I always have difficulty knowing where to start. Then it dawned on me that with this site, our cause, I didn’t need to defend myself. I came into this world as a black market adoption. I’ve just learned in last few months that the whole time I was raised right under my family’s nose (on both my mother and father side). Yet for me to figure out, obviously a family member arranged the adoption. So this is usually where our captive audience starts judging whether I’m lying. My adoptive mother came from a very uneducated family, she had taught school in 1 room schoolhouses, so with my adoption, my very influential biological family gave her a job teaching in their town, if she got a college education. This was my saving since my adopted father raised me most of the time. This man had fought thru WWII and being raised by the grand dragon of the KKK (parent’s generation was in their hayday in the 1920’s) in the midwest. Their fond stories of lynchings and racism was a daily topic. I was the little girl that was punished for any revolt of these beliefs. Even though there weren’t any black families in our cornfield it was made prevalent. At 5 years of age, or somewhere in that time frame, the adopted son, thank God no relation, started sexual abusing me. When my adoptive father caught him in the act, adoptive father was reprimanded by adoptive So-Called Mother and the abuse went on and on, till around I was 12 when he left for college. And so the stage was set. I became the problem, adoptive mother made sure and still tries to make me pay, for my mother and fathers sins (I’m sure they knew each other, small town America) and she sure was and does want me to pay for not keeping my self quite to protect all their reputations in their little world. My life I know would have never been easy with my biological family, but to say I was lucky (as some put it), or that these mentally ill people should of been able to adopt a child is a far cry from the truth. The adoptive Mother still makes sure at 94 to get in the local paper and radio (my biological family’s business and why I picked the name of my story, heard it every morning on their station) (Lee Harvey, if us old ones remember him). She likes to tell what a wonderful teacher is was, how she loved ALL children, just what a wonderful all-around person she’d illusioned herself to be. Don’t ever think that there isn’t a special place for these people. We all look our Maker in the face, and I thank him that I never was this woman’s blood. Her animosity for me, that she keeps hidden, with so many other things is her journeys end, not mine. The tools she chose to give me are now the ones that make her weak to me. I’ve learned to cuddle myself, to hold myself, to love myself. I’m not their dirty little secret anymore. These people need to be exposed for who they are, not protected for what they did! I’ve choosen to RISE UP! To Speak!!

What advice would you offer to encourage others?

I started my healing at 32, I am now 58. Speaking, not letting the guilt they instilled in you to exist, it’s not your baggage. Give yourself a break, we deserve it. Always look for your peace.

 – Catherine, Survivor