Suzanne Asha Stone and Cynthia Hand

[00:03] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Hi, my name is Cynthia Hand, and today is August 7, 2022. And we are in Boise, Idaho. And the name of my interview partner is Suzanne Asha Stone, and I am her birth daughter.

[00:18] CYNTHIA HAND: And my name is Suzanne Asha Stone, and today's date is August 7, 2022. We are in Boise, Idaho, and I am here with Cynthia hand, and I am her birth mother.

[00:30] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Okay.

[00:33] CYNTHIA HAND: This is the first time that we've spoken about this with other people around, so I think I know more publicly, yes.

[00:41] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: But almost a year, too. So we found out about each other about a year ago. It was September of last year, and I live in Boise, but I was traveling for work in Virginia and woke up to a weird message, like an email from ancestry.com. but I guess we might go to you first since you took that first step.

[01:08] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah. My birthday gift last year from my husband and my son was a DNA test, because I've always been interested in ancestors, and, like, my grandfather was adopted, so we didn't know anything about his history. And I got the results back and skipped by the part that said I shared 50% DNA with this person, I didn't recognize because it just didn't even register in my head what that could be. And then, you know, noted that there was a lot of scottish ancestry in my background. Then my brain finally caught up with me, and I went back and looked at your picture and went, oh, my gosh. How did that happen? I hadn't even. It didn't even occur to me that that would be the way that we would find each other. So I called my husband back home and said, turn around. Come back home. What do I do? And you had left your information open so that I had a way of reaching out to you. And it took me a few minutes catching my breath. And then I emailed you, and I think one of the first things I said to you is how much you look like your sister.

[02:27] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah, that wasn't that first message. And I was just shocked. Like, I remember that my hands shook. I. You know, I was in my forties at this point, and, like, I had been. I think I started searching for my birth mother when I was about 18 and had done a lot of different attempts, and none of it had panned out into anything. So it was really the last thing I'd expected. I had really given up at that point, and I was just completely caught off guard. And it took me a while to even be able to form words about what I would respond back. And it was an out of body experience for me, for sure.

[03:17] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah, I think for both of us that way. And I didn't expect it either. So I had left the birth records open, and when I went through the process of doing the adoption, they had asked if I wanted to leave anything in there. And so I had written a letter and tucked in a copy of Kahil Gibrans of what it is of children, his chapter on that, and just hoped that you would have just this amazing life. And then when you were born, you had gotten sick in the hospital. Afterwards, I found out about it kind of indirectly the day after you were born because they wouldn't let me see you. And so it was. It was a real question in my mind that you had even survived. So I think my first overwhelming feeling was just relief that you lived, you know, that you did survive and that this silence for so many decades wasn't because you had died when you were a child.

[04:32] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah, that part is really hard to hear from me because I didn't know anything about you. Certainly the records hadn't been open to me, and I didn't get any letter or any information about you at all. And I had gone through the state of Idaho through their sort of proper channels to try to open the records. I made a request for the information to be passed on to me. But my understanding of it was that you had to do this formal information also, which I think you thought you'd already done, you know? So for all of those years, you know, we both had sort of been open to each other's information and still hadn't been given it. So that part is. Is just tough. I think we've, like, you live, like, what, 15 minutes away from me, like, the whole time, you know, we've been so close together, and we could have brushed shoulders in the, you know, the grocery store. And so that's sad, I think, a little bit that we've had some missed time, you know, like that we could have connected sooner, but I'm so glad that we connected now, so.

[05:43] CYNTHIA HAND: Me too. Me too. And it's been so natural.

[05:48] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah.

[05:48] CYNTHIA HAND: Getting to know each other, and it's like you've always been there because you have always been there. I mean, it's just, you know, people think perhaps that when you release a child for adoption, that, you know, that's the end of it, but it isn't. That relationship is always part of you, always, you know, throughout your whole life. And so, you know, other than just the. The fear that, you know, did you end up in a hospital? Did you, were there things that happened that you would have needed from me. And not knowing that part was just awful. So I'm hoping that maybe our story will help other people who may have run into the same kind of roadblock to get past that, because it's. It was a really solid wall that we ran into trying to find each other.

