40% of women who are in the church,
and I mean attending church regularly,
not just Christmas and Easter,
when they find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy,
they don't have the support they need
from the church or the community.
And again, 40% of women who regularly attend church
are choosing abortion.
Welcome back to Empower You.
I'm Diane with Save the Storks.
I've been with Save the Storks for about six years now.
I'm the CEO there.
And one thing I love about Save the Storks
is the awareness campaigns that we put out there
across the United States.
We definitely want women to learn
about our mobile medical clinics and our free ultrasounds
and our life-affirming programs and services.
But what we also recognize in our space
is that there's literally 3,000 women a day
who are choosing abortion,
and they're not choosing to keep their child.
They're not choosing either to parent
or the path of adoption.
And I wanted to just take the next 15 minutes
or so to talk a little bit about adoption
from two adoptees' points of view.
So I was adopted as a baby.
My coworker here, Emily,
who serves as our marketing director at Save the Storks,
was also adopted.
But our journeys are very different.
Our generational differences are vast, right?
The way adoption was treated back in the late 1960s
versus when Emily was adopted in 1995.
We just wanted to share that and bring some awareness.
And we hope it will encourage you.
And if you have any comments,
feel free to reach out to us
and email us at info at SaveTheStorks.com,
reach out to empower you.
And we would love to just get you on that adoption journey.
So first, I wanna start with you, Emily.
Thank you for joining us again.
Of course, thank you for having me.
Yeah, this is so great.
If you didn't see the last video,
please go back and watch it.
We went into depth about Emily's adoption story.
So you are a millennial.
Yes.
And you were adopted in 1995
when you were adopted from China
and brought to the United States to Chicago,
the big city.
Tell us a little bit about that experience being adopted.
Of course, not when you were little, little,
but when you started to recognize
what it meant to be adopted and how you were treated
and how your parents were treated
and how you were welcomed in your community.
I think what you hit on towards the end
of just being welcomed into the community is huge
because I never really remember a point
where I was treated super, super differently.
I mean, obviously there were tons of different questions
that kids would ask,
or I was even still getting questions
in college about adoption.
But I think, yeah, we were just welcomed into the community.
Our extended family was just so happy for my parents.
Yeah, everyone was just so happy and welcoming.
That is amazing.
That's great.
I know I'm Gen X and I was born in 1967
and my adoption is what they call a closed adoption.
And it's not as common anymore,
but my birth mom, I'd learned this over the years,
my birth mom was married.
She had four little boys and she had a one night stand
and being pregnant by a man who wasn't your husband
was not at all okay.
So she actually, I found this out just a couple of years ago,
she had a friend who was also pregnant
and neither of the women wanted their babies.
So they decided to go to Mexico and abort their babies.
Where I was born in Orange County, California,
the border was just two hours South.
So they got in their car, drove to Mexico
and they both walked into that abortion clinic.
But my birth mom's friend who went through with abortion,
she no longer had a child, but my birth mom changed her mind
and it had to have been the Holy Spirit, right?
On that drive down there, she changed her mind,
drove back to Santa Ana and found an adoption attorney.
And that's how I was adopted.
Now it's interesting because I remember when I started
going to church and Sunday school and then elementary school
kids didn't talk about adoption.
In fact, I was surprised because my adopted mom
had always said, be proud of being adopted.
We adopted you because you had the biggest smile
on your face.
Like she told me stories, you had a big smile
and you were full of life and we couldn't wait
to bring you home and raise you as our child.
Well, when I started telling kids that,
they made fun of me.
They were like, you're adopted
and your mom didn't want you.
Like just really kind of mean things
because back then we didn't talk about adoption.
Now, fortunately in my family, my mom and dad,
they were Caucasian, I'm Caucasian,
but my dad had white hair for as long as I can remember.
And my mom was this beautiful brunette.
So I looked enough like them where people
didn't question it, but they were so proud
that they adopted us that they told everybody.
Oh, for sure, yeah.
