways it was the same. Of course the difference was I realized at a very young age that I didn't look like anybody. Mm. I didn't look like either of my parents. I didn't look like my brother who was born naturally to my parents 15 months after they brought me home. And I always wondered where I came from. My earliest memory of being told I was adopted was at about three, four years old. I, I don't know if I had entered preschool yet, but we had a family tradition of watching cartoons on Saturday morning and hopping in bed with my parents, my brother and me. And, um, during a commercial, my mother told me her version of the chosen baby story. There was a, in the 1950s called "The Chosen Baby." And my mother told me her abbreviated version of the story, which was essentially that she and my father loved each other very much and wanted to start a family and took a trip to the hospital nursery. And there I was, and they brought me home and called me Geraldine. So there was never a tale about the stork, certainly no mention of another family. And I was certain at the time she told me the story that she was telling me the truth. And it explained a lot in my mind with regard to why I didn't look like them. I think children understand a lot more than people think they do it at very young age, but that's my earliest memory of being told I was adopted. And then when I was in elementary school, I attended a book fair and was sent there with a couple of books. So, you know, in the seventies you were kind of a millionaire if a kid with $2 in your pocket, <laugh> sure. And was perusing the books on the table and noticed one called, "Are You My Mother" by PD Eastman.
Betsy Bush (06:27):
That was one of the, I can read books, right. With a cat in the hat, on the binder. I remember that very clearly.
Gerri Berger (06:33):
Yeah. And on the cover, there was a picture of a little chick who hatched in his nest while his mother went out to go find food. And he hops all around the town, asking a hen and a dog and a bulldozer, if they're his mother. And I loved that book because I could really relate to that little chick. And I think ever since then, I started the looking for the face of my natural mother in the faces of strange women who might have been about the right age and who maybe had the same color hair. So in many ways, my curiosity began to evolve and on an informal level anyway, that's where my search for my roots began.
Betsy Bush (07:20):
You know, I relate to your story very well because I had friends. I think we're about the same age. I had a lot of friends who knew they were adopted from an early age and probably a lot who had no idea, but there was a particular period of time when there were a lot of kids who were placed for adoption, perhaps because there was such a stigma against unwed motherhood with unwed mothers, you know, being shamed into, you know, or given no choice of giving. But it seems to be a particular period of time in your book. You call it the baby scoop era. Can you talk about that a bit?
Gerri Berger (08:08):
Sure. Um, I didn't coin the phrase, but the baby scoop era connotes a period of time between 1942 and the early 1970s, possibly the mid 1970s, when there was a surge in births of children who were not born within the construct of marriage, born to UNW mothers. This began during world Wari when young women were pinned and going steady with a fellow who was joining the service and fearing that he might not return many of them, of course, consummated that relationship and commitment, which resulted nine months later in children. Some of those fellows never came home. Some of them opted to break the relationship with the mother, but then, you know, you have a young woman who's living at home with her parents with no means of support for herself and her child. And as you mentioned, there was a huge social stigma attached to that. Oh my goodness. People would see that she's pregnant. She didn't wait until marriage. This is really gonna reflect poorly on the family. She'll be damaged goods. This is what birth mothers were told and were told for decades. Yes. And then, you know, fast forward to the fifties and Elvis and the sixties and the Beatles and the rolling stones and Woodstock and, uh, culture of free love and all of that. And so while at the options in the United States, statistically were, you know, 40 to 50,000 births per year, between 1960 and the early 1970s, there was a real surge to about 150,000 adoptions per year. Wow. You know, probably most likely driven by culture of people feeling more free , but unfortunately birth mothers were still treated the same way by their families. They were either ushered off to UNW mother's homes or sent to stay with a grandparent or other family member until her delivery. And then she was told upon returning home, if she had left home that she's never to breathe a word, of it to anyone that everyone, the whole model for adoption in the United States was to pretend as if, as if the birth mother never gave birth as if the adopting family conceived and gave birth to this child on their own. Even the amended birth certificate that an adoptee receives after an adoption is finalized is in many ways a falsified document because a birth certificate by definition is someone certifying the truth of the live birth event. This baby was born to these parents and it weighed X and it was born on this day and these are the parents and the address. And so it's really a form of legalized identity theft. Hmm. And to this day, only 10 states in the United States allow adult adoptees, unrestricted access to their own original birth information. Whereas in, you know, 190, one of the 193 United nations allow these access to their own original birth information. When they come of age, uh, age of legal majority, mm-hmm <affirmative>, whatever that is in a given country. The only two countries that never ratified this agreement, the United nations, CRC, the rights of a child and the only two countries that never ratified the UNC CRC are the United and Somalia because in the United States, adoption is a billion dollar industry.
