Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / The Black-Market Baby on the Curb Part 2 with Patricia Knight Meyer

Transcript

The Black-Market Baby on the Curb Part 2 with Patricia Knight Meyer · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

• Lyndsay Soprano (00:00) Hey guys and dolls. Before we jump into this episode, a note about our content today. This is created for adult audiences only. We advise listener discretion. So if you need a breather, take a break and come back later. This is Giving Pain Purpose, where we talk about the game of living in and with chronic pain and trauma. I'm your host, Lindsay Soprano. On this show, I sit with the warriors, loved ones, doctors, holistic practitioners, and those who walk through hell and want their voices heard. You don't have to heal quietly, and you don't have to fight alone. Welcome, my lovelies, to Giving Pain Purpose and part two of my beautiful Patricia Knightmeyer's black market adoption story. If you have not listened to part one yet, I really encourage you to start there, please. because what we're about to talk about now is what happened when Patricia finally began finding the answers that she had spent most of her life searching for. And also, really quick before we get started, to protect the privacy of those involved in the story, some of the names have been changed for this episode, just so you guys know. So, in part one, just really quick, we spoke about her black market adoption in Texas in 1970, growing up without records, without medical history, or the full truth of where she came from, the family who raised her, the trauma that followed her into adulthood. The ways that trauma showed up emotionally and physically, and the decades-long need to understand who she truly was, where she came from, and why her story began the way that it did. So before we get going here, let me just reintroduce her real quickly. So Patricia's story began in 1970 when she was trafficked as a newborn along a Texas hospital curb through a black market adoption. She spent decades searching for the truth about where she came from, who was involved. And what had been taken from her before she ever had a voice. That search became Wonderland, memoir of a black market adoption, and it is simply beautiful to read. Coming out in November this year from Unsolicited Press. Today, Patricia is an adoption reform advocate, a book publicist and digital marketer, and a board member of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents. She is also the founder of myadoptedlife.com. Serving a community of more than 30,000 adoptees and advocates working to bring truth, connection, and long-overdue conversations about the 30 billion with a bee, adoption, and child welfare industry into the light. Okay, my love. It is so good to have you back here for part two. I know part one was a blast. It was. It was. It was. So here we are. we ended with talking about. What really got you like to get going on wanting to find out who you came from, like your biological family and how you ended up finding your birth mother? So let's get into the search because this is where your story takes some unbelievable turns. So how did you finally find your birth mother? And then let's take it from there. Patricia Knight Meyer (03:30) Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for having me back, Lyndsay This conversation. Lyndsay Soprano (03:33) It's great to see you again. Absolutely. Patricia Knight Meyer (03:37) You know, sometimes I still like pinch myself that it I actually was able to be successful in this needle in a haystack search. Because my adoption was never legalized and I didn't have any adoption records, I didn't have a name, a date, a place of birth, or, you know, any records to use in a search. The only thing I had that I knew of was potentially, if it was true, where I was born and probably the the two to four week timeframe of when I was born. I knew that the records would likely indicate that the baby had no name and no birth father was listed. But when I started my search, I didn't even know what records to look for. because when I looked for a birth certificate, there was not one. When I looked for adoption records, there was not one. But ultimately I learned that there is something called the Texas Birth Index Records. And those records are up until the records became digitized, you know, in the nineties, you had to go into a building and find a stack of records in volumes that were like dictionary paper thin. And they were all listed by birth mother's last name, by the county where you were born, and then by date. And so Without knowing her name, I would have had to look at every single record. And I remember there was a record keeper woman there and she said, Well, you could pay somebody to come in and do it for you, honey. And I'm like a broke college student, right? Yeah. And then I'm like, even if I had the money, I would have to trust that like out of all these names, like this record this person isn't gonna miss just one that could have been it, right? But what they would have been looking for was a birth mother's name who said whose record showed no baby named and no birth father listed. But eventually when I was in my late 30s after my adoptive mother had passed away, I learned that through a through someone called a a search angel, these are women, typically women, not always women, who volunteer their time to help you help people find their missing people. And they are experts with working within Ancestry and and Jedmatch and all kinds of DNA databases. state records, you know, marriage records, divorce records, death records, all of that. And so this one woman had told me that these records had become digitized. And once they were digitized, that meant that I could search within a given timeframe against certain parameters like no baby name, no birth father listed. And that led me to the maiden name of one woman with a baby that was born in the timeframe that I was looking in the county in which I was looking. And so from there I reached out to the search angel and she looked for marriage records for this woman to see if, you know, perhaps now we could find a married name. And she came back and told me, well, first we found one woman with the same name who was in prison for murder. And I my gosh, like, let's please hope that that's not her, right? Yeah. and then I tracked down another woman and I probably talked to about 10 different members of her extended family. trying to decide if that was the right woman. But ultimately, this search angel led me to a w a marriage record outside of the state of Texas and provided a new married name for this mystery woman. And I asked the search angel, you know, how do you really know it's her? And she said, Well, typically, after relinquishing, these women run out, they get married as quickly as they can, and then they have a baby to make things right. And on this marriage