Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved. Locating his birth mother he was amazed to see someone he looked like but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his Native American heritage while discovering the pain that was deep within him. His experience inspired him to write two songs.

Kyle: 00:03 And that’s the thing is she’s a great person. It was just very hard towards the end to have the relationship because I think she felt she wanted to be my mom. I just period and she couldn’t be. She didn’t raise me and it was a very tough thing for her. And I think it’s just the trauma, you know, it’s easy to get wrapped up in my own trauma, but you know, that can’t be easy… Giving up a baby, especially when you don’t want to.

Voices: 00:35 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:47 This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and my guest on the show today is Kyle. He called me from Seattle, Washington. Kyle tells the story of growing up, towering over his mother and sister and looking very different from them, but being loved, locating his birth mother. He was amazed to see someone he looked like, but struggled to get along with as she battled her own pain. In the end, he was able to truly connect to his native American heritage and the experience inspired him to write two songs. Here’s part of one of them called the saddest song and did this is Kyle’s journey

Kyle Singing: 02:15 [Music] See all of me. I’m there before you. You’re In my dreams, but I don’t know you.

Damon: 02:33 Kyle said that he had a good childhood, but they didn’t really talk about adoption still. He felt like everyone in the family knew he was adopted and some folks were a little nicer to him in his extended family while some folks were less so within Kyle’s nuclear family. His mother told him the story of how she had several babies to choose from, but she picked him and he liked that his dad was engaged, cracking jokes, and he was a fun Dad, but his parents separated when he was young, so the challenges of switching between houses made things a little tougher. He acknowledges that he did feel kind of different.

Kyle: 03:10 Really good childhood. I think I always felt a little different, but when you’re a child you don’t really know why. I just thought I was very shy, so I think I attributed a feeling different. Just that I wasn’t outgoing. My sister is very outgoing and so I thought, well, it’s just because I’m really shy that people don’t notice me as much or you know, I feel different. Yeah, we’d go to my grandparents’ house. They have a farm in North Dakota and go there as children for the summer and my grandmother did the opposite. I was the youngest, so a lot of times the older kids didn’t want to play with me so she would take me under her wing and teach me things and my grandfather would take me with him and he, you know, fix farm equipment. And so that was a, that was actually some of the best memories I’ve had in my life was growing up on the farm.

Damon: 04:05 Those were great because Kyle could just tag along as his grandmother baked and did other things around the farm. She taught him a little about how to play piano and told him stories about when his father was younger or when she first met Kyle’s mother. His grandmother knew he was shy and she needed to reach out to connect with him. She even attempted to connect him with his heritage.

Kyle: 04:29 They always knew that I had some native American blood, but they didn’t know what tribe or anything else, but I remember when I was really young that my grandmother took me by myself all the way up into Canada to go to a powwow and at the time I didn’t really know. Yeah, I didn’t think it through. I just thought, oh, this is kind of cool. Or by herself and, but looking back he was trying to show me things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Um, my family is very scandinavian, so that was a very, a very interesting.

Damon: 05:05 You appreciate that. She did that or like, what’s your feeling about that?

Kyle: 05:09 I think she, she knew of my birth heritage and just thought I’m going to, I’m going to take him up there and expose him to cultures that may be like, you know, some of his ancestors. I also remember she would tell me ,well, When she was little, it was still in a lot of places to kind of the wild west, you know, so she remembers a chief that would come into town and trade for things when she was a little kid, so she told me about him all the time and how he was really tall and proud and so I think she, yes, she used her, her real experiences also to connect with me in ways that I didn’t even fully. I mean I appreciate them, but I appreciate them more now.

Damon: