Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast
Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast is the ultimate audio companion for curious and adventurous minds, offering a journey through thought-provoking discussions and unique perspectives on life, culture, and the journey of an adoptee. This show has been established with the simple goal of reaching other adoptees who may benefit from just hearing other adoptees share on the lived experience. Host, Adoptee Lisa Ann, will share the tangled roots of the life long journey as an adoptee, the search for biological connections, the good and bad of reunions and how saying "I am adopted" has connected to so many others. The candid discussions between Adoptee Lisa Ann and her guests will tackle the term "adoption" and how it is covers so many aspects of our society.
Wandering Tree ®, LLC Podcast
S4:E2 Finding Her Wings: Dana Ozak's Touching Story of Adoption, Identity, and Family Reunion
When Ohio native Dana Ozak was brought home on her mother's birthday, little did she know that her life would unfold as a tale both profound and inspiring. Our latest Wandering Tree Podcast episode encapsulates Dana's journey as an adoptee, weaving through family dynamics, identity formation, and the ceaseless quest for belonging. Her narrative is not just her own but echoes the experiences of many who've grappled with the complexities of adoption—a story punctuated with familial pride and the inevitable curiosity about one's origins.
Settle in as we navigate the nuanced roles that birth order and adoption play in a family. Dana candidly recounts how being the eldest daughter influenced her position within her family and, more intriguingly, how it intersected with her identity as an adoptee. The emotional resonance of her quest to unravel her biological roots is palpable, especially when sealed records and the search for resemblance reveal heartrending truths and unexpected connections. Dana's discovery of her biological father's identity exemplifies a profound balancing act between the pull of nature and the shaping hands of nurture.
Our conversation culminates with Dana sharing the emotional whirlwind of reuniting with her biological family. The breakthroughs and the setbacks, including the bittersweet knowledge of a brother passed and siblings found, craft a narrative so rich that it becomes universally moving. We're honored Dana chose to share her story with us, and by doing so, she offers a beacon of hope and understanding for others navigating the emotional waters of adoption. Her courage in sharing her story is a testament to the strength found in the search for one's roots and the power of family, both given and chosen.
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And the first thing that we did, of course, was Google my biological mother's name. There was no biological father at the birth certificate, so we Google her name and the first thing that we found was her high school picture and in the face, like I have her nose, I have her eye. In the face we look almost exactly the same.
Speaker 2:Welcome to today's episode. I am honored to have with me Dana Ozak. She is an adoptee from the Ohio area. She was born in St John's Hospital in Cleveland in the 70s and adopted through Catholic Charities. Welcome to the show, Dana.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you, Lisa.
Speaker 2:Well, why don't we go ahead and jump in a little bit here and tell our listeners a bit about your adoptee story and journey?
Speaker 1:I always knew I was adopted from day one. My mom and dad took me home on my mom's birthday, and so she tells me, like a lot of times, that it was, like her, the best birthday present that she ever got. She was told that she wouldn't be able to have children at all. She suffered several miscarriages. Little did she know. A couple years later, three years later, she got pregnant with my sister. My sister was born perfectly fine, no issues, and then, seven years after that, she had another child, my brother Matt. Much later on, I found my biological family. I found out they have a total of four brothers and one sister.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I find your front end of your story very interesting because we have a lot of parallel in our journeys. We're about a year apart in age and we have the similarity of infertility and someone adopts and then they learn later they can have a child and then it'll never happen again. And then a few years later it happens again. So we have that in common and I remember when we were prepping for this episode, it was just like one of the key things. I thought well, that binds us a little bit, because it's nice to have commonality and someone that understands that journey, or that portion of the journey anyway. Well, how about you tell us a little bit about, as you were growing up, how you approached life as an adoptee, under the premise that you've known for as long as you can remember?