record, this the search angel also found a record of a birth for a baby boy who would have been born about a year and a half after I was. So it seemed to fit. And I and then she told me, Well, take this married name and search in Texas for this woman under this married name. And I'm like, Well, I thought you said she moved away. And she said, Yes, honey, but they always come home. So I'm like, okay, I will. And and I did. And As I entered this married name just into Google, I very quickly a high school reunion website popped up. And it was from the right, you know, class of 68 or 67 or whatever it was. And they had the high school yearbook pages scanned in so you could see, you know, the little black squares and the little names and faces. And I said, if I recognize this woman, I'm not going to do it because I read the name. I'm just gonna recognize myself on the page. So I put a piece of paper up along the the the edge of the screen to hide the names, and I just started scanning the women's faces. And then I was just basically staring at a carbon copy picture of my own high school yearbook photo. Lyndsay Soprano (08:35) It's kind of like creepy at the same time. Like I just got the chills. It's like, whoa, weird. So you end up finding her. And now it is time to, well, now I gotta reach out to her. Like, what how are you feeling about this? Because for me, I'm like, when I was reading your book, I was so nervous for you. I was excited for you. I was like, I have no idea what this reunion's gonna look like. Like, what's like who's this woman gonna be like? I can't even imagine the butterflies that you had. Like what Next. Like what what did you do next? Patricia Knight Meyer (09:08) Well, I was definitely in shock, right? Defin Lyndsay Soprano (09:10) Yeah, yeah. Patricia Knight Meyer (09:12) definitely in shock. And the the thing I wanted to know more than anything was did she use the same attorney? Right? Did she know this hospital? Did she know this attorney? I wasn't gonna let myself a hundred percent believe it was true just because we looked alike. You know, your mind can make up things. And so I wanted cold hard facts, right? So I sent her an email and I also Timed it with a letter in the mail. So first of all, actually, first I pinned the letter and put it in the mail. And I wrote it on a piece of butterfly stationery that I had saved from the thank yous that I had written for my mother's memorial service, my adoptive mother's memorial service. And I thought that that would be a significant way of taking, moving, you know, taking this one last piece of stationery to go from the the passing of one mother to the finding of the next one. It's beautiful butterfly on it. And I sent it to her and then I waited two or three days and then I sent the email because I was hoping that the letter would arrive before the email did, but I knew that the email would be the best. I really wanted her to contact me via email than just like randomly call me out of the blue. Right. And that's pretty much what happened. She answered the email. She said, Yes, absolutely. That was the hospital, that was the attorney. But then she said, But I didn't give birth in January. I I gave birth on December twenty-second, which would have been basically three weeks before my adoptive parents pulled up in front of that hospital curb to get me. And she also said, I didn't spend an extended time in the hospital. Actually, I left within a day or two and I got home before Christmas, because I remember sitting in front of the Christmas tree without my baby. And, you know, you would think a a mother would remember such a thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. so I was very much inclined to believe her. And I had already heard stories about records being changed and even the sex of a baby being changed to make dates being changed to make it so much harder to find your person. so I wasn't surprised, although it was very identity shaking to suddenly realize like the day I'd been celebrating this my birthday was not my birthday. Right. But it took on a whole new level because maybe what your listeners don't know is that when I was twelve, my parents had also told me that they didn't really know when my actual birthday was because they'd never seen a copy of my birth certificate. So it was either January the fifth or maybe January the sixth. So since since that time, birthdays had never shown quite as bright. But having it moved from a day to like a whole different month was Lyndsay Soprano (11:44) Where the hell were you for three months? Patricia Knight Meyer (11:46) Yeah, and where. And to this day, like we really still don't know. Lyndsay Soprano (11:51) Crazy. Patricia Knight Meyer (11:52) but but as far as like the feeling of the feeling was I just need to get in front of this woman as soon as possible. It was this extreme overwhelm and drive to just, my gosh, this person I've been thinking about my entire life is suddenly within just actually where I I was actually visiting the Houston area when I got this email. And that meant she was only like an hour away. And so from the time that I answered the email to the time we were standing in front of each other in this parking lot was probably about four hours. And so when we met, it was, as you can imagine, a very emotionally charged event. But it didn't pan out exactly the way that I expected it to. And I sensed it from the mut the minute that we were on the phone, and she was telling me the circumstances of my relinquishment. Because I had been told that she had been in college from a very wealthy, prestigious family, that she had to choose between education and being kicked out of her family and being on the streets trying to raise a baby. And it ended up that none of that was true. You know, she she was actually twenty years old, working as a secretary, was not in college, and was, you know, one of I think five children, and her mother was a single woman as a raising these kids on a teacher's salary by herself. And so it was just a very different story than I had been told. And then again, that was just like as an adoptee, you cling to these facts. Like these things you think you believe are facts. It doesn't matter, didn't matter to me really that she was not college educated, other than the fact that this was a I had believed this and now this was no longer true. Lyndsay Soprano (13:40) Yeah, this was this adoption narrative that you had had and now it's like, wait a second, my birthday's wrong. Patricia Knight Meyer (13:46) Right. Every there's no right. And sometimes I say that in reunion you have to per se prepare pe adoptees think that they'll go into reunion and that all their questions will be answered. For me, reunion actually just added more questions to the equation. And that was something that I really wasn't emotionally prepared for. So I went to college because I believed that one day I would meet my birth mother and that she