The Lies That Bind: An Adoptee's Journey Through Rejection, Redirection, DNA, and Discovery
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Born in a California women’s prison in 1963, Laureen Pittman was relinquished for adoption. As a child, Laureen was conditioned to believe that being adopted didn’t matter. So, it didn’t . . . until it did. As with most sealed-records-era adoptions, the truth about Laureen’s birth in a California women’s prison in 1963 was carefully hidden and considered a shameful thing that happened to someone else over fifty years ago. But Laureen would not accept that some people still believed that the past should be hidden and denied in the name of "privacy," or to protect certain individuals from exposure to personal embarrassment, or a truth that would destroy some perfectly crafted life created out of secrecy, lies, and denial. It took nearly fifty years, but Laureen decided to make her own choices about what to do to fill in the blanks about her identity and she made a conscious choice to share her story. Through scraps of information, Laureen stitched together her history – one that started in the psychedelic sixties and ended up in a future where DNA could solve mysteries. She never imagined that spitting into a plastic tube, along with years of painstaking research and the explosion of technology, would reveal the answers to her identity and the rich family legacy shared with her biological father. Laureen’s tale is for anyone who has ever questioned who they are, where they came from, or how they fit in. Her journey to find her truth illustrates the strength and power of our universal need for connection, belonging, and healing through knowledge.