Speaker 1:I, since my parents never, ever kept a secret from me, I didn't believe they should be kept like a secret from the rest of the world. So it's like you know, just about everybody they talked to knew that I wasn't an adoptee. And I do remember one time when I was in grade school I went to Catholic grade school I was bullied by one of the boys in my class who told me that no, no, no, no. There's no way that you're you're adopted. You look so much like you're, like your mom and dad, like your sister and your brother. There's no way.
Speaker 1:And he actually wanted to see proof that I was adopted and I told it to my mom. I was just like devastated because I was. I don't know. Maybe I thought they was like a little bit proud of the fact that I was adopted and when we were like you want this proof that I was adopted, why should I show that to me and my mom's over here, like you know what? Just ask them for proof that it was boring.
Speaker 1:So I was never ashamed of her or afraid of it and everything I thought. I thought that was cool and I was never treated like different from the rest of my family. I was treated equally my mom. They were more of a perspective of me versus my brother's sister and I've talked this over with like several family members. I was like the oldest girl, so I got. I couldn't get away with as much as my brother and my sister is my brother and my sister could. My sister got away with like a lot more than I did, and then my brother, my parents would have went with murder and everything you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting how that works. Birth order and then you put on the layer of adoption. It is a really unique dynamic and I have often wondered if those are the family members where you should be talking about or studying the nurture versus nature aspect of it. Yeah, because you know, I just think back to my own childhood and we were raised by the same people. For the most part we were raised with the same rules. I would agree with you.
Speaker 2:you know, in the construction of birth order I didn't get away with a whole lot, but I always attributed that to being the oldest not necessarily being the oldest only girl and adopted yeah, very interesting. Well, as you were going through just kind of normal childhood in the context of the definition of as normal as possible, not getting too deep into that Tell us a little bit about how you felt in terms of your biological family and did you wanna find them. And when that decision came forth, how did you approach it?
Speaker 1:I know I was always curious, but I didn't have, I didn't know how to go about doing it at all. When I was part of like a group of where they blocked off like the birth certificates, and my mom, yeah, got an amended birth certificate with their name on it, I didn't even know how to go about like looking, I didn't know what steps do I take, where do I go, and I didn't really get like super, super curious about it until I got pregnant and I wanted to know, for the sake of you know, like for the sake of my kiddo and everything, what do I have in my health history? What I needed to know, more than I wanna say. Like seven or eight years ago, the state of Ohio finally opened up the original birth certificates to the children born in 1970s and when I saw that they were down online and I'm over here like I need to do this, I need to know, and the first person that I called was my mom and dad and I'm over here like I don't wanna do this without you, okay, but I feel like I need you, like I have to know, and my mom is over here like Dana. I always knew that this day would come and she goes. If you wanna do this, I'm 100% behind you. If I were in your shoes, I would wanna know too. So we paid like like $10, like registered letter and the mail and everything sent away for it.
Speaker 1:Three weeks later I got my original birth certificate with my birth mom's name on it. My husband opened the mail that day. He was all excited for me and everything. We opened it up together and the first thing that we did, of course, was Google my biological mother's name. There was no biological father and the birth certificate. So we Googled her name and the first thing that we found was her high school picture and in the face, like I have her, I have her nose, I have her, I have her eyes. In the face we look almost exactly like. There was no doubt in my mind that she was my biological mother. And then the second thing that we found was her obituary. So I was crushed. I thought you know where do I go from there?
Speaker 2:So yeah, and that's a that is a crushing moment to to get to that point and know that you're not going to be able to talk to the person or be given that opportunity to ask the the multitude of questions that we typically have as we're going through this. Just to dev summarize a little bit in this and maybe ask one more question just around that time period the picture of your birth mother. Was that really your first time looking at someone that looked like you and seeing the genetic mirroring? Was that your first opportunity?
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, definitely. I was always told that I look a lot like my, like my adopted mom, and I kind of see it too, because we have like the same eye color and everything. But then when I saw the picture, it's just like, oh my God, it was just, it was a shock and a surprise and just like all those, all those emotions, it was just like looking in the mirror.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely can be a little bit unsettling. I can relate to that as well. You have the original birth certificate. We call that the OBC. You have a name. We Google, we get a picture, we get an obituary. Where did you go from there?