had given me up. So that she could get an education and h hopefully that I would get an education. And that if I showed up and was not educated, I was fearful she was going to reject me for not having achieved it. It was like in my mind, we had this unspoken agreement. Like, I'm gonna go to college and give you up so that I can have an education and you're gonna go with a good family who will make sure that you get a good education. And then we're gonna be these really cool, awesome educated people and meet one day and Lyndsay Soprano (14:43) Hold hands and we'll be dancing through the fields of flowers together. Patricia Knight Meyer (14:46) And we and we can, you know, in my mind she was a doctor or a lawyer or a therapist or maybe even a writer because, you know, I love to write. Yeah. And so adoptees do that. We build up these these these impossible to match versions of these fantasy mothers that no no birth mother could ever live up to. And so I came at her with a lot of confusion. And I also didn't see myself in her the way I thought that I would. The things, the the the behaviors that she exhibited were actually things that I recognized about myself that I didn't like. And so I could see myself in another person, but it was all the things that I really didn't like about myself. And so the connection for me was very there was a lot of dissonance and I it was a lot of longing and thinking, okay, this is harder. It's it's almost like You know, you hear mothers having postpartum depression, they expect they're gonna give birth and they're gonna love fall in love with this baby, and instead they're holding this baby and they're like, I'm supposed to love this baby, but this baby is like giving me the you know. Lyndsay Soprano (15:52) Yeah, now I'm on the news 'cause I drowned her. Patricia Knight Meyer (15:55) Well maybe not that. Lyndsay Soprano (15:56) Sorry, but it's true, this stuff happens. Like Patricia Knight Meyer (15:59) It is legit. Yeah. The baby every time I hold the baby I have a panic attack. Lyndsay Soprano (16:03) Right. Yeah. There's this disconnection. Sorry, I went completely to the dark side there. But I mean it's just it it it is. I mean you you ha you create these these stories that that, you know, and then it you get there and you're like, wait a second, this is not even at all what I dreamt was gonna be like and what she was gonna be like and the education part when reading about her, I love the fact that you were like, I have to meet her at a Texas catfish parlor. Patricia Knight Meyer (16:29) wanted to meet at a wine bar. Lyndsay Soprano (16:31) No you did. My little wine drinker. I know and I love my prosecco. Patricia Knight Meyer (16:38) You know, at the time I was just sort of like, Whatever sh makes her feel comfortable, you know, and whatever is the closest and most convenient, let's just make it happen, you know. Lyndsay Soprano (16:47) And there you go. And that's what you did with your mom and your dad as well. You were taking care of them. You were managing their emotions. You were doing the same thing. And here you are again as an adult doing the same thing for this complete stranger. Patricia Knight Meyer (17:01) Very, very good point. And I never learned to have solid, healthy boundaries with my mother. I was a people pleaser as many adoptees are. And I very quickly learned that I needed to learn how to have boundaries with this new mother of mine. And I worked hard to try to create new boundaries, but it was so unfamiliar and so uncomfortable for me to have healthy boundaries. And also I was terrified of her, of us dissolving, of me losing her. You know, I had This is a person I spent my whole life dreaming about and searching for finding. And if I felt like if I really showed up authentically as my true self, that I might be abandoned again. And so I just kept people pleasing and going along and and and you know, having more phone calls than I wanted to have, or you know, every once in a while though, I I did try to lay down a boundary and then it would always back f it just went horribly wrong. Like she wanted we were trying to figure out what to call her. And I didn't want to call her mom. I I my mother hadn't been gone that long and I was still mourning my adoptive mother. And I really felt like she just wanted to swoop in and and be the new mom. And so, you know, I I just wanted to call her by her name. But yet she would leave voice messages and things be like, hey, it's mom. And then sometimes I would tell her, I'd change my mind and I'd be like, Okay, just call me mom. Like, I mean, just just just call yourself mom. You know, I might not call you mom, but you can call yourself mom. And then she'd do it. And then I'd hate it. And I'd be like, No, maybe you better not do Lyndsay Soprano (18:31) Yeah, let's the flip what yeah, it's like it did feel flip-floppy, but I in all sincerity, I feel like you had every single right to feel flip-floppy because you were kind of like a fish out of water. You're like, I don't even know how to behave under these circumstances. How could anybody know, especially when you've built her up to be this doctor, this lawyer, this whatever, and here she is? Nothing like that at all. You know, it's really hard because I don't want to be like birth mom bashing, right? But there's an element of it where when reading it at reading your memoir, I was disappointed in her. Like I wanted her to be this like perfect mom for you, which is of course what you would want. And so I don't want this to turn into a bashing session, but you you mentioned in your book you've already cared for one mother for a lifetime and that was enough. And now you've got this other, your birth mother who tend who immediately was incredibly needy. And one, I mean, she said stuff like, I finally got my baby back. And you're like, What? Like, what are you talking about? Everything seemed to move so incredibly fast. And like you said, this is something that you learned the hard way that you have to like pump the brakes when you do, if this is the decision that you want to do to find your birth parents that don't rush into it because it can backfire. Patricia Knight Meyer (19:58) You know, I d I don't mind bashing as long as I it in it I don't think it comes off as bashing as long as I acknowledge that she had a lot of unresolved trauma that she was unwilling to get help for. So I stress that like both parties have to do work, like a like the the work of healing from what happened, dealing with the past. And it's not I can't heal her, she can't heal me. And if one only one person gets in, this is where some of the advocacy comes in. I talk a lot about birth mother community and how they have taught me to have so much empathy and love for for birth mothers. And I'm, you know, we are each other's surrogates because there are birth mothers who's ha who have had horrible reunions with their children, made mistakes, and it's they can't come back