[No Name Given] [No Name Given]

[00:03] [NO NAME GIVEN]: Hello, my name is anonymous. My age is 75. I was born and raised in beautiful western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, and I was born on Groundhog day, which isn't exactly a national holiday out here, out west, where I ended up, they don't have groundhogs, they only have prairie dogs, and they don't have a day. I was the 20th baby in Pittsburgh to have my life saved by a blood transfusion because I had. My parents had opposite rh factors in their blood. And the doctors told my mother I was going to die twice. So first she bought me a little white dressed, then she bought me a little baby casket. But I fooled them all and I survived. And thanks to the doctors who donate, doctors and nurses who donated their blood to me, they couldn't find a vein, and the only place they could find it was on my ankle, and I still have the scars. And as I was growing up, I heard this story many times, that when I became an adulthood, I should donate.

[01:22] [NO NAME GIVEN]: Blood, because that's what saved my life. This is still anonymous trying to tell her story, and I'm still 75. I was not born into a normal family. Well, I shouldn't use the word normal, but it was not the typical american family. My parents were both 40 when I.

[01:49] [NO NAME GIVEN]: Was born, and as I was growing.

[01:53] [NO NAME GIVEN]: Up, and I'll make it short, I mean, I had no brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no grandparents, no second cousins. I had absolutely no relatives, and I never understood why. And I had the most wonderful father. He could be father of the year. He would win. He would win the worldwide contest for father of the year. He was wonderful to me. Oh, this family. As I said, I had a wonderful father, but I had a mother who had some problems, emotional or mental problems that surfaced. I mean, I didn't notice it. When you're a child, you don't know what's going on. When I was twelve, she tried to kill me. She threw knives at me and then a cast iron skillet. And my father couldn't stop her. I mean, he stopped her before they hit me. He told me to go in my room. He called the police. The police called the Western Pennsylvania psychiatric Unit, and two tall men in white put her in a straitjacket, took her away, and I didn't see her for two or three months. And that's what gave me PTSD, the first thing that did, anyway, to make it short, when I was 22, she finally managed to successfully. She had tried several times to commit suicide. She finally did it with alcohol and pills. Her medication and alcohol did her in. Anyway. Two weeks later, as we were cleaning out the house, my father called me and sat me down and said, kay, I want to tell you something. We loved you very much, but you are not ours. You are adopted. In shock, I couldn't speak. I couldn't say anything. And to make it short, for years I was so hurt and so angry, never having had a brother or sister, never did I meet a relative. And he told me, your mother made me promise not to tell you you were adopted unless she died first. So thank God she did. And I forgave her for what she did to me because she had mental problems. I think when she. When she came back from the mental hospital, she. She was very quiet. I'm hoping they gave her a lobotomy, I don't know. But she was more like a zombie when she came back. But at least she didn't attack me anymore. But as a child, you're. Excuse me. You know, you're so sensitive and you're embarrassed by your parents. And she made me doubly embarrassed. So to all of you who have had parents who treated you unfairly or cruelly, it's not your fault. Don't think that it is or that it ever was. The onus is all on the person that had the problem and didn't go for help or couldn't go for help. So one of the things I wanted to say is that if anyone listens to this, who is adopting a child, tell them from the beginning, do not wait until they're grown and suddenly spring it on them. And I had the misfortune. As much as I love beautiful Pennsylvania, still to this day, they have the absolute worst laws of all the 40 or 50 states concerning adoption. The birth mother has all the power, no matter how much you asked, and I did ask for years and years, the Pennsylvania adoption organization, or whatever it was, they will not let you have any information about your real family. I had no medical history. I had nothing. Nothing. Because the birth mother in Pennsylvania, maybe it's changed now, maybe. But the birth mother had all the power. She could say, I do not want my child to ever find me. And Pennsylvania agrees to that. They will tell you anything. So, okay, that, okay, that does bring me to one more thing. About 1015 years later, I called. You know, I thought, okay, so I don't know who they are, but, you know, it's awful. You go down the street, you see someone, you think, I wonder if that could be my sister or brother or my uncle or anything you have no idea where you came from. Always tell the adopted child they were adopted. Make it simple when they're little. And then when you get older, just stress the fact that we loved you and your mother was sick or your mother couldn't keep you or something, you know, that they can comprehend, so that it's not a huge shock when it finally happens. And of course, if you're going to be adopted, if you're pregnant and you're going to adopt your child, go to Ohio or West Virginia. Don't have it born in Pennsylvania because they won't tell you a damn thing. Okay. The next thing I wanted to talk about is that if you're adopted and you find out late, and it's a great shock, I was given all kinds of advice. Don't find your parents. You probably won't like your history. They gave you up for a reason. And maybe that reason is bad. But speaking as the adoptee, I still want to know, you know, to not know your military, I'm sorry, your medical history or anything, and never to have had any relatives. That's a ridiculous way to live. But my father agreed to it because he was a wonderful person. He helped make up for her by his kindness. Okay, that's it. On adoption, the next thing I want to talk about is. Well, it's a pleasant topic. I was surprised at the questions on the StoryCorps list, but the question was, when was the first time you fell in love? It made me laugh, but actually I was twelve years old. They sent me to Christian summer camp and