One woman's adoption story: 'You were not rejected. You were chosen.'

(Oregon Right to Life) — An Oregon woman who was adopted as a baby and reconnected with her birth mother – decades later and halfway across the country – shared her incredible story of family and identity with Oregon Right to Life. Throughout, she emphasized the generosity of her adoptive parents, the sense of connectedness upon meeting her biological family, and the guiding light of her Christian faith.

Nancy Jones (name changed for privacy) was born on October 12, 1958, in Portland, Oregon, to an eighteen-year-old young woman from the midwest. At the behest of her parents, the young mom agreed to place her baby girl for adoption.

“She wanted to keep me,” Jones told Oregon Right to Life in a phone interview. “And her mom said ‘no, you’re not keeping her…’ Back then you didn’t challenge your parents. You didn’t say ‘no.’”

Jones was adopted less than two months after her birth and raised by her adoptive parents, Newberg-based educators who had been unable to have their own biological children. The couple also adopted a boy, not biologically related to Nancy, whom she would grow up with as her older brother.

‘A Very Loving Home’

Jones’ childhood was a happy one.

“I had a great life,” she said. “I had a very loving home… My parents, oh my gosh, they gave me everything. They were the best people to have been my parents.” 

Jones told Oregon Right to Life she always knew she was adopted – her adoptive parents never sought to keep it from her. Still, the question of her identity nagged at her. She shared a vivid memory of picking berries in the summertime as a third grader and “wrestling with this rejection” by her biological family.

About a year later, while watching television with her parents and grandparents, she burst out with a comment that shook the family: “You’re not my real parents and you’re not my real grandparents.”

Her adoptive parents assured her that they were truly her parents because they adopted her and loved her. But the problem of her identity would continue to bother her as she grew up. 

‘You Were Chosen’

Several key moments helped Jones begin to see her adoption in a new way.

Though she had gone to church throughout her life, Jones’ faith in Jesus Christ became stronger and more personal in her early twenties. But when she was twenty-five, she underwent a deep trauma that called on all her resources of faith and prayer when her adoptive father, a source of quiet “strength and stability” in her life – a school principal beloved by parents and children alike – was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. His passing left Jones reeling. She told Oregon Right to Life she had prayed “like crazy” for his healing, and was devastated when he passed, sinking into a deep depression. 

But it was this loss, and her spiritual and emotional healing on the other side, that Jones felt God was using to strengthen her conviction about the inherent value of every human life: and the incredible gift that adoption can be.

A few years later, a conversation at a Christian women’s retreat with an acquaintance who had several adopted children further triggered in Jones an appreciation of her own adoption, upending her earlier sense of “rejection.”

“You were not rejected,” the woman told her. “You were chosen.”

These were healing moments for Jones. Understanding the truth about adoption gave her a strong foundation from which to move forward in her life. 

Fortified with a stronger sense of her own chosenness, she would later begin to tentatively explore reconnecting with her birth parents.

The Search

For Jones, as for many who were adopted, understanding that she was loved and chosen was powerful – but it did not extinguish her desire to reconnect with the mother who bore her and the extended family members to whom she could trace her biological line.

Finding them wouldn’t be a quick or easy process, but Jones wasn’t daunted. Now married to a loving husband and working as a teacher, she set about to solve the puzzle of her identity.

“I’m a little detective, actually,” she joked. “I put pieces together.” At work, she said, colleagues used to call her “Nancy Drew.”

Jones put herself on national adoption registries and worked to sleuth out what information she could. Ultimately, she successfully submitted a request to the state of Oregon for her original pre-adoption birth certificate.

“Here it came in the mail, and oh my goodness my heart was quivering and my hands were shaking,” she said. “I opened that thing, and there was her name, and [she was] eighteen, and I just started crying.”...

Read entire article at Oregon Right to Life.