from that. but they can see what they did wrong now, right? But the Lyndsay Soprano (20:47) You had said something about birth mother waterboarding. That was that was a phrase that you used in the book that stood out to me. I was like, wow, that is very descriptive in two words. Patricia Knight Meyer (20:57) Yeah. Yeah. And so I learned, you know, and that's where I can go in like with how important it is when you're in reunion to to be part of the community and to learn from others, other birth mothers, because you're too you're too you got too much writing on that one relationship. There's a fine line about bashing and just acknowledging that we were both carrying a lot of pain that we hadn't resolved, right? And we didn't know the rules. And so one of the rules that we talk about in in the work that we do with help and adoptees manage reunion. is baby steps and not one of the things is do not have a gigantic family gathering and expect, you know, everything to to just wound up rainbows and butterflies. we did plan we did plan a reunion and initially, you know, the the it just kept growing. Well I'm gonna invite these these people, these nieces, these nephews. Well if you're inviting those people, then I'm gonna invite these people. And before we knew it we had this gigantic family gathering. I even invited my fifth grade school teacher. Like it was like my god Lyndsay Soprano (22:01) Yeah. Patricia Knight Meyer (22:03) And and then I agreed to we didn't have it in a neutral place. We had it at my birth mother's home. And we had planned on an outdoor gathering. And it turned out that for whatever reason, I I mean, I'd only been there a couple of times. I wasn't aware of the surroundings of her backyard. But on at that day and that time, there was a horrible, horrible situation with flies. And as we were going about trying to prepare everything, I realized that there were a bunch of picnic tables out in the yard and and tables that had been set up. And there were just a very few seating for maybe 16 people on the porch in a s in a screen in porch with ceiling fans. And yet I realized like we need to go get some tiki torches because there are flies everywhere. And she and I got into this big debate about that's too late, don't worry about it, it'll be fine. And of course, it wasn't fine at all. it was there were so many that people could not get a fork to their mouths and no one wanted to eat anything because you you you couldn't fan and eat fast enough to not have swarms of flies landing on it. And then I I wrote a blog post about what I thought was the source of the flies, which was some neighbors that that she had had some dogs and they were outdoor dogs. They were kept in the backyard. And I thought, well, maybe that was it. You know, who knows? Right. But she would not let me go get these tiki torches. And it sound it sounds so minuscule now, right? It sounds so minor. But all in all, she and I needed to be in a place where we could really sit down and talk and communicate and plan this event properly. And we just threw it together and we were still at a point where we were tiptoeing around each other, or she was bossing me and I was just agreeing and going along with whatever. And then it then it got really bad because she came out and, you know, she thanked everyone. for raising the beautiful daughter that she had made. And it's just words matter so much when you're in reunion. And it it might not have been what she meant, but it's the way it was taken, right? And I I really thank my adoptive family for showing up and and doing that. But after that, they were already having difficulty with my reunion. But after that party, it sort of put a bad taste in everybody's mouth. period for the whole thing. And it got to the point, is, you know, this we're talking about, this happened 15 years ago. But it it carried over into a place where my cousins who were there that day just really didn't want to hear about my reunion, didn't want to hear about how things were going in in my adop adoption adoption reunion world. Those two lives had to live separately because it's very difficult to bring your adoptive family and your birth family together. There's a lot of misunderstanding that happens there. And, you know, I've gotten involved with the concerned united birth parents. And these women have really helped me find a lot of compassion for my birth mother and understand the trauma that she was dealing with in her life and how I couldn't heal her. I couldn't expect her to heal me. She has to do that work herself. And even though she and I aren't in communication anymore, if she ever showed up at one of those events and walked in the room, like the the conferences that I go to, if she walked in the room and said, I'm ready to do the work, I would give her that grace. I would I would start over again. Lyndsay Soprano (25:40) I was gonna ask actually if yeah because I know that you guys had had fallen from grace, if you will. and that for in my in my opinion, you had to put up some some massive boundaries like you mentioned earlier. And for me, I would have chosen the same route that you chose, from a boundary perspective. I come from a divorced situation. So my parents got divorced when I was very, very young. I ended up having to say goodbye to my birth father and my stepmother because I that was a boundary that I had to put up. And that was cheese Louise. It's almost gonna be 20 years now. And that makes me sad. but it was the right decision that I made. I don't think that I will ever see them again. I don't I know where they live though. I Google them every now and again and find me to see if they're alive. I look at obituaries. I literally do because I'm like I have no like I'm just curious, but I'm not curious enough to reach out to them and try to establish some kind of adult relationship with them after the things that they had done. So I understand the boundary and one hundred percent respect that you did that too. Cause you needed to do that for you too. Patricia Knight Meyer (26:51) You know, I I think in retrospect, part of the reason I've got into that place with her is because I finally let go of this need that I had from her, or this anger or disappointment that I had that she could not show up and be that mother of my dreams. or really I wouldn't even allow her to be the even though she wanted to be a mother, I I didn't feel comfortable with her being a mom, period. But I still had to mourn the mother that I never got, right? Sure. And And the only way I was gonna get that mother that I wanted was if I had never been adopted, right? I wanted that mother that was there from day one, that was that I that that I was born from. And that that was never my reality. That will never come back. No matter she could be the best birth mother on the face of the planet, but I will still have to mourn that natural mother-daughter birth bond raising from day one scenario that was not in