Twigs Adoption Adventure

 Together my husband and I are proud to have 4 children.

(Our Children: Lyndi Elaine, Casie Meagan, William Alexander & Deven Leigh)

We knew the moment we became parents that it was a life changing experience that God had hand picked us to be apart of the lives he created.

My husband being adopted from the time he was an infant knew far to well the importance of family and he longed to have his own.

(Bruce as a baby)

I had worked with abused children in my high school years.

God placed in my heart a desire to help those in need. It wasn’t until later that I became a foster parent and would fall madly in love with two little girls (half siblings) whom were abandoned and neglected by their biological family.

 

(Deven & Casie a few years after we got them)

Over the years of being the only Mother in their little lives they came up for adoption. Immediately we went to adopt, one went through and the other was a legal battle. However we are proud to say that even though we have not been able to legally adopt her, we have raised her the majority of her life and consider her the oldest of our children and the child of our hearts.

Shortly after our legal battles God blessed us with our biological children and our family is now complete with 3 girls and a boy. As a Mother of both biological and non biological I have to say there is no difference in love.

It does not come in a box, or through blood in the veins, in a package, but comes from the heart.

Every child is created by God & every child is a blessing of the Lord.

God hand chose me to be the Mother of all my children.

I am so thankful to Him for blessing me.

My love for my children has taken me to courts across America & also lead me to meet their biological families. This walk in life has taken me down many hard roads & also happy ones to say that I did the best for my children that God put into my life.

God has moved mountains for my children. For that I thank Him!

I do feel it is very important for children to know who they came from and who they look like & of course their medical history.

I have encouraged my children to have contact with the family members who will not abuse or harm them. I feel this is in their best interest.

After all I would not be the Mommy of them if she had not have given birth to them & for that I am so thankful to her.

She had a choice & I am so thankful she chose LIFE!

(Brandi Geraci Campbell, the girls Biological Mother)

As a Mother your desire is for your children to be healthy and happy.

When our last child was born he got very ill and was in ICU for many weeks. Not knowing what was wrong with him and the panic of testing him for everything and his little life just laying in a bed as if he were dying. It became very important for me to finally search for my husbands biological family to know my children’s’ heritage and most of all their medical history.

My husband had always had a longing to know his biological family. He always felt as if he didn’t belong. He desired to know who he looked like, and out of natural curiosity the reasons as to why he was given up. As he got older the desire to know medical history lingered in the back of his mind. When our son got ill, he knew he had to put aside his fear of rejection and once and for all face the truth for our children.

(MSGT. Bruce A. Carnal)

I had begun searching back in 1997 before our son was even born but not really knowing what to do. I was for sure very uneducated in searching and the process of how things are done.

In 2001 I found the place my husband was adopted through and wrote them to learn that you had to pay money to them to get basic information about his adoption. We paid the fee and learned basic information about both of his biological parents along with some brief medical information and was told to send more money if we wanted to dig deeper. With this information my husband was content for a bit and not really wanting to dish out money to a charity group, so I decided to just search if and when I had time but with 3 kids it got put aside.

Then in 2002 when our son was born that desire changed. I had to know what illnesses ran in my husband biological family for my children’s sake and I had to know what allergies there where in his genes to protect my child who has Muscular Distonic Reaction to pharmaceutical drugs.

The hunt was on………..I called up the Charity but they couldn’t help, contacted the birth hospital, requested records, wrote so many letters I can not count, searched the web, signed up for registries……and nothing.

Then I learned that we needed to contact the Denver Colorado courts to have his adoption file opened. For Colorado is a closed adoption state.

In February of 2004 we petitioned the court to open my husbands adoption file by the end of the month the judge had said yes we could hire a court appointed searcher to open the file read it and find his biological parents. The glitch is you have to pay the searcher and the courts.

We paid nearly $1,000 dollars and were then waiting patiently for the searcher to contact us to begin our search.

May 20^th (our 3^rd daughters birthday) we were contacted by our searcher saying she had found both biological parents and they were alive and she would be contacting them that day. She called the birthmother first, but had to leave a message for she wasn’t there. By the end of the day there was a message on the searchers phone from the birthmother.

She said I believe I know why are you looking for me, does it have anything to do with 10-7-1961 (we believe this is the day she gave him up), the searcher said, you mean 10-4-1961 and she said, YES THIS IS ABOUT MY SON. …….and she began to cry.

She told the searcher that she has never stopped thinking about him and loves him so, and that she was young and 18 yrs old and pregnant and that back then they sent you off to a maternity home to have your baby if you were unmarried.   She said when Bruce’s Birthfather found out she was pregnant that his mother just said it was unacceptable and told him that he could not be with her.

