I Wonder

Where does our identity come from? Are our lives shaped by lessons we still need to learn? Are we experiencing a rebirth that may or may not connect to a past life?

Does it have anything to do with our astrological chart, the placement of the planets at birth? Is our future driven by DNA? Are we preset with needs and desires based on genetic predisposition, inherited patterns, family constellations, ancestral echoes, or generational memory? We've all heard stories about long-lost siblings who meet and discover shared quirks, talents-even wardrobes. There’s research that backs this up: physical traits and personality behaviors can often be tied to our environment.

Does The Apple Fall Far from the Tree?

Digging for relics again, I found a letter tucked between old photos, one my mother wrote to my father just ten days before my brother was born. She was in Louisiana; he had apparently returned to Philadelphia. She was 19, pregnant, and clearly feeling insecure about their future. I also found another letter to my father, dated about six months earlier, from his mother, encouraging him to keep quiet about his departure from the New Orleans radio station WJBW.

In the later letter, my mother shows the kind of teenage jealousy and fear you'd expect, mentioning other strippers and apologizing for upsetting him by trying to help him find work at Louisiana radio stations. She's clearly doing her best to hold it together: swollen feet and hands, sick with a cold, and nearing the birth of her first baby.

The dynamic feels all too familiar to many women: that of a pregnant, unmarried teenager grasping for stability with an unclear sense of how involved the baby's father will be. She explains that her efforts to find him work came from worry and concern, not control. It's obvious they were in disagreement about where to live, each longing for the comfort of what they knew...her in Louisiana, him in Philly.

I couldn't help but think what a tragedy for my mother to not realize all of her talents, how tragic of a life she would have, always with a "woe is me" mentality. "I don't need nice things," she would say, always seemingly feeling undeserving but trying to make it seem like some altruistic sacrifice.

The story was that my mother had been abandoned as a baby. Different variations of the story floated around, as they would in the South. Even though she won the lottery being adopted by my Aunt, a college grad with a nursing degree and government job, and Big Mama, who owned 200 acres of timber farm, I think that word haunted her. Not unlike many kids in the foster system, there's always the lingering question: why wasn't I wanted? I had attributed all of her experimental, unconventional behavior (being a stripper at an early age, swinging later in life, her long-standing relationship with a married man 11 years younger) to her feeling unwanted. It was as if the word "abandoned" was her moniker.

IT’s Britney, KIN!

We’d searched for years before the internet, but it was virtually impossible. The hospital and school she attended had both burned down. What were the chances? We had to rely on the memory of the local sheriff, which only fed the porch chatter.

She’d been left on church steps. A Black woman brought her to the hospital, leading to speculation she was of African American descent. She said she wanted to know who her birth parents were-just to confirm or deny whether she was a Westermoreland, a name with plenty of backstory involving womanizing and scandal. There were porch tales about inbreeding. About her being the daughter of her adoptive father, a barber with a hobby of carving tiny penises from pencils (I wish I were joking).

Or maybe my aunt had been lying all along and was actually her birth mother. She was 20 years older, never married, and it was always whispered about. When my aunt was on her deathbed, we even found ourselves trying to spot C-section scars and coax deathbed confessions while she was under heavy morphine.

My mom was light-skinned, with exotic features and thick wavy hair. She’d say she was Cajun or French Canadian Indian, but none of it was confirmed. I eventually got tired of explaining, so for laughs I started saying I was half Jewish, half Britney Spears-because yes, we’re actually related to Britney, and it felt like a fun way to explain my quirky, hillbilly side.

But if family traits are real, would things make more sense once we found her birth parents? I was determined to find out. Maybe more than she was. Maybe I projected the abandonment wound onto her. Maybe I was the one who needed to know why she was left behind.

Thankfully, before she died, I was able to show her her biological family-at least some of them-via Facebook. My gut told me I was right. And I was. She said that’s all she really wanted out of the DNA test-just to confirm or deny whether she was blood to the clan that adopted her.

The irony? What we discovered after her death was heartbreaking-and if you believe in fate, it explained a lot.

Turns out her maternal side had about 12 siblings. One other was adopted out. One died in a fire. The rest had long been reunited with the child who’d been adopted. Her birth mother had married three times. It took work-and Facebook plus DNA relatives-but we eventually found and confirmed half-siblings. The resemblance was undeniable.

I spoke with an older cousin, a chatty woman with that lonely-old-lady energy. She didn’t deny the match but didn’t offer much detail either-just stories about herself. Still, it gave me insight into the family. Apparently, they were all performers. My mother had played piano and sung in her college choir before dropping out to strip.

The cousin described going with her father to perform in strip clubs in New Orleans. It gave me chills. My mother might have crossed paths with them and never known.

My Grandmother the Madam

Then came the kicker: my mom’s biological mother had been a madam. A full-blown brothel runner. Her deathbed-confession-worthy secret. The whole family knew, and many wanted to pretend she never existed. No one I contacted acknowledged my mom. It hurt deeply. All I could think was-what’s the big secret?

My mom’s father may never have known she existed. She was born in July 1940. He was seven years younger than Big Easy Betty- I mean, Big Mama Mae. He died in December 1941, electrocuted in the Canal Zone at age 27. His body wasn’t returned to the family until the following January. He had another daughter-one he likely never met.

I’ll never know what really led my mother to leave college and start stripping in New Orleans. But I can’t help but wonder if some unconscious ancestral pull led her there. A soul magnet guiding her to her origins, without her even knowing it.