the cards for me. And once I learn to grieve that and really acknowledge that I lost that, I'm starting to get emotional and I won't get it back. That's when I realized that, you know, she can't fill that void. nor could my adoptive mother. It's the wound that adoptees carry. Yeah. And that's what I was going to tell you in the last episode about adoptive parents, is I tell them, no matter how good they are, they could be the best adoptive parents on the face of the planet. Adoptees are still going to want to find their their origin story and find their biological family. It's it's it it's not about what they can't give you. It's literally about, well, it is about what they can't give you. There there's there are things you cannot give your child that aren't yours to give, right? Lyndsay Soprano (28:37) Yeah. Yeah. And you ended up through all of that, the the shakiness of the relationship with your birth mother. You did end up being able to, I know she kind of like you guys separated and you wanted to know information about your birth father, which she lied to you about. and but I want to talk about your birth father because he turns into being. This incredible man. And but so can you speak to A, or why and B, how you found him? Patricia Knight Meyer (29:14) Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Saving grace. Yes. Saving grace. in the first thirty minutes of meeting her, I obviously really wanted to know like how I came into being. I had always imagined that I was conceived in at some like drive-in movie theater or something. Or in some frat house, you know, something like that. Yeah. And very quickly she just blurted out, you know, I'm sorry, but I was raped. And I immediately didn't buy it because this had happened to me in my life. And I knew that it would take me more than just a few minutes, but like months to to really confide that in someone and not say it's so flippant. Lyndsay Soprano (29:58) Yeah, exactly. Patricia Knight Meyer (29:59) But I also knew that she was a product of the the baby scoop era and the shame around that. And that that that may have very well been what she told her mother, who was still alive. had happened to her because that would have been the thing to save her some grace through the situation, right? And my best friend is a is a rape therapist. And, you know, I know like if you, if you don't, if you question that, you can rewound the victim. And so that was the last thing I wanted to do. So I didn't tell her I didn't believe her then, but there I just didn't feel it in my gut that that was the truth of the story. And then as we started spending more time and together, she would say things like, Well, I don't know where you got that from. And, you know, and and I and I'd say, Well, maybe my birth father. but then she would I asked her one time, like, well, what did he look like? And she said, Well, he's tan, he was tan, tall, and and you know, like tan and tall, you know, this sort of thing. and blonde headed. And I'm like, I'm not tan or tall or blonde, you know, like what is what are you thinking about this? and So I began to think there's got to be another man in this equation. But she didn't want to go there and didn't want to explain these things to me. And then, you know, she she eventually had given me a bracelet, a silver bracelet, and said, you know, I've been waiting to give this to you my whole life. And and I'm thinking, well, that's that's curious because why would you save a bracelet that that this man who had who had assaulted you had had given you, right? But then I finally said, we have to put the brakes on. I can't keep being walking around on eggshells being inauthentic just because I'm waiting for you to tell me the truth about my birth father. You need to tell me everything that happened. And, you know, she had said that she had been raped like through like a date rape through so through this some person she knew. And so I cut off all ties and she eventually came back and said she remembered that there was another man and that she thought that he could potentially be my father. She had reached out to him. She had told him everything about me. She'd shown him my Facebook page. That really upset me. Maybe that's more boundary stuff, right? You she Lyndsay Soprano (32:17) Yeah. Patricia Knight Meyer (32:18) gave him her version of my story, told him what she thought of my raising parents, all the problems that she thought I like mental problems and struggles that I felt like I was struggling that she thought I was struggling with. And so lucky for me, he is a measured man with a good head on his shoulders and and he He did not take all of that, you know, literally. He he acknowledged the source it was coming from. and he never knew that he created a child. He had never been told ever. so he was very surprised. But he also said that he had also always wished he had a daughter. And so he was thrilled when he heard the news from her. He wanted to meet. He he wrote me a very long letter. And when I read it, I like immediately fell in love with him. I I thought he was a cowboy poet. And yet I was still also so traumatized from the prior reunion. He said I wrote him back something that read like a contract. It was like it was like we will not call you father. Right. we will meet in small slow steady bits. you know, and but he also was like, Well, he recognized for what that for what it was. You know, I have been down this road before and take it from me, it's not an easy one. Lyndsay Soprano (33:29) I mean, I think there's an aspect of that that you were trying to protect him too. I mean, he just found out about you two weeks before you didn't know you existed. You're like, hi, random chick from 38 years ago or however many years ago just called me and told me that I have a daughter. Like, what? Like that's the whole thing is surprising to everybody. I don't think anybody could be fully prepared to just be like, sweet, okay. You know, like I I would be taken aback, you know? Patricia Knight Meyer (33:58) The mystery the mystery got even more complicated and deeper because according to her, she had it had never dawned on her in her life that he could have been this this guy could have been my birth father. But he wasn't surprised when he got that email from her Lyndsay Soprano (34:14) Interesting. Patricia Knight Meyer (34:15) because his mother had asked him a very important question on her deathbed, and I would have been about thirteen at the time. She said, Jerry, did you ever have sex with that woman that you were running around with back in Lyndsay Soprano (34:28) Falozy. Patricia Knight Meyer (34:30) the Used used her name. let's let's call her Dinah. Like she's called. Lyndsay Soprano (34:33) Call or Dinah. Yep. Patricia Knight Meyer (34:35) And and he said, No, mom. And he's like, Yes, I lied to my mother on her deathbed. my God. And he's like, he's like, but she knew me too well. She looked at me like, I know