I fell in love with Uncle Lex, my counselor. He reminded me of my father. Reliving memories is hard, even when you're older, especially if you're sensitive. But all my life, as I look back, I fell in love with men who reminded me of my wonderful father. I think this was a mistake. The next thing in my life I guess I would talk about is, well, I mean, you never get over being adopted. I searched and searched as best I could. And about 1978, I think it was, I said, to hell with this. I'll just. I will write the hospital where I was born and see if I could get somebody to look up the records there, since the state of Pennsylvania refused to do it. I mean, other states, the child has some rights. The adopted child has rights, but not in Pennsylvania. Maybe it's changed, maybe it's wonderful now, maybe it's just like every other state. But it certainly wasn't for me growing up in the fifties and sixties. Anyway, I called the Allegheny General Hospital, McGee Hospital where I was born in Pittsburgh. And I started asking. I asked if I could talk to someone in the records department, and this wonderful woman answered, it was the luck of the jaw or synchronicity, or however you want to think of it. The woman I spoke to said to me, I've heard so many sad stories about adoptees that can't find who their real parents are because Pennsylvania has certain laws. I said, oh, yes, that's me. She said, well, and this was before the Internet, you know, this was 35 years ago or whatever. She said, listen, I'll tell you your real father's name. I couldn't believe it. She gave me his last name and she said, don't ever say anything. I said, I won't. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I couldn't stop thanking her, so I had something to go on. So then I started searching. And it's not easy trying to find someone who's already dead. But anyway, to make it short, a few years later, I said, okay, I changed my name legally to his, my real father, my birth father's last name. And that's what I go by. Till this day, I've never met him, have never met my real mother, but at least I have that. And then, you know, the adoptive story has no sense going into that. It's up and down and it's. Parts of it are sad, parts of it are happy, but anyway, you never stop wondering where you came from. Okay, let's see the next topic. Well, just be thankful if you have one good parent out of two. Some kids don't have either one. Good. Thank God it was my father. It was wonderful, because if he had died first, she would have never told me. I would have never known. Anyway, I want to get off of this topic. Sorry, I. Okay. The next thing is something that I. Well, I wanted to just mention that I have experienced several paranormal events in my life. And in general, although people are more open now, they're not afraid to talk about strange things that have happened, things that can't be explained logically anyway, or rationally. But when I was twelve years old, growing up in western Pennsylvania, which I loved, I was a tomboy. I ran through the woods, wild as any indian, and happy as any Native American ever was. I love the woods. And one day I was about. I used to. Well, as a tomboy, I just left home and ran through the woods for hours. Nothing bad ever happened to me. It's amazing. But anyway, one day I was coming back home. I took a little different route, usually took the same route. But I took another one. It was summer. I was out picking blackberries. And as I was coming, probably more than a quarter mile from my home, something caught my eye on a tree, a big old tree. And I stopped and I saw something shining, shiny, like, sticky, shiny coming down a tree. And I just stopped. And I turned my head and looked and it seemed to like, disappear into the ground. I said, oh my God, what could that be? And at twelve, you have no fear. You have no fear of anything. And so I went over to the tree and there was a stick, sticky substance that went down. I know this sounds crazy, and I. I'm an artist. I do have a great imagination, but I know what I saw. So I touched it and it was sticky and it was, it was like, it was iridescent and it went down into the ground. And I went home, told my parents and they said, oh, it's just a SAP from the tree or something, you know. So that was actually my first strange experience. Okay, the next thing I'll skip to here in New Mexico, where I live in the year 2000. I was living with a man who was a full blood indian on Santa Clara reservation, which is right near Los Alamos national lab. And I came. Since I'm an artist, I photograph fine art, mainly nature, nature, animals, etcetera. I came out, it was about, I don't know, 05:00 p.m. the sun was going down, I think it was September or something. And I was out there. I wanted to catch the gold sunlight on the cloud. It made it look like gilt around the edges. So I'm sitting there in a chair, just looking up, waiting for the sun to get just far enough down so that it would show up. And I saw a silver object coming from north to south. And Santa Clara reservation is only about 15, 20 miles as the bird flies from Los Alamos national lab that makes nuclear weapons, etcetera. I saw this plane fly into a cloud and I'm standing there and all of a sudden I realized it has not come out of the cloud. What is going on? And it was probably at 25,000ft regular jetliner. It did not come out of the cloud. I called to my boyfriend, come out, come out and see it come out. I see something strange come out. No, I'm tired. I just got off work, blah, blah, blah. He would not come out. I stood there for about three more minutes, and all of a sudden the same object came out of the cloud in the same direction it came, but three times it flew back from the cloud out of it. It never continued west towards sunset. It flew out and off it went. And I said, oh, my God, that had to be a UFO, because what plane is going to do that? But I had no witness and I didn't have a movie camera. I had my 35 millimeter. So I told him about it. He said, yeah, well, that happens here because of the lab, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, that was my second experience. The third one I'm not going to talk about because. Well, anyway, it was just a strange, if not stranger. It was about four years ago, and I was living in a town, a little mountain town, El Rito, which is halfway between Dulce, New Mexico, and Los Alamos