Betsy Bush (11:44):
So your own story is really interesting because you as a child, again, you knew you didn't look like anyone else you knew you were adopted, but when did you start looking for your birth parents in earnest? Or was there a time when you said I'm gonna do this, or I'm really gonna start looking, tell me your process of discovery.
Gerri Berger (12:07):
Well, I was certainly always curious and sometimes that would come more so to the forefront than others, but for the most part, I was living my life as Geraldine Berger with my family and my friends. And then I'd either see a movie or come across a book or meet someone else who was adopted. And those inner PS of longing to know would surface again. And during those times I would often ask my mom, my adoptive mother, what she could tell me about my birth mother, anything that she knew, whether or not she thought I looked like her. So I would say probably around junior high school, I, I was 12 or 13 years old and had a neighbor who lived across the street, who was one of my best friends named Nancy. And we were playing tennis in my driveway, banging tennis balls, back and forth. And she was in my Hebrew school class also and said, you know, you don't look Jewish <laugh> and I got that a lot, but I was like, well, what does Jewish look like? But I agreed with her. And I guess, because my parents had always told me that my birth mother was also Jewish and from Northern Westchester, that her family's story would've been similar to mine in terms of her grandparents coming Ellis island at the turn of the century, et cetera. And that made me wonder, well, maybe my father wasn't, you know, maybe my natural father was something else. And so people would often say, you know, what are you, um, are you Scotch Irish Are you Spanish? Are you Italian? Are you? And I, I don't know, but I think my search really began in earnest on my 18th birthday. My mom always told me that she had a copy of my adoption papers containing my birth mother and grandmother's name and that when I was, and I could have a copy of them. So on my 18th birthday, I nervously asked her if we could go to the safe deposit box and if she would provide me with a copy of those. And a few days later, we did that. And my mom and I didn't make a lot of eye contact. And we were in the little room at the chase Manhattan bank, Insley New York. And I was cognizant of how she may be feeling. But I, I had wondered my whole life about this nameless faceless individual. And when I looked at the papers, there was her name and knowing that she had also been a high school student from Northern Westchester, at least allegedly based on what the attorney had told my adopting parent, I thought to myself, well, how hard can this be? I have a name. I have a location. How many high schools could there be in Northern Westchester? I'm gonna go find her picture in the yearbook. But I later learned that she had used an alias. And what I thought would be a relatively simple search was actually virtually impossible and lasted almost 24 years.
Betsy Bush (15:00):
Wow. While you were conducting this search in a personal way, you went to college, what was your chosen profession? What sort of field of career did you choose.
Gerri Berger (15:12):
In college? I majored in business and telecommunications. I started that as a telecom major. I wanted to, I was active in the college radio station and took a lot of film classes and learned how to use a camera and editing equipment and all this kind of stuff. And then eventually, you know, ha having friends with, of parents who worked for ABC in New York realized that this might be a very tough field to break into. And despite my love of entertainment and that whole field decided to have a double major in business. So when I graduated, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. My parents suggested that I get involved in sales because I love people and I'm extroverted. And I wasn't really feeling that, but I, I had signed up with a recruiting agency who actually recruited me into becoming a recruiter for them. And so that gave birth later to a career in human resources where I spent 25 years, went on to obtain a master's in psychology with a focus in organizational development and became a human resources executive who worked for, I worked for fortune five hundreds. I worked for a top 10 American law firm. I worked for startups, which I really enjoyed. So I, I had a career in HR, ultimately
Betsy Bush (16:31):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then when did you, was it the evolution of DNA testing that broke open the case of your own birth family? Tell me what happened there.