[06:46] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah. For me, that was the biggest surprise. Well, there was a good surprise and a bad surprise. The good surprise was just how much I liked you immediately and felt connected with you. It really made me a believer in genetics. I could not stop staring at you, specifically your eyes when we met because we have the same eyes, and it was just weird to see that the only person that I've ever known who had my DNA was my children, and I loved that. But it really was an amazing thing to see all of the ways in which we're similar physically and also just little details about our lives that sort of lined up with our personalities and all sorts of things. So that was a really wonderful surprise. And I just feel like I hit the birth mother lottery because I just like who you are so much, and. And it is easy. I think it is an easy relationship to fall into, and it's been a little complicated for me to navigate, but it's always been good. So that's. That's amazing. And that's not true of everyone that I know who's adopted and who've, like, reconnected, so that I'm grateful for. And then the bad surprise was just how much I felt like the information that we had about each other was wrong, and we'd been, you know, both my parents and you had been misled in order to keep us from being able to find each other. And it just feels really gross, in a way, the amount of lying that happened and manipulation and the way that you were treated. And if you're comfortable talking about that, I think it's probably a good idea to talk about how you were treated and what they said to kind of manipulate a 16 year old girl, you know, which is really tough.

[08:47] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah, it is very difficult being 16. I didn't have a lot of family support, and because, you know, back then, it was just something you didn't talk about. You had to hide that from the community. And if you're going through the system, I experienced everything from attorneys offering me tons of money to give you over to somebody through a private adoption. It was like, that feels really awful. No way I'm going through that. And then the state of Idaho then being so assuring that everything was going to be fine. We went through the process of probably going through a stack of ten different potential families, and so I got to have a little bit of influence over which family that you went to, but the information wasn't always accurate. What they were trying to do is just kind of, I think, push me through that system as fast as they could and then make sure that I didn't change my mind. So when I heard that you were ill, and it was like the day after you were born, still in the hospital, I wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure you were okay. And there was no way the adoption hadn't gone through yet. I hadn't signed the papers yet, but they were adamant that they would not give me any information about you or let me back into the hospital to see you or anything like that. And at 16, you don't know to challenge the system. You just kind of accept that this is the way, potentially, things are. And I didn't have the ability then to see that this is just kind of bullying of a 16 year old know, and I'm sure they probably had the best intentions in place, but it was. It was really horrible. And, you know, I hope that not many others have gone through that, but.

[10:46] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah, one of the details that breaks my heart that's sort of come out is. Is that, like, they wouldn't even let you hold me when I was born, that, like, other people who were with you, you know, in your family were allowed to hold. Hold me, but you weren't, like, the most that they would let you is that you were able to touch my foot. And that just. It just breaks my heart as someone who has kids, too, you know, and who understands what that moment is like, you know, when you have a child, and that just is one of the most disturbing, heartbreaking details for me.

[11:21] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah. Yeah. But somehow we made it through this. And if it was not for the DNA testing and ancestry, being able to look back at all of that genetically, I mean, you've been looking for a long time that way. And I had never even thought that we would find each other, that it'd be a one in a billion chance of happening. But what started you looking in that direction?

[11:52] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: I grew up knowing that I was adopted, and it was always this sort of fairy tale story that had been told to me about this brave teenage girl who wanted to give her baby a better life. And that was a part of my identity growing up, and my parents were really positive about all of that, and I. But I knew that there was a. A story out there that I didn't know. And it felt like the beginning of my story was the mystery. And in the way my parents told me the story, I was the happy ending to their story, you know, that they had been trying to have children for years, and that I was the happy ending to the story of the lonely couple who wanted a child. But for me, the beginning of that story was a complete mystery. And it always felt like this missing space in my life. And I think even emotionally, too, just like there was a hole there that I could feel all growing up. And I was very curious and interested, and I also wanted to be sensitive to my parents. You know, I wanted to protect them from any idea that I was trying to, you know, replace them or I wasn't happy in my home. I had an extremely happy childhood, and my parents were great parents, and they've been nothing but supportive of this whole thing. But I still was very curious. And so when I turned 18, I was under the impression that when you turned 18, you could request your official birth certificate, and it would have the information of your parents, like your birth parents, on it. That turned out not to be true, so I requested it. And then the birth certificate that I got had my adopted parents names on it. And so then I found out that Idaho was a closed adoption state and that you needed to have some sort of medical emergency to actually open your files, and that there was a legal way of requesting that information to be opened. And so I think I was 18 or 19, you know, which would have been in, like, 1999, you know, or so that I filled out those forms and sent them into the. To the state. I also did weird stuff in that time. Like, I looked at. I knew that you had grown up in Boise. So I looked at the yearbooks from the Boise high school and tried to see if anyone looked like me, which is such a weird thing to sort of, like, look for your own face. And now I'm super curious. If I actually saw you, we should look up the yearbooks and see if I actually saw you. When I was doing those things, and I had some non identifying information, like your birthday and those sorts of things. And so I looked up birth records for people with your birth date and things like that. There was a period when I was about 18 or 19 that I really made an effort. And then it just felt like none of it went anywhere. And it was really kind of emotionally taxing for me, too, I realized. And so I would go through little waves of being interested in doing it. I think that one was because I moved to Boise. So I felt like I was sort of at the scene and able to investigate it in a way that I hadn't been able to before. And then I tried some, like, online adoption searches also, and that never really picked up anything except misinformation. So, yeah, I went through years of sort of off and on looking, and it never, never worked out.