[18:58] [NO NAME GIVEN]: The national.

[19:00] [NO NAME GIVEN]: The lab again. And it was definitely strange. And this time I had a witness. So, anyway, it was, if you see something and you're not on drugs, you're not drunk, you're not under the influence of anything and you see it, well, then you saw something strange. You know, don't laugh at people who say they've seen things. I mean, some of them are lying, some of them are crazy, etcetera. Some of them are mistaking the planet Venus or whatever. But then there are those who saw things that were really unexplainable. Try and have an open mind. Okay, that's enough of that topic. Okay. My last thing I wanted to mention, I know I'm all over the board here, but interesting, different things have happened to me. When I was 19, I wanted to get away from my mother so badly, I decided to join the military, and I wanted badly to join the air force. Number one, because I'd always wanted to be a veterinarian. I would have made a great equine surgeon because I love horses and I wanted to learn to fly. She browbeat me into joining the Marine Corps, which I did not want to do anyway. When you. When you decide. When you're young and you decide you want something, try and follow your dream. Don't let somebody else tell you that you're wrong. I mean, if you're not doing anything illegal and it's something that you're good at or something that you feel you could. You could help the world with, do it. And like a fool. Well, not a fool. What do you know when you're 18 and 20? You know, I joined the Marine Corps, but I never learned to fly. I never became a veterinarian, and I regret it to this day. So if you want to become an archaeologist and your parents are doctors, and all they ever tell you is, oh, you have to be a doctor. You have to. Your uncle was a doctor. Your mother and father are doctors. You do what you want, you do what you're good at, you do what you feel you really want to do. I don't care if it's, if it's being, if you want to be an electrician instead of an md, go for it. Do it. Don't listen to people who don't have your dream or who think they know what's best for you. That's my advice to the younger generation. You know, I mean, maybe you are making a mistake, but that's how we learn to. We make mistakes as we grow, but we learn. And besides, nowadays, people can switch careers in midstream. Doctors become artists. I mean, you're not stuck in one thing, but if you want to do something, don't let people just try and dissuade you, because they may have your best interests at heart, but then again, it may be just their ego that's trying to get you to do what they think you should do. My last piece of advice, and, I mean, when you're young, you don't listen, or you listen to the wrong advice and you hang around with the wrong people. I was very lucky in one respect. I never drank, smoked cigarettes, took drugs, although I tried marijuana. Of course. I never was a gambler. I don't go to casinos. I don't have any bad habits that so many people seem to have that ruin their lives. And I'm very thankful for that. And, I mean, I can say that having a mother who was an alcoholic growing up, I didn't want to be anything like her. I. And so it worked to my advantage because I didn't want to drink, because I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to end up like her because I thought I was related to her. I thought I was her physical child, and I wasn't. But anyway, and my father smoked a pipe and he died of skin cancer, of throat cancer, from smoking. So I said to myself, well, I guess I'll never smoke. So those two bad things, I made something good. It actually had a good effect on me by virtue of the fact that I didn't want to be like them. And then when I found out I was adopted, it was also a great relief. I mean, I was glad she was gone because she was horrible. I mean, it's not her fault she was mentally ill. But until I found out two weeks after she died that I wasn't related, I thought, oh, my God, that's my future. I too, am going to become a schizophrenic. I am going to be taken away by two giant men in white coats, put in a straight jacket, and stuck in a mental hospital. So when she died, it did take a big burden off of me. I thought, oh, my God, I don't know my medical history, but at least I'm not going to have that as my future. So I'll just end this saying the same thing. If you adopt someone or you know, someone who's adopted and their parents are trying to hide it from them, try and talk them into telling them, because finding out the truth later is just too hard. Thank you so much. Goodbye.