When I was about 12, I found a letter hidden in my mother’s dresser drawer that she’d written to the family attorney. She wanted to change my birth certificate to remove my birthplace, Alderson. The letter said I’d been born in the Federal Women’s Prison there.
My world spun out of control after that news. West Virginia’s a long way from where I lived with my adopted family in Seattle. I also learned I was born addicted to heroin because my birth mother was an addict.
I already knew I was adopted by then and my racially ambiguous looks troubled me. My caramel-colored skin was more Latina than anything, but my eyes suggested Asian in me somewhere. Others thought I was biracial -- black and white. Altogether, I differed from my parents’ Eastern European looks. Only later would I find out my background: part Greek and a blend of Taiwanese American, Latina and more — at least as much as family stories and DNA testing can tell.
For years on my school bus rides home from elementary school, I endured name-calling. Like many adoptive parents, mine thought love answered everything. As much as she wanted to help, I needed more than love to understand the confusion and injustices I faced out in the world.
I was a wild child in the making and drugs, drinking and running with the wrong crowd gave me all I needed then, so I thought.
Over time, a wedge divided my family and me and it would take over a decade to re-unite. My life spiraled down, and I had nowhere to go but up. I’d experienced too many near-death episodes and I knew I’d end doing no good for the rest of my life. After too many close calls, I moved to Minneapolis, white-knuckled my way into changing, sought help from professionals, reconnected with my family from whom I’d been estranged for years, and worked my way up. It was a long slow climb up, but it was worth it!
While many adoptees seek to figure out where they came from and how they fit in, my story is compounded with the odds against me from the beginning. I’d already survived heroin addiction at birth — only 50 percent of heroin babies survive, and the recovery rate is just 19 percent for non-white drug addicts who start under age 16.
Still haunted by my prison roots, some years ago I requested a tour of my birthplace. I flew to the small town in the Appalachian Mountains and received a private tour. It was one of the most profound moments in my life. Afterward, as the warden walked me toward the front of the compound, we stopped at a white picket fence in back of her home on the grounds. “These are the babies that didn’t make it,” she said, her voice almost in a whisper. The fence embraced six grave markers. You were a lucky one, I remember she added.
At that moment, standing there at those gravesides, I thought, “Who better than someone like me who had made it out the other side?”
I recognized my good fortune. I vowed to reach back and give back to my roots. Shortly after, I started a year of quarterly visits to the Alderson prison where I led writing workshops with the same group of women time after time. I also began to tour other women’s prisons across the country to speak about resilience, hope, and positive attitude. I share my story as proof that the past does not always define the future. My goal is to establish regular speaking engagements and workshops at each of the “Big Six” federal women’s prisons.
I’m lucky to have broken the cycle of drug addiction and incarceration, and I feel it’s my duty to give back and reach out to others, and to share my gratitude for all those who walked with me on my path.
BIO
Deborah Jiang Stein is a freelance writer and creative consultant who lives in Minneapolis with her two young children. She can be reached at
muttslikeme.wordpress.com
www.deborahstein.com