you're lying to me. Yeah. And and she said, Well, you need to know there was a baby and it was taken care of. And she went off and married a soldier. And moved away. And he's like, Why are you, you know, he's like said to her, like, you know, why are you telling me this? And she says, Well, you need to know there was a baby and it was taken care of. And so he said at that time he thought he knew he had been with her one night on her 20th birthday. But he thought, well, but I also know that she was running around with my friend Ben. And I figured it was probably Ben's. And so when we finally And I and we went very slow because I I wouldn't speak to him on the phone until we actually had the DNA test results. Right. So I didn't get the meat of his version of the story until we actually had a phone call. And we didn't have the phone call until we got the results. But on that phone call, he immediately went to answering the million dollar question of, you know, like what was his version of my conception? And that's when he told me that he had met her, had been invited to her twentieth birthday party. That they had danced to Tina Turner's Roland on the River, that that had given him some ideas to take her out to his family camp and the Spartan trailer that sat along the San Bernard River down in in that area. And that they created me on that evening. And that he never knew that they created me on that evening until his mother mentioned something to him, you know, 13 years later. and then he mentions to me, and then I say, Well, you know, like, well, where did this guy This but guy Ben came in, the one that she says assaulted her. And he said, Well, from my recollection, and I always trust this is my birth father's rememory of the story, was that she and and Ben had been dating and that Ben was a married man with family in Oklahoma. And that Ben made it very clear he wasn't going to be leaving his family. And so they broke up. And to make him jealous, she had asked his buddy, you know, out. And it was basically just sort of a a sort of a screw you, look what I can do kind of thing to Ben. But then my birth father added that about two weeks after being with her, he was at a bar that they all frequented and he watched the two of them walk in together. And he thought, she was just using me to make him jealous. And I wonder if he's told her, because I mean, if she's told her him, because if she did, this guy's about to come over here and beat me up. Mm-hmm. But he said instead, I saw them whispering and looking at me. And then he just grabbed her by the arm and drug her out of the bar. So my birth father's version of that story was, Well, maybe she was assaulted, but she was likely already pregnant with you when it happened. And maybe those two versions, those two events got conflated in her memory due to the trauma of everything. And sometimes you do over time believe sort of the lies you tell yourself. Lyndsay Soprano (37:49) Sure. Yeah. And especially when you've been assaulted and you've had you've been raped. You and I both have unfortunately experienced this more times than we'd like to count. And it's it's something that you have like, I know for me, there are bits and pieces that like I totally 100% remember. And then there's there's fragmented pieces of things, and then there's just like complete holes that I'm like, I don't know if I'm ever gonna be able to find out what that hole was in some cases. Through psychedelic therapy, I've been able to find some holes that I've been able to fill, which has been very, very helpful for me in my healing journey. And it's been fairly recently over the past year. And so I can understand how that, how she could come. It it's so interesting when you said that a lot of these, these birth mothers are like stuck in time. And it's almost like she never really fully matured because a lot of her behavior was so immature. The way she spoke was very immature. I mean, even just like Her grammar, you know, all of the things. I mean, some of that's just like kind of where she was from too. But all of it just felt like she was kind of trapped in this one spot and never really got out of it. And then you popped in and was like, I now have an opportunity, but I'm just not able I'm not capable of being able to do so. Patricia Knight Meyer (39:02) And I mean, even if all of those other issues didn't exist between us, we were so far apart politically. Yeah. We're so far apart. just as in general, like when it comes to LGBTQ and and race and all of the Lyndsay Soprano (39:16) Racism for short a lot of things in there, my gosh. Yeah. Patricia Knight Meyer (39:20) And so, you know, some of those things in reunion, there's just no way you're gonna you're gonna span those gaps. A lot of for many adoptees, I know it's boils down to religious views, even. So yet, you know, I tell people, just like some people sometimes even in natural families, one one child takes after one parent more than the other. I think that played a part too, because after I got to know my birth father, he and I were so much alike. Like the carbon copy. I used to say he was the male b version of me and he would say vice versa, same thing. Yeah. We could we knew what each other were thinking. We could finish each other's thoughts. We liked all the same things. We thought about the world the same way. And even though we did have different political views, like we we still were able to have a healthy debate without it becoming contentious. Lyndsay Soprano (40:13) Sure. Patricia Knight Meyer (40:14) And so it was the best thing that could have possibly ever happened. And It it allowed me to heal in ways that I still had yet to heal. And it was I I often have to keep in mind that a many adoptees search and they go through reunion and they never find any rainbow at the end. It nothing positive comes of it. And I was incredibly fortunate to have two amazing fathers in my life. And I wasn't even interested. I'd never dreamed or ever thought about finding a birth father because I was so close to my raising father. Right. That that I I just didn't think, why would I ever want another man ever in a million years to try to take his place? But I never viewed my my birth father, never positioned himself as trying to take his place, never criticized my raising family, even though he could have. but he did lead me through some very insightful questions to come to recognize that. My parents were complicit in the black market adoption, that the the issues in my house with having like fleas and and having like never like going to the dentist and just things that normal people do, like, you know, calling an exterminator, that's a lot of that was was neglect. Yes. And trauma. And the The mismanagement of money, like this my mother's exorbitant spending while like the basics were not being taken care of in our home, that all of that was something that happened that need that they that I needed to hold these people