[15:49] CYNTHIA HAND: One thing that we have in common, and you have mastered is. Is writing, you know, creative writing. And one of the first things I found out about you was that you were a New York Times bestselling author and that you had actually written a book about adoption and the birth mother process and kind of from my shoes in some fictional sort of way. But I was amazed at that, that you had put so much of yourself into, you know, that kind of standing in another person's birth mother's shoes and what that might have been like for her.

[16:30] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: That was easy for me to write about. That book is called the how and the why. And it's about two characters. So it's about an adopted child who has just turned 18. And then the other half of the book is about her birth mother who was living at a home for unwed mothers, which is what I thought was true of you, which turned out not to be true. But I remarked then that it was actually easier for me to write about the birth mother's experience than it was about the adopted child because of the age that I made her at that time. So she was my age, lived, and grew up in the same period that I did. So I think that part of it was easier. But I've always been able to imagine that in some ways, it was accurate. In some ways, it wasn't right. But I did have a much easier time writing the birth mother's point of view than the adopted child's. Weirdly, in that book, what was it like reading it?

[17:40] CYNTHIA HAND: It was eerie reading it, because there were so many times that you had, you know, accidentally, you know, gone from fiction to reality in terms of not only how the birth mother, you know, how you feel being in that position and your relationship with your unborn child, but also because of, you know, just the Skyd coincidence of, you know, things that character did that were similar, but that's largely because we have such similar things that happened to us both being in theater, both, you know, doing a lot of community, you know, being a figure within the community. So it was really interesting to see that come through.

[18:26] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: It's fun that we were both, like, theater nerds of the things that happened early on was I showed you, like, a photo album that had, like, my theater stuff in it. And it turned out that you and I both played the same sort of obscure role in this, you know, obscure Neil Simon play, come blow your horn. When we were both 16, we both played the same part, and there was just lots of little things like that that are sort of weirdly connected. And it's cool.

[18:58] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah. I totally believed that nurture was much stronger. In fact, probably had almost all the influence over nature, over the genetics, and that has completely turned upside down now. I can't believe how much the genetics transfers both mannerisms and personality and just, you know, it's so strong. I didn't expect that, either, but, yeah, me, too.

[19:29] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: I would have said nurture over nature quite a lot, you know, before this experience, it is kind of eerie, but it's been really fun, I think, and easy, like you say, it's been just easy to sort of fall into getting to know each other. And I feel lucky that we live in the same town, and we've been able to spend a lot of time together since this happened and connect. And we've gone on some road trips already. And some trip trips already. We went to New York with your son and my daughter, who are about the same age. That was really amazing. And this summer, we went on a trip to Yellowstone together for your work. And that was really cool, too. Just to see you at work and to see what you do and really spend time together, that's how you build relationships, right? Is time. And that's the thing that you and I haven't had all of this time. So it's been great to be able to do that.

[20:40] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah, I can't wait for the next one. So I'm looking forward to. I hope we get a chance to go to England together for your movie series coming out. And, you know, I mean, you've got so many adventures together that I'm looking forward to. It's just. It's just opened up a whole other new world. And it's also true for our families. Right. Because it's not just a relationship. I mean, my son is so excited to have a big sister, and that makes two now, so he was counting himself lucky. And my other kids are. It was great to see you meet my oldest son, and you two look so much alike. And you talk when you talk, it's just like, wow, you could easily pick these two out as being siblings.

