Adoptee Meets Birthfamily

“Katelyn DeLaune has always known she and her family are different.

She is athletic, curious and intense. Her parents are not. She shares neither their interests their physical features. If she dyes her hair, reddish streaks — not a trait her parents share — always bleed through.

The 24-year-old Thibodaux resident knows these differences are because she is adopted.

Her parents told her when she was small. Her mother, New Orleans native Rose Thibodeaux, often read a children’s book about adoption to her.

“My parents were very open,” DeLaune said.

Before they began the adoption process, Thibodeaux and her husband, Clifton, decided they would always be honest with their future child.

“I think it was healthy for her to know she was adopted and how special she was,” Thibodeaux said. “I always told her, ‘Honey, even though you didn’t grow under my heart, you grew in my heart.'”

DeLaune said she is happy her parents told her about her adoption, avoiding feelings of betrayal that often arise when children learn they’re adopted later in life.

“Some people I know who were adopted who found out when they were teenagers felt bad. They felt like they were lied to their whole lives,” she said.

Although DeLaune said her parents raised her well and loved and supported her, she always felt pushed to find out more about her lineage.

Her curiosity led to a nearly six-year-long search to find her birth family, armed with only a handful of vague descriptions of her biological mother.

During her senior year in high school — just before she submitted her paperwork with the adoption registry — Thibodaux told DeLaune that her biological mother had died less than a year after her birth.

“She had known for a long time and she kind of waited until the right time to tell me,” DeLaune said.

With the help of her parents and the state’s adoption registry, DeLaune learned that her mother was Riana Bell of Gonzales and that she had an older brother who was adopted two years before her own birth.

After nearly six years of searching, DeLaune recently met her maternal grandmother, her aunt, two cousins and her step-grandmother.

She said she finally found the genetic connection that she missed as a child.

When she was young, DeLaune noticed that she had friends who looked like their parents or shared common interests and talents.

“I never had that,” she said. “It’s not replacing my old family. It’s just a blessing to have a new family to be able to welcome in that I can say, ‘Oh, I look like this person.'”

DeLaune’s maternal grandmother, Karen Bell, said she hadn’t seen her granddaughter since the day she was born.

“It was just awesome. It was like a miracle,” Bell said.

Although she always knew she would see DeLaune again, Bell said she was unaware that there were now ways to search for adopted family members.

Bell said that, when the adoption advocate who helped DeLaune in her search approached her, she said she was nervous about meeting her granddaughter.

“She’s family and you love her. You’ve always loved her as family even if you don’t know who she was,” Bell said. “It was kind of scary. Because you never know what kind of impression you’re going to make.”

Bell said she and her daughter Sharon also found DeLaune’s older brother via Facebook. They were unable to establish contact with him.

DeLaune said she was trying to contact him and didn’t want to release his name.

Throughout her search, DeLaune remained an advocate for adoption. She has given speeches at various events to dispel misconceptions about the adoption process.

“I think adopted people need to realize that, most of the time the people that are putting them up for adoption don’t want to put them up for adoption,” she said.

She said notions that the child isn’t good enough or that the parents are acting selfishly are false.

“Nine times out of 10 it’s because they want a better life for you that they can’t provide,” she said.”

Adopted Thibodaux woman meets birth family[San Francisco Gate 9/7/14 by Chris LeBlanc, The Daily Comet]

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