I remember one day a little boy, you know,
made fun of me at school and said, you know,
just teasing me about being adopted.
And I went home and told my mom and she gave me
some choice words to go back and tell him.
And it probably wasn't very Christian like,
but he understood.
He understood that I was special and I was adopted
and that I was just as important to my parents
as he was to his parents.
For sure.
So it taught me how to be confident
about being adopted when I was little.
And what was interesting when I was in sixth grade.
or my adopted mom passed away when I was little.
And so my dad decided to move to a different neighborhood
where we could walk to the schools
and have more of a community
because then we wouldn't have to take the bus.
And where he moved,
I had five adopted friends just in that neighborhood.
That's amazing.
Yeah, I mean, it was just like,
if you weren't adopted,
you weren't normal in my neighborhood, right?
So finally, like I had this community of people who like,
we were kind of the cool kids because we were adopted
and people did ask us questions a lot and we all bonded.
It was pretty remarkable how God put that together.
But again, I didn't know anything about my birth mom.
And so I had to have records unsealed,
but we can go into that a little bit.
So tell us,
I know you shared in the last video
about your adoption story,
how your birth mom placed you on the steps of a factory.
Yes.
Yeah, how did that make you feel
when you did learn that news?
Like, I don't know how old you were
when your parents told you that.
I don't fully remember how old I was.
All my life, I've never really struggled
with being adopted.
Like you said, I knew I was wanted by my parents.
I knew that my parents loved me and my family loved me.
When I was a senior in college,
I went on a mission strip to Peru
and we worked with children at an orphanage.
And I think that's when it like sunk in
that these children in the orphanage
were not wanted by their parents
because of either disabilities
or their parents couldn't afford them or what have you.
And I remember having a moment on that trip of like,
cause I think in my mind,
I always thought my birth mom had to give me up
because of the one child policy.
And so I always thought, oh, she wanted me
but she couldn't keep me type thing.
And it hit me like,
she might just never have wanted me at all.
And I remember thinking that and thinking like,
oh my goodness, I never had that thought before.
I always thought I was wanted by everybody.
And then I was like, oh,
but she just might not have ever wanted me.
But I was able to overcome that with just realizing,
you know what, it doesn't matter
because Christ wants me and my identity is in Christ.
And that's really all that matters.
And my family wants me and they love me.
And so I didn't dwell on that too long.
Yeah, so that's kind of what I know about my birth mom
is basically nothing other than yeah,
that she put me on the steps when I was a baby
and then I was adopted at five months.
But yeah, how did you learn about your birth mom?
Yes, so again, I was always told that I was adopted
and I didn't know the whole story
until when I was in my 20s, I had this curiosity
and I think it might've been
because my adopted mom died when I was little.
So I didn't have that mother nurturing
that I think I probably really missed out on.
So I asked my dad, I said,
hey, could we get my birth records unsealed?
Again, because it was closed.
And so we went to the courthouse,
we filled out all the paperwork
and it was kind of a miracle
because back in the old days,
I had the microfiche film and the lady said,
oh, this could take months to find at the courthouse.
I said, totally okay, here's my number, my landline number.
And I'm not kidding, I was at work that day.
I went back to work after lunch and I got a phone call
and she said, we found the microfiche,
we have all the information.
And she said, we've never found it that fast.
I was like, oh my goodness, right?
So right there, I was already prepared,
it could take forever.
They might not even find the microfiche, right?
So she said, we can't give you her information,
but what you can do is write a letter to her
and then drop it off here,
or I think I mailed it to the social security office
or some government entity.
And then they would, if they could find her,
they'd forward it.
Well, it was about three weeks later
after I mailed the letter,
it was 10 o'clock at night and my phone rang.
And she said, is this Diane?
I said, yes.
She goes, this is Edie, I'm your birth mom.
And I was bawling, like I didn't expect it.
I think it was a Thursday night,
10 o'clock at night when you're getting ready for bed.
