When I was younger, I thought every kid was adopted because that's all I've known. I have everything I need, so I never felt the need to have answers for what happened.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them.
I was adopted without the benefit of papers. They used to hide adoption in the forties; I don't know why. Perhaps it was shameful. I could have been kidnapped - there are all kinds of crazy things that people have done - but I got over dealing with that a long time ago.
The journey into adoption started for my parents, as it does with so many families: my mother and father desperately wanted to have kids, but they couldn't.
I've always known I was adopted.
Meanwhile I married and I adopted three kids who were all from one family and then later I was divorced.
I always thought I would adopt. Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt.
My mother desperately wanted children. She had a child that was stillborn - something I learned when I was looking through her 'effects' after she had died. It was then that I discovered my original birth certificate, which indicated the previous birth.
I was not allowed to talk about being adopted when growing up. I walked around feeling like I was going to explode.
When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn't have parents.
When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was - and that my real parents were going to come get me.