Gerri Berger (16:45):
Well, in 2007, I was reunited with my birth mother through a registry called ALMA, that was founded in the 1950s by a black market baby named Florence Fisher. And I registered with them in 1991 and no match was made. And eventually I had divorced and relocated and remarried and had moved to Georgia. And I never believed after several years of having been registered with them, that that was the way I was gonna find her. And it was the opinion of several of my mentors in the adoption community that she probably did use an alias, which was not uncommon back then. So I was living in Georgia and emptying a filing cabinet in my home office, getting ready to paint the room, to drag the cabinet out of there. And I had to empty all the files out of the drawers in order to be able to do that. And I came across my registration form with Alma, and I said to myself, you know, maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing. Let me get in touch and see, and just update my address information. And that's when their membership coordinator said, "Gerri, are you sitting down? We have a match." Wow. So it was just surreal. I never believed that it would happen like that or that it would ever be that simple. And we had a wonderful reunion at her home in New Hampshire. Coincidentally, she lived eight miles from new England college where I attended school. No kidding. She was living in where New Hampshire a job had brought her husband and herself there eight years after my graduation. And I asked her when we met for the first time in person who my natural father was and 10 years would pass. She was unable because of the trauma at the time. And other reasons to help me locate him and identify him. And he had a relatively common name. So probably, oh, I think it was 2013. I had been working with a cousin of hers who lives in Ohio, Jack, who is our family genealogist. And he was doing a Y DNA test because his father's side was Welsh, et cetera, not the side we were related on, but I told him the story. And I told him that I was still interested in what earning the other half of who I am and where I come from. And he said, why don't you do an autosomal DNA test? And I said, what's that <laugh>? And so, um, I did, I tested with Ancestry. And when you take an autosomal DNA test through Ancestry or 23 and Me or other testing companies, you not only receive a breakdown of your ethnic mix called an admixture chart. You also are paired with your genetic relatives who are either called DNA matches or DNA relatives, depending upon the testing company. And sometimes they're communicative. And sometimes there are family trees posted. And there's an opportunity who discovered the truth of who you are through them or through professional genetic genealogists. And it would take another three years before I would have a close enough DNA match to actually solve my own case because the Italians, uh, my natural father was half Italian. The Italians in addition to other groups are very underrepresented in the DNA pools. At that time, I had been volunteering for many years in the adoption search community. And the membership coordinator from Alma had contacted me and said we were in touch frequently. And she said it to me. Um, you know, there's a woman who registered and her birth mother didn't sign up, but she's done a DNA test. Do you think you can help? And I said, I don't know, I'll try. And so I started doing this on a volunteer basis and was actually able to solve about 40 or 50 cases before I was able to solve my own because my DNA matches were fourth to sixth cousins, which places your common ancestors back in the days of the revolutionary war, the tree would just be, it would be a book. It, it, it would really just be untenable.
Betsy Bush (21:06):
You know, Gerri, let me just stop you for a second. Cuz we've talked about a couple things. I just wanna clarify some terms for my listener. Now ALMA is a registry. If I understand it, where mothers who are hoping to locate the children that they gave up for adoption and the children who are looking for those parents can meet through a registry and they're paired up that way. Is that how that works?
Gerri Berger (21:34):
That's right. They are, what's called a mutual consent registry and there are several out there each state in which an adoptee was born or adopted has a mutual consent registry where both birth parents and adult adoptees can register with one another for free to be paired up with one another and release contact information. There's also the ISRR.org. They are the international sound X reunion registry who also started in the seventies and is free and where matches can be made between adult adoptees and their birth families. Alma is a nonprofit organization. The one through which I was fortunate enough to be reunited with my birth mother. And today there are probably a dozen free electronic registries online. But unfortunately the downside is, is that it has over fragmented the adoption community who is in search. And no one really knows which registry their missing person will be found in if anywhere.
Betsy Bush (22:43):
So when you found your birth mother, you came up with some very interest information. And so your heritage was very different from the one that you thought you had when you were growing up as a kid in Quaker Ridge, right?
