I don't mean to be offensive to the person who wrote this article, because I have gone through a similiar circumstance like this and I know many others who have, also.
Myself and many others I've know do indeed have no knowledge of a mother or a father. At least the writer of this article knows who the mother is and the mother has taken that responsibility. Further, the writer has had a man step into thier life to be a dad.
I was raised in an orphanage in southeast Tennessee for over 17 years. I was born out of wedlock in northern Virginia, but my mother returned to southern Virginia, where most of her family lived, and married a man who was a drunk and not my father. She had 6 other children with her husband. I have never know who my dad was. Around age 2, my youngest aunt took me away from my mother and her husband when he an his brother, who were drunk at the time, were pouring beer down me. My aunt had to take me away by beating them with a large stick and took me to my grand parent's house. My mother never made any attempts to retireve me. Perhaps that was a blessing I never realized until recently. My grandparents had 13 children with only the youngest daughter, the aunt I referred to above, still living at home. Grandpa had been laid-off from a government manufacturing plant and couldn't find work. Through the church he attended, he and the pastor were able to place me in the orphanage.
I had thought grandpa and grandma were my mom and dad until sometime around my teen years. In the orphanage, wer had houseparents - sometime single, widowed, divorced or separated women and sometimes couples, some with a child or two of their own. There were four different houses - 2 in town and 2 in the country - and each house had approximately 15 - 21 children. Houseparents came and went like changed underwear. The number of children per home made it difficult for the single female houseparents to handle and the non-presence of a male figure made it difficult on the children. It didn't take long for me to figure out I was not in a normal family situation. I saw other families in the community and at church who did not have 15 - 21 children. The houseparents who had children of their own made it very obvious that their own children were favored, while being raised in the same house with thier own rooms and amenities and the orphaned children crammed into the available bedrooms with community amenities. We were expected to call the houseparents "Mom" or "Dad". Some children refused, knowing they weren't our real parents, so they were expected to call them "Brother (last name)" or "Sister (last name) - this was an orphanage sponsored by a penticostal organization. Often it was tough calling them anything good, because many of them did not have our best interest at heart, rather their own. These situations did result in many abuse situations, which I personally experienced from houseparents and from other older orphange kids.
Not everything was bad in the orphanage and I do have a few fond memories. My final assessment is that I do not wish for any child to grow up in this type of environment. The orphanage was shut down, because it had become dependent on State and Federal benefits to continue operating and the governments found to many problems that could or would not be corrected. I have been away from the orphanage for 37 years and have very little contact with other folks who were in the orphanage at the same time as myself, although some of them live in the same town as me. I think part of that problem is that our conversation always gravitates around how that situation adversely affected our lives.
Fast forward: After leaving the oprhanage, I went into the Air Force for four years, with 2 years in Germany plus I got out of the military in Germany and stayed nearly 2 more years. I returned to the town where the orphange was (I didn't know or have anywhere elso to go - at least I knew some folks willing to help me to an extent) and finished my BS degree on the GI Bill. During that time, I met a young local lady, married her and we had two great sons. After completing my degree, I worked and helped her complete her degree. She has felt that I was too leniet raising our sons, but I would tell her that at least they were going to feel loved by the time they leave home - the older son completed college, is in the US Air Force and calls us every weekend; the younger completed a college certification course and works in a local computer department while still living with me and his mom and helping with the bills. They are both Eagle Scouts and performed community and church volunteer work over the years.
When the older son was about five or six years old, he came to me one summer day and asked "Dad, how come we always see Mom's mom, but never see your mom?" Two things here: 1) My wife's Dad died before the older son was one year old and until this point, I had never discusses my parents. I didn't know a lot about either, although I had seen my Mom on a couple of extremley brief occassions. So neither of my sons had a realtional concept of grandfathers, nor has anyone ever stepped in to fill that role; 2) Until this question was asked by a very intuitive child, I had always intended never to discuss it with my sons hoping they'd never ask and I wouldn't have to explain. The reason for this was that after leaving the orphanage, I began feeling the mental and physical pain of not having parents, real or surrogate.