And we had a good cry and I learned a little bit,
but in my letter I wrote to her, I said,
first I want you to know I'm okay,
I was adopted by a great family.
And I told her that it was a gift that I was adopted.
So I think that gave her a piece.
But I asked her, I said, did you remember my birthdays?
Because that was a thing growing up.
I always wondered if she remembered me
because I sort of always felt like I was forgotten.
I don't know, that was just a feeling I had.
And she said, every day I thought about you.
So I would encourage you, your birth mom,
I'm confident she thinks about you every day,
even though she couldn't raise you
because I had that reassurance from my birth mom.
So that was really beautiful.
I found out I had six half brothers.
I knew I had the four older brothers
and she had two other boys after me.
So my joke was, you just didn't want a girl, right?
So here I was the only girl and I was the one.
But what she told me was when I was born,
the hospital she was in, I guess they didn't want
the mothers to bond with the babies that were being adopted.
So they blindfolded her and they didn't talk about the gender.
So it wasn't until she received the letter
that she knew I was a girl.
So I was 26 years old.
So I flew up, she was living in Oregon at the time.
So I flew up to meet her about a month later.
And at the airport, she had a balloon that said,
it's a girl and everybody was crying.
Yeah, it was just a beautiful, yeah.
And my half brothers joke, they're all jokesters.
They're extroverts where I'm definitely an introvert,
but they said, you should have waited.
Had Oprah, you know, cover the story, we could have all got a free trip to Chicago.
Um, well, cause Oprah was really big back then.
I go, I didn't think about that, you know, but yeah, we probably would
have made a great Oprah story.
So, yeah, so it was great.
It's definitely been a celebration for all of us and my half brothers.
It's interesting to hear about the younger ones, especially they didn't
even know that she was pregnant.
And then the older ones said that they remember taking it or the hospital, but
then she didn't come back with a baby.
And so they all assumed I died.
And I thought, well, that's kind of a interesting perspective.
So they were living with this grief, right?
They never talked about it back then.
So it was a, it was a real surprise when they found out about me.
Yes.
Yeah.
So you mentioned that your dad helped you kind of find your birth mom.
What were just those dynamics with having your dad and then your birth mom
and your mom had passed away?
Just what did all of that look like?
Yeah, that, that's a great question.
You know, to think about his point of view, I think because I didn't have that
birth mom and I was kind of your typical emotional teenager.
My dad almost didn't know what to do with me sometimes, you know, dad, this
dad, that crying boys don't call you back, whatever, you know, turn down at
dances and things.
Um, but my dad actually was such a great man.
He passed away a couple of years ago, but he was so encouraging when I said,
Hey, I'd like to find my birth mom.
He said, okay, what do we do?
And it was weird because even though I was 26, he had to actually sign the
papers authorizing, it was okay to go into the birth records, which is strange,
but that's the way it was back then because I didn't have any medical
conditions.
When I first heard from my birth mom, I let my dad know and I said, Hey, I have
two half brothers who live about an hour away.
They want to come meet me.
My dad said, I want to come over.
He brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate and he welcomed them to the
family.
It was so beautiful and it was funny because the older half brothers too are
big jokesters and my adopted dad is a big jokester.
So they all really got along.
We had Thanksgiving dinner the next year.
I remember my younger half brothers were still like teenagers then.
So I would take them to events sometimes.
I remember we all went to the Newport beach boat parade because I got free
tickets from a radio station.
So I brought my dad and my birth family.
Like it was, so we were just kind of one big family.
It was fun.
Yeah.
And it's interesting because my adopted mom was an artist.
She was a beautiful painter.
And when I met my birth mom, she's an artist, right?
I have no artistic talent at all, but these two women in my life who were
responsible for me being here and helping to raise me, um, yeah, they're
both artists.
And I thought, wow.
And God's the ultimate artist and just how he, he put this beautiful plan
together that no one could have thought of.
And that even he gave me this dad who was just so open and welcoming and loving
and a little bit of a sad part of this.
