My Mothers & Me

For most of us, Mother’s Day ushers in feelings of joy and pleasure and is a cause for celebration. But for those of us within the adoption community—birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees—it is also a reminder of a deep loss, the severing of ties between biological relatives. 

I spend much time thinking, writing, and discussing my adoption experience and the complicated topic of adoption in blog posts, essays, on podcasts, and at Book Clubs.

As many of you know, I have a new book coming out in February 2025. Twice the Family, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood is a coming-of-age story, a prequel to my award-winning memoir, Twice a Daughter. It is a tale about what it was like to be an adoptee and an identical twin in a family comprised of both adopted and biological family. 

What follows are three condensed excerpts—sneak peeks into Twice the Family. In honor of Mother’s Day, I begin with pieces about my birth and adoptive mothers, and then close with my own initiation into motherhood. 

A gift from me to you for Mother’s Day! 

My Birth Mother’s Story:

On a cold and cloudy February night, my twenty-six-year-old birth mother, who called herself Ann Jensen at the time, left the downtown Chicago women’s home where she’d moved with her trusted friend Mary. Three weeks shy of her due date, Ann was having pain she assumed was labor. As directed by Catholic Charities, she reported to Lewis Memorial Maternity Hospital, a facility on the city’s South Side that had previously operated as a hotel. 

As was the custom back then, the doctor on call put Ann into “twilight sleep,” a type of sedation administered through an IV that makes a patient calm and groggy but alert enough to follow directions. When she was in recovery, my birth mother was surprised to learn that the pregnancy she’d hidden from family and friends had resulted in the birth of twin daughters. 

Out in the hospital waiting room, Ann did not have a nervous husband pacing, a man who might have fingered a pocketful of celebratory cigars to pass out when the doctor informed him, he was now the proud father of two perfect little girls. Instead, my birth father was several states away, oblivious to Ann’s whereabouts, her well-being, and her due date. After refusing to marry the girl he “got in trouble,” my birth father went about living his life. By the time my sister and I were sitting up and crawling, he’d found a new love interest and was engaged to be married.

Also absent from the maternity waiting area were my biological grandparents, people who might have studied the clock and wrung their hands while their oldest daughter labored throughout the night. Like my birth father, my maternal grandparents lived several states away. Oblivious to Ann’s situation, they were struggling through another snowy, bitterly cold Midwestern winter on the family farm where they worked with my many aunts and uncles. Had my grandparents learned about my birth mom’s unplanned pregnancy, they might have disowned her. 

Once my sister and I had been cleaned up, weighed, and tightly swaddled, Ann requested that we not be brought to her, thus depriving us of precious skin-to-skin mother-daughter bonding time. She named us Ann Marie and Mary Ann Jensen, and we remained in the sterile confines of the infant nursery. 

Five days after our birth, Ann signed away her parental rights, and my sister and I became wards of the state. Catholic Charities never heard from Ann again. Three weeks elapsed before the adoption agency placed my sister and me with our new family. The Daughters of Charity and the staff at St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum on La Salle Street in Chicago cared for us. 

My Adoptive Mother’s Story:

While our physical lives began on a cold February afternoon at a South Side Chicago hospital, our family life and true sense of belonging started on Adoption Day, March 6, 1959. On this date, Suzanne and Jack Ryan—the childless couple whom Catholic Charities had selected to become our adoptive parents—came to St. Vincent’s Infant Home to pick us up. 

My mom’s vivid retelling of the day she got “the call” from Catholic Charities has become so real to me it’s almost as if I were in the room with her when she picked up the phone.

Mom had been immersed in a lesson with her busy third-grade class at St. Cletus in the western suburb of La Grange when someone knocked at the classroom door. The school secretary poked her head in.

“You have a phone call in the office,” she said. 

The entire staff at St. Cletus knew my folks had experienced a half dozen miscarriages during their five-year marriage. At twenty-six and almost twenty-eight, my adoptive mom and dad had been waiting nearly two years to adopt. 

As the story goes, Mom left the school secretary in charge of her class and rushed down the wide hallway. With each hurried step, Mom felt more certain that the phone call she was about to take was the one that would change her life. 

“Hello,” she said, “this is Sue Ryan.” 

“This is Marge Duffy calling, the social worker at Catholic Charities.”

“Yes . . . Hello, Marge.” Mom readjusted the phone, as if moving it closer to her ear would hurry the delivery of the message she craved.

“Sorry to disturb your school day, Mrs. Ryan, but we had a question about your adoption paperwork.”