Gerri Berger (22:59):
<laugh> yes, that's true. In fact, my half sister Rohan, my birth mother on our first phone call told me that I had six halfs siblings who have known about me since they were old enough to talk, which is very unusual. She had met and married her husband six months after I was surrendered for adoption. They went on to have six children before she was 30. And each of them, when they were old enough to understand, knew that there was a sister out there who may one day return. And on our first phone call, she let me know that they were all anxious to speak. She told me that and that they were all anxious to speak with me. And I received six emails, long emails from each of them. And the email from my sister, Rohanna really shifted my paradigm in terms of who I believed I was and where I came from because she told me that we were Mayflower descendants on our mother's mother's side. And I said to myself, wow, I never would've imagined that I have roots as a Pilgrim. Like none of that really resonates with me. And I had also had that conversation later with my birth mother. And she said, don't be fooled. They were very rusty people. My dear, they, they were warned by their minister, never to go to the new world that they would certainly suffer, but they believed in divine Providence. And they went anyway. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I was like, well, well that sounds a bit like me. <laugh> in a little bit of a rebel, certainly in those earlier years. So it was interesting to discover that. And also 10 years later, my natural father's side, but it, you know, a lot of people not just adoptees will take a DNA test believing that they have roots in particular countries or cultures and find out that there's a lot more to that picture than they ever imagined. And in many ways, for some people, not a lot, but certainly a small percentage of people are discovering that the siblings that they grew up with are in fact, half siblings, not full siblings, that a lot of family secrets are exposed through DNA and people will have DNA matches they don't recognize, like you could take a DNA test. We could find out where second cousins and you look at those results and say, who the heck is Gerri Berger? I know who all my second cousins are. Yeah. Until you were receive an email and discover that I'm an adoptee. So
Betsy Bush (25:30):
Yeah, you're right. There are no secrets. Now in this age of DNA testing, you can't hide the, I mean, we're learning a lot about children born from sperm donors that, uh, there are a lot more out there that maybe the donor they, they were getting was actually the doctor who ran the clinic. There were several documented cases about that. Dani Shapiro, an well known author has written about her discovery in her Jewish family. She had blonde hair. She didn't look like anyone. And no one could understand because she thought her parents had IVF help. And it turned out that the it was Patrician director of her clinic was actually the donor. It kind of, you know, it's, it's one of these things where you think there was an age when maybe did people think infants were blank slates and you just handed a baby to a family and maybe aside from hair color and eye color, everything else would be taken care of in the nurture part of that baby's formation. And the nature part was very limited. But I think now we're learning that there's a lot to DNA and heritage than we had thought before. Right? Like talents and preferences and things like that.
Gerri Berger (26:53):
Well, sure. You know, it's interesting. I'd always heard the expression growing up. As many of us have the apple doesn't fall far from the tree mm-hmm <affirmative>. But as an adoptee, you, you can only really conceptually understand what that means without a personal frame of reference and personal experience. People often ask me since I found my birth mother, who are you more like, are you more like her or are you more likely your mom? And I often say, I mean, my experience has it's like asking me what my favorite color is. It just depends. Are we talking about carpeting or automobiles or flowers or, or clothing? It really just depends. But what I did realize was that you inherit, having spent a lot of quality time with birth family members, particularly my birth mom, that you inherit entirely more than how you look. In many ways. I was a watered down version of her. I remember a first visit to her home. We were sitting in her hot tub on my second night there looking up at the stars. And I said, oh, look, there's the big dipper. And she said, yes. And there's Cassie Opia Pegasus. And Taurus, we should go upstairs and do your two chart, dear. And I was like, oh my God, I loved astrology when I was a kid and a teenager and my best friend. And I always used to get those little scrolls from the supermarket and those plastic tubes and called the Jeanne Dixon forecast from our before homeroom and junior high school. And that was just one thing that we had in common. She was musical. She sang, that was the case with me. She was into the performance arts. That was the case with me. She liked blue cheese and we had the same laugh, even though, as she would say, we didn't do the time together. So, you know, your talents, your interests, sometimes even the way you laugh are inherited your temperament, but the lenses through which you view the world. I mean, I think that the people who teach you how to speak are the people who teach you how to think and the lenses through which you view the world. And I remember asking her on my first visit, if she recognized me as one of her own I, and she said, yes, but you have elephant ears. And I said, what's that? And she said, Doris and Lenny, I can see them in you as well. You know, not physically, but the way I carry myself, the way I speak the way I think the, my ideas, et cetera. So you're kind of both, right?
Betsy Bush (29:24):
So Doris and Lenny are your adoptive parents, adoptive parents. So interesting. So she could tell that there were certain things that were innate to you, but also were part of your bringing up.
Gerri Berger (29:37):
that had nothing to do with them. Yeah. Interesting. And it's weird because, you know, in my own experience, I went in search of her because of this ongoing it's more than a curiosity. It was a genuine need to know who she was, where she was from what she looked like, what were the circumstances of my birth? What's my ancestry, my heritage,, my ethnicities, and your birth mother holds the key. She knows the answers of the truth of your origins. And I was so fortunate to at the time that I was matched with her through Alma, that she was alive, that she was willing to meet with me, that I had siblings that she wasn't trying to hide me from. And that she was very open about her experience then, and very welcoming and provided all the information and more that I ever could have wanted to know about my heritage.