[21:31] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah. One of my favorite moments of that trip was meeting him, of course, but we were, like, having a meal in a restaurant, and the waitress asked if there was any, if he wanted cilantro. And his, like, reaction to Cilantro was so similar to my reaction. And I was like, wow, all these little things that you take for granted when, you know, you've known the genetic element of your family all of that time. But, yeah, yeah, that's really cool. My family has been really excited about it, too. My husband called it, like, a meteor impact in our life when it happened, but I guess, in a good way. And my parents have been, I think, have felt a little vulnerable in this situation, especially because neither of my parents live in Boise. And so they're not able to spend as much time with me now as I'm spending with you, in a way. And I think that has made them a little vulnerable, but they've both been so great about being open with it and encouraging me, you know, in that way. And I'm sure it must be scary for them in a way, but also good. And it also, I think, is disturbing for them to hear some of the ways in which, you know, the adoption was, you know, the misinformation that was given in the adoption came to them, too. And I think that's hard for them to hear because they really trusted those people as well and believed everything that they were told. And that's hard, I think.

[23:20] CYNTHIA HAND: So, yeah.

[23:21] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Not to bring us back down the sort of sad path, but we wouldn't.

[23:24] CYNTHIA HAND: Have found each other if it weren't for your stepfather. Right. That he was the one that really helped with the genetic.

[23:32] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah. He was the one who encouraged me to do ancestry.com dot. A few years ago, when I was writing the book, I did 23 andme, which is another DNA test. But I did it largely for the health part of it. I did it to research for my book. But I also wanted to know something about my genetics, health wise. And that's always information that when I fill out a doctor's card or whatever, I have to say, I'm adopted. I don't actually have this information about my medical history. And so I wanted to know that medical history, and I'd had that done. And my stepdad was really into ancestry and genealogy, and so he and my mom paid for me to have the ancestry test so that he could sort of dig into the genealogy of it all. And I don't think that they thought they were encouraging me to, like, look for my birth parents. I think they just wanted to know more about my genetics and how Scottish was I? I'd always been told I was German Swiss, which my mother heard from the social worker when I was adopted. That turns out not to be entirely true, but, yeah, they were really supportive of that. I would have just stayed with the 23 andme if it hadn't been for them, so. And yours was a gift. Right. So we both were sort of given a very enormous gift and had no.

[25:14] CYNTHIA HAND: Idea what it was going to produce, so it was, it was amazing. Yeah. And it's, it was, it just feels like the whole puzzle, you know, is now that piece that's been missing so long is there, and it just, it just feels complete, like this is the way it was supposed to be. And maybe it took a few more decades than it should have, but I am so glad to have found you and have the relationship that we do. And I'm so grateful to your parents. And I know the first time I met your mom, the two of us just hugged for what, ten minutes and just said thank you. You know, it just. Yeah.

[26:00] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah. That was really nerve wracking for her. I know. I'm sure it was nerve wracking for you, too.

[26:07] CYNTHIA HAND: Me, too.

[26:08] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: There's, like, more nerves around that. I was in, like I said, I was in Virginia when we found out, and then I had to fly home and then we had to sort of discover or plan how we would meet. A and I was working at rediscovered books at that time for a while. And this little bookstore downtown. That's amazing. And I just couldn't handle putting it off anymore. I kind of just wanted to get it over with all the anticipation of meeting you. And so I suggested that we meet earlier, sooner rather than later. And if I hadn't done that, we might have actually met over the counter in the bookstore as you were buying my book.

[27:01] CYNTHIA HAND: Yes, because that's the first thing I did was all of us did, was to find out about all of your books. And I ordered all of them immediately and just loved them. But I bet, I'm just surprised that we didn't actually bump into each other. I bet there's a chance that we did.

[27:19] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Oh, yeah.

[27:21] CYNTHIA HAND: Because that's one of my favorite stores.

[27:22] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: So, yeah, that would have been good for the story, but I'm not sure about good for us.

[27:29] CYNTHIA HAND: We met across it and we know so many people in common, too, which is also, you know, our community just kind of connected, but it's in some parts the same community. And so that's, that's been really interesting, too. I don't think it surprised anyone that that relationship was there, other than, you know, just not knowing that we were that connected. But, yeah, what a change in life and meteor, I think Dan got it right. That is, everything has changed, but it's like this. It just feels like it clicked into place, like, you know, that missing part. And I can't tell you how much the relief of knowing that you survived, you know, that that's the part that's just like, I almost didn't want to know because I didn't want the answer to be that you had died, you know, in the hospital. And it was better for me to not know that then, you know, because I was always afraid that that was going to be what I found out. If I dug even harder.