After a few months of making phone calls (I had the phone number of an aunt and step-sister living in northern Virginia), I was able to arrange to go to northern Virginia for a "family reunion". Up to this point, I had never seen 4 of my step-brothers and sisters. Upon checking into the motel, a man was trying to get into his room with his daughter, about the age of my younger son. It was probably the closest to a transendental moment I've every had, because I immediately felt upon seeing him that I knew him - he was one of my brothers I had never see and we recognized each other immediately. He was living in North Carolina with his wife and three daughters. Anyway, over the next couple of days, I got to meet all but one of my step-brothers and sisters - the one step-brother was not able to attend the "reunion". Aslo, my wife and two sons got to meet my mother, who now was in her mid to late 50s and in very poor health. She would hardly talk to me and I to her. I felt animosity toward her for not being a "mother" to me, although the orphange I was in with all it faults was a much better situation than if I had been raised by her. I made several attempts then and later to find out who my dad was, but with no success. I still do not know why she wouldn't tell me or why the secrecy - she died at 62 from heart failure as a result of kidney failure.
Ater this meeting, I became very upset about not being able to find out who my father was and actually went into a long, deep depression about my life situation. I was able to deal adequately with my family, because I love them. However, my life outside my immediate family became almost unbearable at points. I underwent phsycologial counseling and was on medication for many years, all the time keeping this fact from my wife for most of this time. I felt "embarrassed" to share that I was in deep depression and actually would hide my medications from her. I took care of our families finances because she was busy taking care of our sons during their pre-school years - and what a fantastic job she did! I finally came to realize that I needed to let her know. My depression was to the point that it was getting difficult to "hide" from her, like suddenly crying for no apparent reason, very defensive, etc. When I did tell her, it was like falling in love all over with her, because unrealized by me she had a fairly good idea what was going on with me and more importantly she still loved and accepted me and tried to understand what I was going through. Wow! what a woman!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I continued to struggle with milder depressession for many years after confessing to my wife. At one point she told me that for the sake of the family and to prevent me from killing myself or going crazy, I needed to find a way to get rid of these feelings about my mother. I knew who my mom was - I knew her name and had actually seen her face on a few occassions. However, I did not know my dad's name nor had I ever seen him and didn't know his name, so it was extremely difficult to be upset with him. All my anger was taken out on my mother.
Don't misunderstand me at this point, I'm not trying to get preachy, but I finally had to release all my anger and rebellion against my parents to God. I asked him to help me get rid of the anger that was causing some of my health problems, to release my resentment against two people I didn't really know or know why they did things the way they did, etc. The healing was not instant, rather over time I have been able to think less about my situation, to forgive my mom and dad, give my wife and sons more attention. I still do think about my situation, but no longer sit in a dark room sulling over my demise. When feelings of depression do come up, I talk to my wife or a very dear long-time friend, who happens to be a social worker and helps many other people through prayer, listening and spiritual advise.
Okay, I've talked about myself. There are thousands of other people who have the same type story, some worse - some not. After these many years, I've come to the conclusion that it has been better not to have known or been raised by my mother and step-dad (my real father, I'm not certain) that to have been raised by them and to have been abused, manipulated and not to have had many of the opportunities I have had. My older son had an Internship in Wahsington, DC his senior year, so his Mom and I drove him to and retrieved him. I happened to find out that the aunt who resued me at two years of age, and with whom I had lost contact with, had moved back to southern Virginia. I was able to get her phone number to let her know I'd like to stop by on the way back from dropping Mac off at his Internship. As my wife and I visited her, she made me aware that the man who married my mom was a drunk and didn't like me because I was not his own child, that if I had been taken away from him there was a very good possibility he would have killed me. In the early 1950s, there were very little to no child abuse laws like there is today and he most likely would have gotten away with it. Isn't God great?!!!!!!!!!!