Betsy Bush (30:38):
Gerri, let's talk about how you help people make connections with their birth parents. How does that work? What do you do and how do you help people?
Gerri Berger (30:50):
Well, I'm a professional genetic genealogy and I use people's DNA test results through companies like Ancestry, DNA, 23 And me, my heritage family treat dna.com to identify and locate their birth parents. Typically, I advise people to test with Ancestry DNA first because they have the largest population of members of DNA testers. Their database includes over 20 million people. And so the statistical odds of a close match, first, second, third peasant, et cetera, are much greater than with the other DNA testing companies by sheer virtue of the size. That said as an adoptee or someone with unknown parentage, there are many cases like that. And you also brought up owner conceived. You just never know where your closest match will have tested. Maybe they got a 23 and meat kit as a gift, or, um, attended a symposium where they were handing out my heritage kits. So people come to me usually through the adoption community or through referral, or because they hear about me through a webinar or word of mouth or lectures that I've given at historical societies and libraries and say, can you help me?
And I ask if they've DNA tested, I offer everyone a free consult to review their DNA test results with them to just log into their account with them and look at those matches because the family trees, uh, of an adoptee or other person's matches are my puzzle pieces in solving the case. And so ultimately what I do is I generate a family tree chart from scratch. I see where those trees intersect. I knit that tree down to the ground. Sometimes I need to meaning complete it through research or by direct contact with adoptees' DNA relatives, and then through a process of elimination, narrow to the birth parent. And then I act as intermediary, but to between the adoptee and the birth parent or any living relatives that the adoptee might wish to have contact with, which provides the birth family with the emotional space to process that their child, after 40, 50, 60, 75 years is interested in meeting them.
Betsy Bush (33:18):
Now you warn against the adopted child getting on the phone and saying, hi, I'm here. Or this is me because there's just too much. You're not quite sure what kind of response you're going to get is a message that you tell people, is that right?
Gerri Berger (33:38):
Yeah. Well, you know, there's a knee jerk reaction to protect this deep dark secret because you know, harking back to what we were talking about earlier, birth moms were warned by their parents at a very young age. If you tell anyone, if you tell your husband, if you tell your kids, your life's gonna go down, the tubes, they'll lose respect for you. You're damaged goods, et cetera. You're not an exam as a parent. And so there's that fear. And so the people, including the birth parent who were committed to keeping that secret back then will often be committed to keeping it 40, 50, 60 years later, the danger in, and this is just through, oh God, real life experience.
Hundreds of people that I've spoken with over the years when you contact a living birth parent, if it's a birth mom, you don't know if her husband is standing next to her, especially if she's of retirement age, if she ever told him. Birth parents mourn this loss like a death, many of them are not in search. And because they don't know that there is a way to search unless they're active in adopt option groups on Facebook or other social media platforms, what they believe is what they were told years ago. Once you relinquish all parental rights, legally, there's gonna be no way, no possible way for you to find your child. Not only that, you've pretty much sworn to never interfere in the life of that child or the relationship between the child and the adopting family. And they often believe there would be legal ramifications for that. So when someone contacts their birth parent, the knee jerk reaction could be a denial.
And then it's like a two by four hitting that person on the back of the head, out of the blue or someone coming back from the dead. I've often made the call as an intermediary and ha oh no, you must have the wrong person. Yes. You know, I did have a child on that day in that place, but my child's father was so and so, and it couldn't be this other person. And so you have the wrong individual and or sometimes I don't know what you're talking about or how you got my phone number, but you better never call here again, or I'll call the police. Only to be called back several weeks later, or to have the adoptee be contacted directly by the birth parent mm-hmm <affirmative>. So having an intermediary who's experienced and is not parroting scripts from TV shows, which is a real danger, you know, that's meant for drama and suspense and entertainment, but when people parrot the scripts of these shows example, hi Betsy. Uh, my name is Jerry. Did you have a baby in 19? We have to talk. I mean, that's enough to guarantee in real life, a permanent hangup and permanently alienating the adoptee from their birth parent.