Speaker 1:Reading through the obituary after, like the initial truck, I saw that I had a sister out there. I had a. I have sisters and I also saw that I had an aunt that was still alive. I got her name and everything and I used Kayahoga County Ohio voters registry to look up her address online and I sat with the information I wanted to take for like a good year. I didn't know how to how to write her. I didn't even know what she knew about me or not. I didn't know how to contact her, how to reach out to her. And then it was New Year's Eve and I just thought to myself you know, I got to do this. I have to do this now.
Speaker 1:My only resolution that year was to write a letter to my aunt Jill. So I sat down, I wrote the letter out. I got like a really good feedback from some family and some friends about it and so I wrote it up, mailed it to her, sent her a picture of myself there was no denying just to prove, maybe just to prove to her that I'm not making this up. And I heard that from her within like I want to stay like five days. She called me like five days after she got the letter and she told me um, dana, I kind of had like suspicions growing up because she was a lot younger than my biological mother.
Speaker 1:I can't get some suspicions growing up that something was going on. And yes, I am your aunt, you do have a sister, you have a lot of cousins out there and she goes and I think I might possibly know who your biological father was. So she gave me a name right around that time. Since there wasn't a name for my biological father, I asked my husband if he could get me an ancestor or a DNA kid for my birthday. I didn't get any hits off of it at first, but I used the database part of it to look up the names of the biological father that my anchovy, and after I did that I found his death certificate too. He passed away as well.
Speaker 2:That's kind of a brick wall. Yeah, that's definitely a brick wall. Well, how did you start working around the things that you found along the way up to this point?
Speaker 1:Well, my anchovy being some information on some of my cousins, and I reached out to them and found like a few of them on Facebook. I had messaged my biological sister. I don't know if she even got like the first message that I sent her I didn't care from her, like you know, like until like a little bit later I reached out to one of my cousins. His dad reached out to me and he goes Hi, dana, I think I have like a little bit more information for you regarding your biological father and everything. You wanted me up for dinner and I'm over here like yeah, that would be awesome. And so we met them for dinner.
Speaker 1:He was very kind, very nice. He gave me a family tree and then he was like I'm very, very interested in ancestry and everything and he asked to see my DNA profile. So I showed it to him and a couple days later he calls me goes, dana. The more I thought about it, you would have more more Eastern European if this guy, mita, was your biological father, because he was straight up from Serbia. He had emigrated from Serbia. I thought about that. I thought about that and I looked up through my DNA count one more time. It can't hurt to do another search and I found a parent child Well, and I'm sure that was a very stunning moment.
Speaker 2:under all of the other research, you had done the direction your maternal aunt had set you on. Now you're shifting and there's a human who's alive.
Speaker 1:Alive. Yeah, he lost his ancestry count so he didn't have, like the the the pain version anymore. But he wanted to leave me like little breadcrumbs. He left me the link to his LinkedIn profile. You know, I think he was kind of like waiting for me to contact him. I didn't know how to contact him. I didn't know exactly what to say to him, so I called my uncle. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to contact him. I don't know if he even knew about me. I don't you know how do I contact this, this John, this John guy? Uncle Steve goes. So, dana, do you want me to contact him for you More? Really, yes, please. So it turns out that they actually went to the same college together. Uncle Steve was able to get his contact info through the alumni and he called him for me.
Speaker 1:Women, like, maybe about like five, five days later I was on on St close to St Patrick's Day. His wife called me back. Back then I had a really bad case of flare and jelly is like a barely talk, probably from my kids. So I worked because I'm I'm a, I was a toddler teacher at the time. And she goes on. Dana, I don't want you to talk, I just want you to listen because I know that you know your voice doesn't have to it.