When she was in the maternity home she wrote him letters begging him to please marry her so that they wouldn’t have to give up their baby. The grandmother would return her letters and eventually she stopped begging and has had no contact with him since.    She said she even tried to send them certified but the mother intervened and wrote on them HES MOVED and sent them back to her.......so she said she just gave up. She said a piece of her heart was ripped out the day they took her baby boy from her.

She said that she has tried to find him over the years, contacted the hospital he was born in but they had closed down and she didn’t know what agency to contact but tried but was unsuccessful. She doesn’t have a computer and just didn’t know how to go about finding him.

She said that she has one son, and that he has always known about Bruce.    Bruce’s real name is Robert Thomas.

The birthmother did not know where the birthfather was, and she said she didn’t mind at all if Bruce found him either. But she was 100% certain who the father was.

The look on my husbands face, was so worth it. The only time I have seen that glow and smile was when the birth of his children. He just wept and said, she didn’t reject me and thank you honey for finding her.

By the end of the week the searcher had contacted the birth father who had never told his wife or 5 sons of his first born son and he refused to have contact with us. When the searcher said we had a sick child and really needed to have medical information he became very irate and refused to give us any information.

She informed him that the birthmother had consented through the courts and that the judge had signed off and that when they reunited that we have every right to contact his children along with him and that it would best for him to break the news to his family first before we did.

Needless to say it got ugly and he didn’t like that. He then said he wasn’t the father and the searcher said you are listed on the birth certificate and all this information is given about you at the time of the adoption so you will have to prove you are not the biological father through DNA testing to remove your name from this file and from these legal documents.

As to which he refused to do any testing.

So he knows he is the biological father.

She told him he had to sign the court papers refusing contact and that she would be sending them to him.

He refused to sign the court papers refusing contact.

As a mother with a child who was hooked up to tubes on life support I can not tell you the rage that built up inside me of a man who would not share his medical history with his biological child. I told my husband then that I would do whatever it meant to get that medical information and I meant it.

Within 3 weeks we had packed the children up and gone to Tennessee to meet my husbands birthmother Sarah Thomas Moore.

42 yrs had passed since she last held her son in her arms.

She told us the hole in her heart was now mended and she felt complete.

Mother and son reuniting

The smile on the face say it all!

Mother and son

on one day she gained 4 Grandchildren.

hugging goodbye until next time we see each other.

Since that reunion we have kept in constant touch with Sarah, spending holidays with her and talking to her as much as we can even though she travels and works a lot.

We waited and waited thinking the man would have a soft heart and change his mind. I prayed and prayed and always kept going back to the scripture that says something about no secret shall be kept the truth shall set you free.

My husband is not a secret to be kept. It is not his fault he was created and it surely isn’t going to be his fault if something were to happen to one of our children when we don’t know what medical issues going through their veins.

 So I decided I had waited long enough and I searched and looked up every person with the last name in Colorado as the birthfather. After 6 months of waiting I had enough and I wrote a letter, attached pictures and told our story of why we were searching.

I mailed out over 35 letters and by the end of the week had 3 people contact me with information that we needed.

2 being the biological brothers to my husband.

In the summer of 2005 we packed our children up and went out to Longmont, Colorado to meet 3 of my husbands biological brothers, wives and children. It was a wonderful and sad time. Great to finally see who my husband looks like, for he is dead on his birth father,looks more like the man than his 5 other sons.  Most important we finally got the medical history that we needed for our children’s sake.

Bruce and his biological brothers

Both of Sarah's Sons

However as of this day the biological father has yet to admit my husband is his son and this breaks my husbands heart for the rejection is uncalled for.

If you would please say a prayer for that man to soften his heart and for him to have the desire to make things right with his first born son.

So that is our story………adoptions truly are a wonderful thing

and sometimes bitter as well.

I encourage any adult who is adopted or any adopted parent to help their children find out who they came from. It is apart of them! I am not threatened in who I am to my children. Labels do not mean anything to me. Mommy is just a word, but Love is something stronger & deeper.

If you are a Biological Mother I want to thank you for choosing to bless a family with your child!

If you are a biological Father I encourage you to be brave and step up to the plate and be what God would want you to be ……..Honest and honorable.

I encourage any adoptee/birthparent to at least register with International Soundex Reunion Registry. It is Free! http://isrr.net/index.html To all adoptee & birth family members who are in search or wanting to start a search please check out this site http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/7575/index.html It is done by state & very very resourceful.

Thanks so much & God Bless all his children of the world!

Twigs