If you know me then you know I'm a researcher by nature. I love to research EVERY subject matter to death. I get a rise and lost in the process of discovering and investigating facts, history, point of view, truth and real stories about real people.
After LA Times released my story online on June 21, 2017 and on the front cover of their Sunday paper on June 25, 2017 it struck me as odd that I hadn't research journalist Corina Knoll, nor read any of her pieces.
Corina Knoll is the LA Times writer who found me in internet land and asked to write my story back in in 2010.
I can't believe I agreed for a writer to write my story without knowing their work. But when you have an extremely rare condition, you agree to any coverage. I also never expected my story to be treated as big and written as well as it was.
I found out Knoll is an award-winning journalist. She was part of the team that exposed and investigated corruption in Bell City, California - which led to the paper's Pulitzer Prize for public service - and went on to cover the trials of the city's former corrupt officials. She also contributed to coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. I knew she was a mother of three and adopted but didn't know much beyond that.
When we met annually and sometimes bi-annually she was professional and stuck with focusing on the interviews. She couldn't even accept coffee from me. I offered one day, not thinking, and she said, "Oh, no. We can't accept any gifts".
"Duh," I thought. "Now I'm one of THOSE oligarchs bribing their way through with promises of coffee and a dash of cream."
I guess I never looked into Knoll because I didn't think of it and didn't want to get my hopes up. I also didn't have much confidence that my story would be accepted by her editors as "newsworthy". I'm not fishing for compliments but as I told her I found it amazing that she even stuck with my story for this long because I largely find myself boring. This could be my self-deprecating nature, lack of self-awareness or the fact that when we live with ourselves 24/7 we can't see what others see. I think it's the latter.
Every year Knoll would update me and apologize, reassuring me that she's dedicated and wanted to share my story, but her pitches weren't striking a cord and/or the news season was really busy. I would always feel bad that she even apologized, after all, she was putting in a lot of personal time into my story and in a way I felt bad she was "wasting" time pursuing it.
Though I have had many stories written on me I treated this LA Times interest as a "maybe" and put it in the back of my mind, so no apology was necessary. It eventually became a non-thought and we would catch up here and there.
Six years would snail on and many pitches later Knoll contacted me this past spring and said her latest editor was interested in my story and wanted to do everything they could to maximize visibility.
When Knoll and I met in 2010 I was walking, still driving and living in San Francisco. She was married with no kids. Fast forward to today and I am no longer walking, standing, driving and I'm back in SoCal. Today, Knoll has three adorable children.
In many ways I think it's been special that it took six years to publish. She met me when I was still walking and the passing of time has allowed her to experience GNEM (aka HIBM) in action.
So I started looking her up right after my story was published and began coming across her pieces. Her 2012 piece Abandoned as a baby, she gets a priceless gift particularly struck me one late night.
I read this 2012 article to Jason while sitting in bed. I wept the entire time. She shares her experience as an adoptee and how it trickled over to her own child and becoming a mother.
Her words are so beautiful and poignant. So eloquent. So honest. So tender. So familiar. It's about loss and love. It's about searching for identity - something we all go through, adoptee or not.
I bathed in her words, intimately understanding the voice behind it. If my adoption story was told it would, in many ways, mirror this well-written story.
“I had been housed, but did not have a home.
Adoptees universally are told their biological parents adored them so much that they offered them up to a better life. It is a nice theory, one that has no trace of ugliness,” she writes.
I'm deeply impressed by Corina’s writing. It doesn't aim to be above you or smarter than you. It aims to share an intimate space in time. For a moment. A rarity today.
“I discovered that faded, typewritten assessment years after being adopted by an attorney and a real estate agent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when I was 2. As a teenager, I would take the papers from my mother's desk drawer without asking and pore over them when the house was quiet.”
I did this. I earnestly gazed over my thin tissue papers explaining who I was and why. They were my only link to a past forgotten.
Adoption isn't always easy and it’s not for everyone but I believe in the potential beauty of it. Little people come to you with pre-shaped traits and you're forced to adapt, grow and learn together. Like a dance with four left feet. Some adoptees experience harshness. Some adoptees experience physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse. Some adoptees find solace in experiencing family love and for the most part chalk up their abandonment as another chapter in their life that contributes to the complex tapestries that make them who they are. Many have identity issues, but don’t we all. Sometimes it doesn’t end in fairytale form but neither do many biological families.
It's not about parents controlling the entire direction of a human life from inception on. It’s about watching human life grow even if it is an abandoned soul. It's about letting them find themselves, find acceptance, and find love within and in others. And it's about grown-ups learning more about themselves just as they would through a biological child, yet it's slightly different and through a once abandoned child.
We're all searching, some more than others. Some more wounded than others. But wounds make us stronger, adaptable, perhaps more compassionate and understanding of human existence.
Some of us orphans do come out at the other end and form into beautiful people, void of pity and through Knoll's words I sensed she is one of those.
Please don’t ever pity an adoptee. I get this all the time. Pity is unproductive, an unnecessary stain.
I know we read a lot of bad things every day. It feels like the world is caving in. It feels like it's full of evil selfish people. Wars have been unnecessarily started, innocent people are senselessly dying. It feels like we are being exploited and uncared for by those in power - today and before. This is not untrue. But, while it's important to stay informed, scrutinize and question everything you're being told, it's also important to take a break from 24/7 fear and engage with those around us; neighbors, strangers, friends...I myself have stepped back. We soon realize the world and those within it aren't as bad as we are being told.
Take a break from the fear, read someone's story, gain perspective and focus on moving outside your own bubble.
Everyone has a unique story. Like a snowflake no two people share the same. No person is a category.
See the good. And check out this story: Abandoned as a baby, she gets a priceless gift
Thanks to journalist Corina Knoll for painting my life in such a wonderful way. I hope she continues to pursue these types of personal stories and sharing her talent.