Speaker 1:She said Uncle Steve, talk to your, to your biological father. He's always known about you, or at least he's like like some hints about you. He does want to reach out to you and call you, but he has a lot of family members that she wants to tell. First, you have four brothers, four half brothers. Through him, my biological father called me like on right on St Patrick's Day. We talked for like a a, a good like hour or two. He told me that when my biological mother was pregnant with me, he met her for lunch because he was getting ready to move away. And I'm slamming up with her. He knows that she was pregnant and she told him oh, you know, don't worry about this, it's not yours. She also told him right there. And then she she just decided that she was going to give me up for adoption. She rushed him up. He went up, moved away, got married, had my four half brothers and everything. But like in the back of his mind he always wondered and he didn't know for sure until he got that DNA test. It turns out that both him and his wife Got DNA tests for Christmas. I got mine for my birthday, so that's why I didn't shop right away, that's why we had to wait and everything.
Speaker 1:And then, little by little, I started getting hold of, like my other family members, of my Brothers. They were wonderful, they were welcoming my youngest half brother, jason, who I just Recently lost. He just recently passed away. He told me on right off the bat and, dana, I always wanted his sister. He's like growing up in the house with like um, with four. Four brothers I ever wanted was a sister. And I told him, jason, you have me forever. Now I'm, you know I'm not going anywhere. And my brothers were very welcoming. I met a cousin who's a truck driver who travels all over the place and everything. She was very welcoming.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we're going to touch on a couple different things from that portion of your story. The first is you making connection to you're now for sure, for sure, biological father, learning that you actually come from a fairly sizable family, that are accustomed to all their cousins and they're aunts and their uncles. But for adoptees, we have a tendency to be a little overwhelmed by those, the number people.
Speaker 2:Yeah you have some sadness in your story. You touched on it a little bit, and so I'd like to give you some opportunity to talk about your brother Jason. It is a recent event. Why don't we just take a few moments and pay some tribute to him and give you opportunity to talk about him?
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. Jason was Upgoing, going, just very, very Mubbing, just very caring. His last text to me was me and my husband were up in Detroit for the Metallica concert and he was. He was worried because one of his friends had moved from Detroit that Down to Q West everything and he goes dating. You know, I'm worried about you to stand safe over there, make sure that you don't bring a purse to the concert and make sure that you always look around so that just that just goes to show the kind of person that he was. He was always looking out for like, for like everybody else and just outgoing.
Speaker 1:And my husband told the story. He went down to Orlando once for work and I couldn't go because I had to work, and so my husband just met up with with them and they went to like um, I think, like a, like an Applebee's bar together just hanging out at the bar and then Jason just like sitting there chatting up the waitress Like he could talk to anybody and it's. We met six years ago at a Christmas week. We traveled down to Q us and he told me that, like them, it was this Christmas present that year and Christmas is very, very hard for you know, the whole holiday season is gonna be hard now because Jason loved Christmas.
Speaker 2:So it's hard with us, take a brief minute and allow you to collect a little bit of your thoughts, and you know I'm glad that you had that opportunity, through this journey, to find that person and to find those siblings that truly embraced you and kept you close to their heart and allowed you to build that Bond that you're talking about, and you know our condolences to you and your family for that loss. I know it is not something that anybody wishes for us learning and making connections. So again, well wishes to your family and condolences.
Speaker 1:We always some being Jason always taught that, that we felt like we were ripped off on time. You know, like us finding each other, like like later Jason ever got to see my kid when he was younger. All my brothers weren't at my wedding, so it's like we felt like we were ripped off on time. I don't think that that six, going on seven years was enough time to spend with like I would give anything for For more time with them, but I'm I'm kind of trying to stride like the grief with gratefulness thing. Of course I'm grieving my brother how can I not?
Speaker 1:But I'm grateful for the time that we did get together. Like when, when they look back, nice, see all the stuff that we did together, everything from you really want to see the Christmas story house when he came up here for for Cleveland. So we flew to the Christmas story house together when we were down in in QS we went to go see there's how many way house together, all the things that we did together. You know, all those wonderful memories. That's, that's what I hope those to my heart for always.
