As a Black-Market baby, sold for cash along a curb in 1970, I knew one day I’d tell my story. Of the 170,000 infants placed for adoption that year, 9000 were illegally brokered on the black market. I was one of them.

The day an unscrupulous attorney handed me to the desperate pair he would later extort for thousands of dollars my life underground began. As a child, I never knew about the shady attorney my parents hired to cheat the system or that he later blackmailed them. After $30K paid, they struck a deal. Fear, abuse, neglect, and addiction followed.

My memoir, [REDACTED], for which I am currently seeking representation, tells the story of my journey to reclaim my true identity and unearth the secret that drove my bi-polar mother into an alcoholic abyss, ballooned my crippled father to 650 pounds, and invited the dark man to stalk my dreams — at any moment someone could return for their baby.

Taken by unvetted parents and never adopted or appointed a legal guardian, a childhood wrought with trauma followed. At 5, I asked for a new family. At 10, I kicked bits of my grandfather’s brain off his front stoop. At 12, I used fake papers. At 18, I stood in my birth mother’s shoes. By 21, I realized “adoption” happened to me, not for me. At 40, I found my birth mother, unraveled her accusations of rape, met my birth father, and uncovered the dirty deal that altered my fate and stole my identity.

In the shadow of the recent Roe v Wade ruling, this memoir is a timely and cautionary account of lives destroyed when desperation meets need and greed. It explores the variants of loss permeating the adoption constellation and driving a billion-dollar industry. Lastly, it is a healing testimony to the resilience of one relinquishee who refused to be erased.

Bio
Relinquished on the black market during the Baby Scoop era, I am active in the adoption community, blog at www.MyAdoptedLife.com, and speak publicly about my adoption experience. I am published in local, state and national magazines and newspapers, and am a member of the National Association of Memoir Writers, the Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, and The Writers’ League of Texas. I live in both the Texas Hill Country and New Orleans, LA where I write, work and road trip with one old grumpy rescue Chihuahua named Ollie.