I have always known I was adopted, but it wasn’t until I was in my forties that I really began to understand the massive impact this had on my life. We never talked about it in my family; I knew that the reason I didn’t look like anyone else was that I had different parents, and it was made clear that my behavioural problems must have been due to bad genes. Other than that, I did not give adoption much thought. I had the normal occasional fantasies about being related to royalty, and the not-so-normal fears that the girl I had a crush on in high school could actually be my sister, but I don’t recall feeling any particular sense of longing for my family of origin.
As I got older, adoption gained some prevalence; I would watch my friends root for their home countries in the world cup and wonder what flag I should be waving. Occasionally someone would mention that I looked familiar and ask if I had a brother, making me consider that perhaps I did, maybe even a twin. I watched my adoptive father live his life in fear as he came from a long line of people who died from cancer and I recall thinking how lucky I was that I was not related, but also wondering what I should be fearing. Every adoptee knows the feeling of not knowing how to answer intake forms at every doctor, dentist, specialist, therapist, even blood donation clinic, and anywhere else that requests a family history. But these experiences were just part of my reality, and I did not feel their impact significantly.
My first real curiosity occurred when my first son was born; the first person I ever met that looks like me. It dawned on me that he was the first person I had ever met that I was related to. My son’s birth awoke in me a desire to find out more about my origins both to discover a medical history and answer some of my curiosities.
I was born in the 1960s. My adoption records were sealed, and adoptees were not entitled to them. Searches could be conducted but only if you had your birth mother’s name, which I did not. When the internet was in its infancy there were adoption discussion boards where you could enter what information you knew about yourself, and if someone was searching for you a connection might be made. I did put my information out there on forums like Canadopt and Soundex, but no-one was searching for me, and my search ended.
In 2001, however, everything changed. Cancer finally caught up to my father, and after he died, I discovered an envelope in his desk that contained my original adoption order. The order includes the name I was given at birth, Michael Richard Burt. Before that moment it had never occurred to me that I had a different name; that thought had not crossed my mind. Now, as I looked at this document that stated that His Honour Judge R. J. Cudney ordered that “1. That Michael Richard Burt be and is hereby adopted as the child of John Rolfe Sunseth and June Elinor Sunseth” and “2. That the name of the child shall be Steven Michael Sunseth”.
Hello? My name was Michael?
I suddenly began to realize that adoption was not my origin. My story began before my adoption. Someone chose a name for me; they probably walked around repeating it over and over to me while I was growing in her womb. She probably tried out several names until she lovingly selected the one that seemed just right for me. I was a person who had people before I was assigned to new people. In fact, my adoption order is dated 18 months after my date of birth, and I had no idea why. Suddenly I had questions burning within me that could only be answered by finding out who relinquished me.
In 2006 I hired a private investigator who, by cross referencing my original surname with newspaper ads and census records, was able not only to identify my birth mother, but to locate her. This was exciting and terrifying at the same time. I now had the phone number of a stranger who held the key to the door to my past. I had no desire to meet this person, I certainly was not looking for a relationship with her; I just had some questions (like what nationality am I? Are there any medical concerns I should be aware of? Do I have any siblings?). Despite my relatively benign intentions, the thought of making that first telephone call was surprisingly terrifying; it generated a somatic reaction deep in my stomach; a pit of fear that I had never before experienced.
The next few years led me on a journey into the truth about adoption. I learned about intrauterine bonding, about attachment, about the trauma that separation from our primary caregiver causes and the developmental impacts that has throughout our lifetime. I learned about implicit and explicit memory; how our earliest memories are imprinted at a cellular level and influence the way we form relationships in adulthood. I learned that many of my own behaviours, from leaving home as a teenage and living on the streets, to intense romantic relationships that never lasted, to jobs that I was tremendously successful at but had to move on from every couple years, to picking up and moving as far away as possible as often as possible. I had grown up thinking I was just a messed-up dude and I learned that these behaviours are very common among adoptees; almost normal.
I also learned that support was non-existent. I went through a pile of psychologists, counsellors, and therapists to try to change my behaviours and despite going over my childhood with a fine-toothed comb, nothing seemed to work. Adoption, as a societal narrative, is a positive thing; a child was born to a woman who was unwilling or unable to raise him safely herself, and so another family became that child’s saviour. Mental health professionals consider adoption to be a solution and are not equipped to consider it as a risk factor when providing therapy.
Eventually my self-study led me to formal academia where I pursued a graduate degree in social work and post graduate training in developmental trauma therapy, and opened Kintsugi Counselling, a space dedicated to supporting adoptees as they face the grief, crisis and complex trauma that is a natural repercussion of childhood relinquishment, as well as the distress caused by birth family search and reunion.
In future posts we will delve into some of the neuroscience behind the strategies we developed that saved our lives as infants, but we continue to employ long after they have outlived their usefulness. I will talk about the devastating impacts that consumer DNA sites such as Ancestry.ca and 23andMe can have on adoptees and birth families. I will provide proven techniques to help you understand and change adoption-related behaviours that no longer serve you so that your future relationships are healthy and fulfilling. And I will provide advice on search and reunion strategies that prioritize your emotional safety while honouring your extraordinary journey.
To provide context, I will sprinkle in bits of my own story, as I understand it to be as I embarked on my reunion journey some 15 years ago. In fact, if you have read this far you may be wondering if I ever did make that terrifying phone call.
Well, I stewed about it for a few days until I realized that I would likely never sleep again until I asked my questions. Finally, I took a deep breath, dialled the number, and made the call.
“Hello…”, I began. “You probably don’t remember me; My name was Michael”.