But when I was 44, my husband, um, he had an AVM rupture, so he, um, passed
away and he was on life support for about a, about a week and it was Thanksgiving
week.
And my dad was in his eighties at that age at that time.
And he wanted to come up and spend time with me in the hospital because I was
just there 24 seven.
And my oldest half brother who lived about an hour and a half away, but in
rush hour traffic in Southern California, it was more like three and a half hours.
He said, I'm going to pick up your dad and take him to the hospital all the way
in Los Angeles.
So that brings tears to my eyes.
So like just the bond that everyone had, you know, it didn't matter that we weren't
blood related.
Like my half brother took care of my adopted dad, right.
Um, that, that time of great need for me.
So they came together to, to be there for me.
So it was, so yeah, the being adopted is such a blessing because I feel like we do
have two families, right?
And it's a beautiful picture of God's love for us, how he adopts us.
So again, like family can come to you in so many different ways, shapes and forms
and God knows exactly what we need.
That's why I think now I love that adoptions are open because it's good for, I
think everyone.
And most of all, I think it's the right thing for the birth mom.
Yes.
So the birth mom doesn't ever have to wonder, right?
Like your birth mom, I'm sure thinks about you every day and I'm sure she wonders
how you are.
And with an open adoption, the birth mom has access to that family and you know, the
birth mom and the adopting family, they can decide what's best for the child.
But as soon as the child gets older, then they can make decisions and decide on what
type of relationship they want.
So I feel like that's a lot healthier for everyone involved.
I think so.
Because then I feel like the birth mom, like you said, is able to still have that
relationship and hopefully it'll help with her mental health too, a little bit.
And then, like you said, the birth mom and then the parents can figure out what's
best for the child, both their families.
Right.
We are at Save the Storks, we've been working with a young mom who was
contemplating abortion.
And with the assistance of our amazing COO, she ended up choosing life for her baby.
But it wasn't until a few months later that she realized she wasn't ready to be a
parent and she chose adoption.
So our team helped her get connected with a great adoption agency.
And there was a couple in Los Angeles, I think, who adopted.
at her baby, and they get together at least twice a year now, but for the birthdays they
celebrate, they celebrate the little girl's birthdays, they send the mom gifts, they just
are in her life in so many beautiful ways.
So I am all for open adoptions, and I think what we should do is have another discussion
about birth moms, and like you said, their mental health, their emotional health.
Something that the audience might not realize is about 40% of women who are in the church,
and I mean attending church regularly, not just Christmas and Easter, when they find
themselves in an unplanned pregnancy, they don't have the support they need from the
church or the community.
And again, 40% of women who regularly attend church are choosing abortion.
This is tragic because again, I mentioned earlier that there's 2 million couples estimated
waiting to adopt in this country, and it's hard to adopt a baby in our country.
It really is.
I was in that situation myself several years ago where we adopted out of the foster care
system, and there's a definite need there.
There's so many older youth and special needs youth, at-risk kids who need homes, forever
homes.
But there are really not a lot of babies in our country because they are aborted.
Again, 3,000 a day.
So I think what we should do is talk a little bit about moms and their mental health, their
spiritual health, how the church can come alongside women who find themselves in an
unplanned pregnancy.
I don't know in college still, do you have to read the scarlet letter?
I think I read that in high school.
Yeah, high school, yes.
But I feel like we're not physically putting the letter A on a woman, but we are telling
women like, if you get pregnant, we are going to basically ignore you for nine months.
And you should be ashamed and embarrassed, and you cannot be part of this church.
They might not actually be saying those words, but that's how they're making women feel.
So we're basically giving her that scarlet A to put on her shirt.
And we have to do a better job as a church.
And I just hope and pray that you will watch our next episode here so you can learn more
about how your church can come alongside that woman who is facing an unplanned pregnancy.
And again, if she's not ready to parent, let's give her all the tools she needs so she can
choose adoption.
Thank you so much for just joining us today and letting us share our adoption stories.
We're grateful for you.
God bless you.