accountable for and stop like making them out to be saviors. And, you know, and in the feedback that I've received from the book, people have said that I do a very good job of showing the complex nature of generational trauma. And also not making people out to be like all good or all bad, but showing like we're all just human beings trying to do the best and sometimes that's just not enough or that's not good enough. So Lyndsay Soprano (42:20) Yeah, and I and I agree with that. I think that the book is is balanced the completely, which leads us straight into what what I want to talk about next, which is writing and healing and how that is such a powerful force for you and for so many people. I mean, we talk about it on this show often about how journaling and writing and getting it out, whether you're a good writer or a bad writer, it doesn't necessarily matter, right? But for you, you happen to be, my love, a very, very good writer. And I just found my if you saw a copy of my book, I mean, every other page is dog eared, the whole damn thing is highlighted. I just love all these quotes in here. I mean, you just you they're just scriptive and things. I can be there, I can see it, I can taste it, I can feel it. I like the whole, the whole spectrum of it is there. And I really love that about the book as well. but what I find so interesting about it is also where you started writing the book, because you opened the book. with this fire. And I was like, my gosh, what the hell? And and so I was like, okay, there's this big fire and I have no idea what's going on and then you end this book with this fire. And I'm just like, my gosh, this is such a full silk circle, how beautiful it is. But can you talk about really briefly, if you could, about where you ended up starting writing this book, and how incredibly beautiful that part of your story is and how that has been been so helpful for you from a healing perspective, writing your memoir. Patricia Knight Meyer (43:52) Yes, absolutely. I always said I would r write a book when I had a good story to tell. my god, you've had a good story. Lyndsay Soprano (43:59) You have many good stories to tell, my dear. Patricia Knight Meyer (44:03) my my degree's in journalism, but you know, maybe what I defined as a good story was a happy ending. And I didn't really until I could see like the happy ending, or maybe until I could see the the healing arc and the coming out of the fog. And there was so much to resolve within myself before I could really start making sense of it. And part of writing a book is making sense of the past and it will lead to healing. But at the same time, if you If you haven't examined certain aspects of your story or of your life or how you got there or what your faults were, then it can become very one-dimensional, or it can come off like you're a big victim. So I didn't want, I wanted to know that I had done the emotional work to tell the story in a fair and balanced way. And that probably comes from like the journalism background. But ultimately, I just knew that it was time to tell the story. And it it it was because. Right after I reunited with my birth father, he had a friend who had a cabin and she let me stay there for two weeks. And he would come in the I would I would work right during the day and then he would come in the evenings and I would share with him the the the stories from my life and read them to him and then that would spark conversation and then I would tell him about more aspects of my life. And then I realized, okay, while I'm telling, I'm trying to just download my entire life to my birth father in, you know, in this cabin. At night with wine and beer or whatever, I need to capture this because this is going to be the book one day. And so w the nighttime conversations would lead to what I would write about the next morning. And oftentimes I would send him home with pages that he would then share with his wife Susan, who we call Nanny. And that's how it began to pour out. But I was only there for two weeks. And I probably only wrote like, I don't know, maybe a hundred pages or two hundred pages, whatever it was. I don't know. But But ultimately, as that was going on, and this is a whole nother aspect of this, reunion can make the people in your life feel very pushed aside. Because the two people in reunion, especially if it's a good reunion, it's like being a teenager in love. All you do is want to connect with that person, share your stories with them, know more about them, you know, spend all your time with them. And that led to me really pushing my husband. Aside at the time and and just sort of like taking him extremely for granted. And I'm not saying I caused the fracture in our marriage. It was probably already there. But while I was in this riding, while I was in this cabin, I started seeing text messages happening between my husband and this other woman on Facebook, like at one and two o'clock in the morning. And a little bell went off in my head and I thought, boy, this this probably isn't good. And then eventually. No. Of but I was still so enthralled in reunion. I like I didn't even worry about it. And and to to my poor husband's, you know, chagrin or whatever, I have to acknowledge that it was that period of time that he came to pick me up from this cabin and I completely forgot it was even our anniversary. And we'd only been married for like four years. So it was bad. Like it was really bad. Yeah. ultimately he had an affair. And that sort of thing with an adoptee, just immediately It was over. Like that I was done. he had it wasn't like a one-time thing. And then he came and told me I made a mistake one night. It was like hidden from me for about a year. And that level of abandonment really, really just shook me. That led to me getting fired because I couldn't function at work. And it was at that time with and this has all happened within probably a, you know, eight month time frame. My my birth father said, you know, I am I am renovating a cabin I have on my land. So that you will come and finish this book that you started. And now you're in a position where you don't have a man, your daughter's gone to college, you you're you know, you have no job. Come out here and write this book by God. Lyndsay Soprano (48:09) And you're wearing sweaters with cats on them. Patricia Knight Meyer (48:13) Pretty much. Yeah. And and so I said, Okay, well, you know, I did kind of have a job. I was I I was doing like part-time work from working from home kind of thing. But ultimately I said, Yes, I will do this. And so I I moved into that riding cabin and I was there for probably a couple like a month, maybe, maybe not even that long. And I hadn't even unpacked all my boxes, like barely unpacked boxes. And I let a friend come to visit me and she parked her used car in my garage. with all my unpacked boxes and it set itself randomly on fire and it burned the house down. Lyndsay Soprano (48:49) And you