Speaker 2:It's okay to be grateful for the things that we do have. It's okay to find joy in those. I'm looking, you know, into the next few years. I want to find joy in this process. I do not want to be in what I call the abyss forever.
Speaker 1:Because if you think too far down the abyss you can't get up and everything. So I have I still have like three wonderful brothers. I'm very close still to Jason's husband she has so it's like we're still in touch and I'm checking in on him because it's like I'm really worried about him. Jason had a twin brother, jeremy, and I'm constantly checking in with him and making sure that he's okay Because you know they were, they were identical twins. They had like that you know the intense bond that nobody else had. Jeremy told me just like a couple of days ago you know he looks in the mirror now and it's just him. So when I tried to tell him, it's like no, you know, you've got us too. You've got all your siblings who love you and everything. I know that. I know that it's not the same as having Jason with you, but but you do have support and you do have family.
Speaker 2:As you move forward and continue to grow in those relationships. Can you talk about some of the changes how you view yourself or how you view your identity?
Speaker 1:The biggest change is I kind of like learned that, like maybe I'm like a little bit of both the nurture and the nature, because I did find out that my biological grandmother was a school teacher. For many years she was a substitute teacher and I'm a preschool teacher. I did also meet up with my, with my sister, and when I finally did meet up with my half sister, we sat there and we had like a like a good discussion on Tim Burton and Tim Burton movies and everything, because she's she got like the whole spooky side to me and everything. So it's like I found out that it's not necessarily one or the other, it's both. I'm the person that I am and I have all this love in my heart because of how I was raised, from my genetics background, you know.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about what is on your horizon. You have been working on a memoir, I am, so tell us just a little bit about that activity, where you are headed with that.
Speaker 1:I am working on a memoir called A Girl and Her Four Families, because I don't believe I'm just like the sum of one family. I believe that, like I'm a sum of like all these wonderful families who I am, I'm including like a little bit of info about. You know, the family that me and my husband create together, the family that I married into, my adoptive family, my maternal family and my maternal family. I believe that all that is the sum of who I am.
Speaker 2:Give me a little bit about your why. Why did you want to write a book? What is it that you want it to do for? Not only, maybe, yourself, but others?
Speaker 1:Basically, I wanted to write a book because I know that there's a lot of adoptees out there who might want to know, but they're afraid. They have that fear of, like the whole fear of rejection. What if my biological family rejects me and I was very lucky and blessed on that because it's like I never. I didn't see any of that, you know, but I wanted to kind of give them hope that, even though I went through the whole roller coaster of emotions with thinking that my biological father was dead and finding out that my biological mother was gone, and now, even with losing my brother, I wouldn't have traded like any of the experiences. I wouldn't have traded any of that for the world and everything you know. I think that it changed me, like in a positive way. I just want to, I want to tell the world that you know, don't let fear hold you back, don't you know? Don't be afraid to try it.
Speaker 2:I think those are very salient points and good things for adoptees to take into consideration, based off of your lived experience. As we, as we were working to kind of close out, I like to talk about connection to community. What are some of the ways you're connecting to the adoptee community?
Speaker 1:A lot through their Facebook. I'm involved with a bunch of adoptee groups and when I lost my deaf mother and everything, I found like droves and droves of support who understood what it's like to be tea on that time with a family member and everything and lose them, to connect with them like that and then to lose them. So all of them are just wonderful. I never had like a negative experience in any of the groups that I've belonged to. It's all been pretty positive.
Speaker 2:Facebook and some of the groups are great catalysts into the community and finding connection. It's nice to be in fellowship with people that get it too. Yeah, oh, yeah. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. It is a true privilege for me and an honor to have adoptees come and share their personal stories, but, more importantly for today, your willingness to come and talk about not only your adoption journey data, but also your living in the moments of grief, and that's hard to share. So big hugs to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lisa, yeah, and I wish you such great success. You are always welcome here to come back anytime. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Wandering Tree Podcast. Please rate, review and share this out so we can experience the lived adoptee journey together. Want to be a guest on our show? Check us out at wanderingtreeadopteecom.