[28:43] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: When I was searching, there was a hit where one of the people who had your birthday died in a car crash several years ago. So in the back of my mind, I, too, thought that it was possible that you were gone. That may have been part of what slowed me down a little at the end there, too, you know, is this notion that the news was not going to be good if I found it. And that's frustrating. Now I just kind of want to fix it, right? Like fix the broken system or do what I can to try to help other people in our position, you know, that are out there looking and have this situation where the people who are supposed to be helping them aren't. I definitely did apply for the letter program. I knew that the state of Idaho, during a certain period allowed birth mothers to write letters to their children, and I put in a request for that to be released. And it turns out you did write a letter, and that's still out there. I want to read that letter, and I want other people to be able to read their letters. And so I don't know what we can do, but I want to try to do something about that.

[30:09] CYNTHIA HAND: I think that's the next step, is trying to figure out how we can ask the right questions and open this up. So does that letter still exist? Is the book still there? Who has that? And if not, what happened? Why was there this information, given that your birth records would be open to you? Why did that change? And was it just misinformation, intentionally given at the time, just to make it so that I would be able to release?

[30:45] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: I think it was because I think. I think the state of Idaho very clearly advertised themselves as being closed, you know, at that time. So, like, yeah, I was surprised to hear that detail that you thought that it was open because as far as I knew, the state of Idaho had always had closed adoption through the state, you know, not through private companies, of course, but, like, so that's upsetting, you know?

[31:14] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah. It's very different than what the social worker or any of the adults involved in that told me when I was that age, so. And, you know, why would they have me write a letter if it wasn't to be able to get it to you? But, you know, that part's frustrating. We lost decades. We have a lot of making up to do. But I'm just grateful that it happened.

[31:47] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah, I'm so grateful. And it was a good time for us to come into each other's lives, too. You know, I'm sad about the miss time, too, but I do feel like it was kind of the perfect time for us to meet in a way, too. So that helps me, you know, get around that. I still feel very outraged on your behalf for the way that you were treated and the things they told you. And they told me, you know, when I was requesting the letter that nobody had been working on that for a long time, and there was a big backlog and I might not hear for a while, and that was years and years ago, so they knew that. I mean, certainly they've got to have had other people who asked and requested those things. And where is it? I always imagined like a box somewhere in a basement of a government building or something, but that's tough to consider.

[32:46] CYNTHIA HAND: Yep. Well, going forward, maybe we can help other people. But, you know, it just feels like things are healing around all of that now. That was for such a long time, you know, like a different lifetime. That kind of. I put it in its own compartment and, you know, it just tried to build a different type of life going forward so that because there's a lot of pain and stuff that goes on with, you know, making that kind of decision, it's hard. And some people are asking me now, they're like, well, aren't you glad that you didn't have the option to do an abortion? And that wasn't true. I actually did. In fact, I went all the way to making a commitment to do an abortion and then decided against it. And I think if I had had been told that I couldn't, that I might have pursued, you know, out of desperation, perhaps something that wouldn't have been, that we both wouldn't have survived. So I was grateful to have that as an option, but also to have adoption as being an option as well. And I had the time, I felt like, in my life that I could give you to get you started, you know, so that you would have a life that, you know, that was also important. And so I've had really mixed information coming from people about, you know, what they. Their opinions of this and what my choice would have been. But I think having that choice was incredibly important to me and that I've. I know I've made the right choice, but.

[34:45] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Well, I think you did.

[34:46] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah.

[34:48] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: I'm grateful for that choice.

[34:49] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah. Yeah, me, too.

[34:53] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: It complicates how I look at that issue also, you know, like, I can't be quite black and white about it in any way, so I get that.

[35:04] CYNTHIA HAND: Yep. And, you know, I. When I had you, I. We had complications and stuff, too. That's part of the reason that things were so tough in the hospital is because I almost died when I had you. So I had a placenta tour and disrupted and almost bled to death. So it wasn't like this was an easy. You know, all the things around your birth were not easy. They were all really incredibly hard. But. And I'm so glad that it all wove together into something that gave you a good family, a good life, and that we have each other now.

[35:46] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: Yeah, me, too. I am just so grateful just for the choice that you made and the sacrifice that you made, and I really want to thank you for that. It turns out you were the, you know, brave 16 year old girl who my parents talked about, you know, but so much more than that, too. And I'm just. I'm grateful, too, you know, for all that you went through and how brave you are now, too, you know? Like, I actually think that's a word that I would associate with you is just brave. You did it, you know, and you face this tough stuff in your life at that time, and I'm grateful.

[36:34] CYNTHIA HAND: Yeah, well, we have lots of time, hopefully, to talk about all of that and then start really, you know, building from there, so. Yeah, I'm glad.

[36:46] SUZANNE ASHA STONE: I'm excited for that, too.

[36:48] CYNTHIA HAND: Me, too. Yeah. Did you have any.