“Yes?” Mom frowned. She wondered why the social worker had pulled her out of a busy classroom to ask a question that could have been posed in the evening hours.

“In your adoption paperwork, you checked the box next to ‘Twins.’ Did you mean to do that or was it an error?” Marge’s tone was friendly, almost casual. 

Mom did remember putting a neat little checkmark in the box next to “Twins,” but in all truthfulness she wasn’t sure why she had done it. The youngest of twelve, Mom yearned for a big Catholic family like the one in which she’d grown up. Declaring that she and my dad would welcome twins had been spontaneous, but the decision still felt right. 

“Yes, I meant to check the box for twins. It was no mistake.” Mom shrugged at the nearby principal as if to apologize for the delay in returning to her classroom.

“Well, in that case, we need to set up a time for you to come to St. Vincent’s Children’s Home. To pick up your twin daughters.”

Mom’s whoop of joy startled the principal and could be heard in the outer offices. 

When Mom hung up, the principal and everyone within earshot swarmed around my sobbing mother. The principal helped her dial my dad’s office number. In a shaky and tearful voice Mom informed Dad they were about to become parents—of twice the family for which they’d prayed during the previous five years. 

My Initiation into Motherhood:

It wasn’t until visitor hours ended and I had my daughter to myself that I began to sift and sort through the significant layers surrounding Colleen’s birth. Sharing the much anticipated and breathtaking moment with Steve. The creation of our family, one of the foundational steps in building the future we envisioned. The exhilarating yet humbling privilege of stepping into motherhood after suffering a miscarriage. The awe-inspiring blessing of beholding a healthy, normal child. 

When Colleen whimpered in her tiny bassinet, I plucked her up. Soothing her and pulling her into my chest, my eyes closed. Heart to heart, the two of us dozed, peaceful and content. In that half-sleep state, realizations engulfed me. My twin sister and I had been my parents’ firstborn, and now my daughter had slipped into that identical slot for Steve and me. Had Jenny and I fulfilled that same title role for our first mother, a woman I hoped someday to locate and get to know? At twenty-six, I had become a mother at the same age as my adoptive mom. While I didn’t know it at the time, my first mother, Ann Jensen, had also been twenty-six when Jenny and I were born. 

Now—because of my adoption search in 2011—I understand how much Colleen’s birth contrasted with my own. My birth mother had labored alone, unwed, besieged with shame, and judged harshly by those who cared for her. Her parents, my birth father, and his parents were ignorant about and absent during the entire experience. There were no celebratory phone calls, baby showers, or pink cigars. Unlike my daughter, Jenny and I did not sleep in bassinets by our first mother’s bed. She did not see or hold us. Instead, we were whisked off and confined to the nursery until the transfer to St. Vincent’s orphanage. 

Three days after Colleen’s birth, on my twenty-seventh birthday, Steve pulled into the pick-up zone at Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, the same city in which I had been born. A nurse helped him load all the flowers and baby gifts in the trunk, buckle our daughter into her infant seat, and settle me into the front beside him. When we entered our quaint brick-lined street, I spied a pink banner swaying in the stiff February wind across the front door of our townhouse.

It’s a girl! it proclaimed. 

Steve grinned at my pleased reaction. “Your mom made that for us.”

Once Colleen was asleep in the nursery that Mom and I had painted yellow and adorned with a stenciled border of pastel teddy bears, I lingered in the rocker. I watched her little chest heave with life-giving breath. My flesh and blood. Steve’s, too. Such a miracle. My firstborn daughter’s birth meant a cycle had been broken. I would know and nurture my biological kin and guide her through her life as my adoptive mom had done for Jenny and me. 

Follow Me Here

On May 15, the Book Club at Pottawattomie Country Club in Michigan City, Indiana will host Julie’s discussion of her memoir, Twice a Daughter. Jennifer, Julie’s twin sister and major character in her memoir, will share the stage for an unforgettable discussion.

On May 18,  Adoption:The Making of Me Podcast will have Julie on their show to talk about how adoption affected her life journey and the impact of writing about it.

On May 20, Julie will speak to the Women’s Philanthropic Education Organization (PEO), Hinsdale chapter, at Hinsdale Methodist Church about her journey as an adoptee and writer. 

On June 4, Julie will guest on the Trauma Survivorhood Podcast with Sarah Miley.

To listen to other podcasts where Julie shares about her books, adoption story, and perspectives on all things related to identity, family, and belonging, go here (the media tab on her website).

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