lost a lot of your manuscripts and you lost like your baby box. Like I'm just was just like, I'm I'm reading this and I am just like, you've gotta be fucking kidding me. I literally at that point, I'm like, no more. This woman can take no more. Patricia Knight Meyer (49:11) majority of the manuscript in the cloud, but what I didn't have was all of my childhood, like everything I'd ever written in my life. and all of my notes and all of my like cards and you know, anything all of the assets that I was referencing for the book, those especially all my journals that I'd kept since I was like eight. It was all all of that. And family fiction and family photos and videos. And so Lyndsay Soprano (49:37) Things that you can't replace. Patricia Knight Meyer (49:38) Yeah. And so basically I was totally emotionally destroyed. I had I had lost my everything I owned in this fire. I'd lost my husband. My daughter had moved away. My mother had died. I was on on the outs with my birth mother. And I was at a very, very, very low, low point in my life. It was it was a time of real, real fracture for me. but the one good thing I had going on was was this birth father of mine who was just there. Like, you know, my my compass and North Star telling me you can get through this and and you can do it. And he had they had had house fires in the past so they could relate to this type of loss, which was horrible because like here I just put another I just burned his house down. And Lyndsay Soprano (50:25) Nice to meet you. Thank you for let building a cabin for me. I'm now gonna burn it down. Patricia Knight Meyer (50:29) Now. He put like fifty thousand dollars. He put like fifty thousand dollars in it and then forgot to to let the insurance company know that he'd made all these renovations. So he didn't even get his investment back. But we survived that, you know, but we we even survived that. Yeah. But but the so the writing then had to move out of the cabin and began very slowly over the next because I moved at that point I moved to New Orleans to be close to my daughter and to try to just rebuild from there. And she had just told me that she was pregnant and I was gonna have a grand I was gonna have a grandchild. So that was like a shining light in my life. Yes. And I'll tell you though, it was really hard to start writing when all the things I had written burned. I had this feeling of like I didn't ever want to put anything down on a piece of paper again unless I knew it was going to be in the cloud. Interesting. So I had very hard time journaling. But but I did s I did finish. I did start writing the book. And then in 2020, right before COVID happened, I turned 50 and I went on I took my I bought myself a birthday writing retreat in Costa Rica. And then within weeks of getting back from the writing retreat, we were full on COVID lockdown. And I used that time, all of it, to work on this book. Lyndsay Soprano (51:45) Yeah, and I I'm I'm so glad that you did because it is absolutely beautiful. And I can't wait to physically meet you in Austin and to share in the joy of your book launch because it's just gonna be something spectacular. It's exactly why we're here doing what we're doing today, too, is we're giving our pain purpose. And that is certainly what you have done in your book, and it's certainly what we've done in part one and part two today as well. for our episodes together. And it has been nothing but wonderful spending time with you. And I just wanted to thank you truly from the bottom of my heart for for writing it because it did really help me actually process a lot of things that happened to me from the sexual side of things that happened, but it actually helped me significantly with a lot of what went on with me and Jim. And that. it it's gotten me to this place where I'm like, I feel like I need to shoot him an email. Wow. And send him these two episodes and say, Hey, I just wanted to see how you were doing and what you were up to. Patricia Knight Meyer (52:53) Yeah, yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (52:54) Before we go, if you could go back to that Texas hospital curb and sit beside that newborn baby, knowing everything. That she's gonna lose everything she's gonna gain, everything she's gonna survive, and everything she's eventually going to build from it. What would you tell her? Patricia Knight Meyer (53:14) Mm-hmm. Lyndsay Soprano (53:16) besides don't have a big reunion. Patricia Knight Meyer (53:23) Think I would tell her to always stay true to herself, to be authentic in this world. I think that's the thing I struggled with the most as an adoptee. And it's the most important thing that when we show up authentically, we don't live from a place of fear. we, you know, anyone that really wants to be a part of your life will accept you exactly as who you are. And I think that if she could have carried that little grain of knowledge through her life, she might not have suffered as many struggles as as she did. Lyndsay Soprano (53:53) I love it. It's a beautiful answer. I knew you were going to say something beautiful, of course. Patricia Knight Meyer (53:58) Thanks. Lyndsay Soprano (53:59) All right, guys. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us on the big show here. You can find her at well, first of all, the book is called Wonderland. and it is amazing. It's the memoir of the black market adoption. You can go to wonderlandthememoir.com. She's on social media, all over the place. I will have it in show notes and in social and email marketing, all the things. also you can go to her website, myadoptedlife.com. And on there it has a whole thing about her book launch, which is on Friday, November 6th of this year, 2026, from 6 to 9 PM CT time. And it is called Down the Rabbit Hole, the fight for Texas Adoptee Rights, Then and Now. There's a stage adaptation of Wonderland. There's a panel, there's a book signing. She'll be there. I'm doing everything in my power to get my butt there because I haven't been to Austin since I lived there. And it's Patricia Knight Meyer (54:54) It's live stream. Lyndsay Soprano (54:56) and it's live stream. even cooler. So check it all out. And thank you so much for being here with us. And thank you guys for tuning in and listening to our stories because we are here to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to give pain purpose. And you certainly have done that, my dear. Thank you so much for being here with me. I love you. Patricia Knight Meyer (55:15) Thank you so much for having me. Love you too. Lyndsay Soprano (55:17) You are welcome. You are exclusively invited to share this wonderland VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how to heal with you by mine and Patricia's side. Please follow Giving Pain Purpose wherever you digest your podcast content. We will be there. Visit us at giving painpurpose.com and follow us on all the socials. Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.