So giving the birth family, the emotional space to process that knowing what to say and not to say to someone who surrendered a child for adoption, giving them the space to process that and sharing with them. Also, what are the intentions of the adoptee? Why did they wait so long to search for me? Well, until now there really wasn't a way. You know, how did you find me? So what I do as an intermediary is everything within my power to ensure that the contact between the adoptee and their birth parent or other, a living birth family member is a positive first contact.
Betsy Bush (37:04):
I want to make sure we cover a couple of things because we're coming up close to the end of our time. So it is possible for a birth mother to take steps, to find the child they re relinquished for adoption decades ago. Is that right? Or what steps would you suggest a birth mother take?
Gerri Berger (37:26):
I would suggest that she test with ancestry DNA. If the child she's surrendered for adoption, who's now an adult has tested. each of them will show up in the parent child category of the DNA matches portion of the software program of ancestry.com. Many volunteers in the adoption community, including professionals like myself will suggest testing with ancestry first, simply because they have the largest user base. So that's a first step also in the footer of my website, there's an area genetic genealogy coach.com. There is a newsletter that folks can sign up for to receive information on how to upload their DNA to other sites. Once they receive their ancestry or other DNA results, to help them be in as many DNA pools as possible to increase the chances for a match. Great. So I would recommend they test with ancestry first, go ahead and hit my website for instructions on how to upload your DNA to other sites, and then to ask for help. You know, it's a very steep learning curve, genetic genealogy. There are a lot of volunteers out there willing to help folks, but oftentimes they complete a few steps and then disappear or get stuck. And that's oftentimes when I'm contacted.
Betsy Bush (38:47):
You have solved some incredible cases of unknown, you know, baby left in hotel. Tell that story because that, to me, that just blows my mind.
Gerri Berger (39:01):
When I was living in the suburbs of Atlanta several years ago, I made the acquaintance of a woman who became a very dear friend of mine who invited me to join the Cobb county genealogical society, her local DAR chapter, et cetera. And she had a neighbor who she bumped into on an evening walk with her husband who told her a story about how he and he's in his mid seventies now. And his story is in my book, Richard Cole, who is a very dear friend of mine to this day as is his wife Nancy. And he told her a story about how he was left as an infant and in Atlanta hotel room at about two weeks old. And that this story made the front page of the Atlanta journal constitution, which is like the New York times of Atlanta three days running in 1944, after it had happened, she said, well, you have to contact Gerri Berger. And apparently he had done a DNA test several ago and you know, was unable to solve his own mystery as is the case for many.
And Richard called me and we made the appointment to meet. And what's unusual is I was able to drive to his house because most of my clients are from all around the country, even Australia, the UK. But, uh, I was able to meet Richard in person and he had laminated newspaper articles from the forties in his home. Wow. And this was a mystery that ate at him his entire life, despite having been raised by a wonderful family who adored him. And I was able to identify both of his birth parents. The newspaper article said that his birth mom checked into the Robert Fulton hotel as Mrs. Richard Parker from salt lake city, Utah. And it turned out that both of his birth parents were from Davenport, Iowa. He is the spitting image of his dad and his paternal grandfather. And I was able to reunite him with his half sisters on each side of his family, on his birth mother's side and his birth father's side. And when sisters from his father's side came to visit Georgia, I was invited to attend a lunch with them. And we had a DNA party at his house to celebrate his knowing the truth and long story short, we felt that the follow up of his cold case really belonged in the Atlanta journal constitution who had published these stories 75 years ago. Yeah. And so a famous, uh, local genealogy named Ken Thomas who publishes a column for the AJC every Sunday for decades, put us in touch with a reporter named Bo Emerson who spent a few hours with me on the phone and a few hours with Richard and Nancy at their home. And I'm gonna get choked up. <
Richard's story appeared on the front page of the Sunday lifestyle section of the AJ state. And now he knows the truth of his origins. And as it turned out, his wife, Nancy had a family tree mystery way back to a great grandparent that I was also able to solve for them. And, you know, it's unusual that an adoptee would have such, you know, such an experience having their own story, being publish in a newspaper in infancy, but it does occasionally occur such as when people are, you know, baby left in a vestibule of an apartment building, et cetera. He's not the only case, but certainly one that was publicized in the AJC .
Betsy Bush (42:28):
That is remarkable. And I guess left on answered is, you know, is the other half, you know, who do you know, why do you know why he was left behind? Was that ever answered to anybody's satisfaction?
Gerri Berger (42:44):
You know, by piecing together the chronology of her life, she was young. She actually married his natural father, but that fell apart very shortly thereafter. And then she was married to another man who may or may not have known about her pregnancy, who was in the military and could have potentially been stationed in Atlanta. It's still a mystery as to why she chose Atlanta. Yeah. And to this day, we don't know Richard's actual birth date or where his birth mother gave birth. He was given an approximate birth date that he has celebrated his entire life. And try as we have, I mean, he could have been born on a military base. He could have been born at an Atlanta hospital. Maybe she had friends there at the time or relatives. There's just no evidence, no rhyme of reason as to how or why she got, was she alone? Would she have been traveling alone with a two week old from Iowa? Or was she living in Iowa at the time? I believe she and her second husband were living in New England. That's where they were married. And we found their announcement of their marriage in a newspaper, but it was a shock to Richard's half sister on his mother's side to learn that he even existed. Apparently she and her mom had a very close relationship. And her initial response was if my mother had a child that she placed for adoption, I would know. And I'm here to tell you that 99% of the time, no.
Betsy Bush (44:17):
You know, it's all such a human story. And so many people's motivations and what's going on in their heads and what their circumstances are at a particular moment. So much of that remains unknown. Doesn't it?
Gerri Berger (44:35):
It can, you know, I often say the stories are as different as the people they involve. You could read hundreds of stories about searches and reunions, and still not be able to know how your story was gonna play out. Mm-hmm, the stories of others, help others understand what could potentially face them. You might have a welcoming birth parent or birth family members. Your half siblings may or may not have ever been told about you. The same could hold true for your birth mother's husband or the natural father, sometimes birth mom's the father. There was a very sad story. A case that I worked on where the birth mom surrendered the child for adoption, both were students in Boston. They moved out to California, had three other daughters. I was hired by the adoptee to identify and locate the birth parents. And they were married to each other. Oh. And when we made contact, the birth mother did not want contact. She never told her daughters about my client and the father was brokenhearted because he really wanted contact. It took almost a year. All of them living on the west coast, ironically or coincidentally, to agree to meet in Florida at a time share or hotel. And my client and her partner met her birth parents for several hours in the afternoon. And her partner said, well, when does she get to meet her siblings? And the birth mother responded, she doesn't, and she never will. So, you know, you know, you have your family, we have ours. and this is as far as we wanna go. I really believe that if the birth father that if it were up to him, that that would be different. But you know, sometimes people go spiraling into therapy, go into a deep depression. There's a real fear of finding a birth parent, because the fear is of rejection by sheer virtue of the fact that they were placed for adoption, they feel that it would be like a second rejection. Yeah, but almost no one gave up their child willingly. It's the most unnatural separation in the world. Many birth parents were prompted to surrender their baby for adoption by their own parents. Right. And were truly given no choice.
Betsy Bush (46:52):
Uh, so many, you may get answers, but you may also get more questions. And it's the human story in so many ways. Gerri Berger, I wanna thank you so much. This has been an extraordinary, extraordinary conversation. And I don't think I've ever had an hour long podcast before, but this is the fur. And as we know, we've talked about so many things, you're a treasure, and I hope people who are looking for birth families will certainly buy your book. Living in the know the adoptees quick start guide to finding family with DNA testing by Geraldine, Berger, and Gerri give us your website again.
Gerri Berger (47:37):
Yes. It's genetic www.geneticgenealogycoach.com. And the link to my book, which is on Amazon, is on my website as well. And, and I have a contact form. If anyone has questions they would like to reach out. They can fill out the contact form on my website and I'll give 'em a call.
Betsy Bush (47:55):
That's fantastic, Jerry, thank you so much for an incredible conversation. And I wish you all the best and certainly everyone who contacts you looking for answers. So the best to you. Thanks again.
Gerri Berger (48:10):
Thank you, Betsy. I appreciate it. Happy New year,
Betsy Bush (48:14):
Happy new year. Hey everyone. I've got something to tell you. The latest version is moving to every two weeks. Why think about Lucy and Ethel and the chocolate conveyor belt. You really can have two, much of a good thing. This will give you lots of time to stay current with each episode and give me time to find the very best guests to talk to and watch for updates on our new newsletter. If you're a fan of the show, please rate, review and subscribe on apple podcast and check out our web site. You can listen to episodes there and read more about me and my guests. I'm Betsy Bush, and this is my latest version.
