In her debut book, Janet Leef ’77 Sherlund explores the lasting psychological impact of adoption — and the enduring, human need to know one’s origins.
After submitting the manuscript for her memoir, Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms That Once Held Me, Janet Leef ’77 Sherlund received a note from her editor. Throughout the book, Sherlund uses the phrase “big black hole” to describe the mystery surrounding her birth parents, her heritage, and her identity. Could she find a synonym, the editor asked?
“I couldn’t,” Sherlund recalls. “There’s no other way to describe it.”
That “big black hole” — and what psychologist Nancy Verrier coined the “primal wound” of separation from one’s family of origin — had come to define Sherlund’s life. Despite being adopted into a loving family as a newborn, graduating from Colgate, going on to a successful career in nonprofit leadership, and raising two sons, Sherlund always felt an all-consuming pull toward finding her birth parents and understanding her identity.
Her search for answers began, in part, at Colgate. In an elective on early childhood development, the literature and fine arts major was stunned to learn about then-emerging research on the lasting psychological impact of separation from one’s birth parents. That feeling of being “identity-less,” her lifelong fear of abandonment, the deep ache she couldn’t name; Sherlund was learning there was scientific data validating all of it.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m not alone, and I’m not crazy,’” she says.
She found some solace in writing, but it was only when her adoptive parents passed away that Sherlund considered sharing her work with a wider audience. “I was always conscious of not hurting them,” she says.
Published in May 2024 and excerpted below, Abandoned at Birth details Sherlund’s journey while also exploring the flaws within the adoption system at large.
“That need for familial connection, to understand our roots, to be part of a clan, is physical. It’s primal. You have to know who you are, and you have to know where you came from.”
Filed Away
I drove to the adoption agency on an unusually warm November day — 65 degrees, with bright sun and pure blue skies. Most trees still held their leaves — the consequence of a warm, wet autumn — and the roadside glowed green and gold with only the occasional streak of orange. The radio blasted Springsteen, and I drummed the steering wheel, my mind wandering with the ease of familiar roads. The route took me through the town where my husband, Rick, and I had lived for 30 years and along roads I remembered from my childhood. Given my destination, the drive through my past was poetic. Snugged into my seat, sunlight curling around my shoulders, I was grateful for the opportunity that lay ahead — to read excerpts of my adoption file from 1954.
Eleven years earlier, I took the same drive to the agency while searching for my birth parents. Such information hadn’t been offered to me then, but now, many years into a difficult journey, the compassionate social worker thought it might be helpful. While I had since discovered many facts about my adoption, I was looking for nuanced details. Did my mother ever hold me? Have I ever seen her face? Where was I between my birth and adoption? I hoped reading specifics would bring an aha moment of understanding and prayed for much-needed closure. Fortified by all I had learned over the past decade, I walked into the agency with a big smile, confident the pages I read today would be the Holy Grail, the final piece of the puzzle.
Gloria, the social worker, greeted me. We chatted as she guided me into a small, friendly conference room with stuffed animals nodding down from a bookshelf and easy chairs arranged for conversation. She sat across from me, holding some papers on her lap. “I saw the letter this agency sent you in 1977 when you wrote to request information.” I nodded, recalling the letter I had written 44 years earlier, just after college graduation. It asked about my ethnicity, what my birth parents looked like, why I was given up for adoption — anything they were allowed to tell me. The agency’s reply was breezy and carefully edited. They had privacy agreements to uphold, adoption laws to follow. “I thought it was awful that they didn’t tell you every nonidentifying fact from your file. This is your story, your life, and you’re entitled to know more.” She reached across and handed me what was a summary of interviews with my birth mother. “Take your time reading these. I’ll be in my office next door.” She slipped out and left me with the faded and discolored documents, some handwritten and some typed pages from 1954. The story of my beginning.
The old paper was covered with the soft dents of typewriter keys and a social worker’s neat, professional script. Some pages were stiff and crinkled, others limp. They all smelled musty. When I touched them, it was as if they could transport me back to the day I was born, to the story others knew, but I did not.
On the first yellowed page, Shirlie Anne Jones was listed as my “Unmarried Mother.” I was listed as her child, Linda Lee Jones, born on July 1, 1954.
My stomach whirled to see that name typed out on the official paper. I was once someone else with another name, another identity. Eleven single-spaced pages described their interviews with Shirlie and noted how distant she was, how removed from the process. My birth mother first called the agency on July 7, seven days after my birth, during which time I remained in the hospital nursery, fed by rotating shift nurses. My mother never saw, fed, or cared for me in the hospital, a fact the agency noted as unusual. They offered her multiple opportunities to see me — a standard practice — but she declined each time, instead asking how soon she could sign the papers for my release. When the baffled social worker finally asked if I was even real to her, she replied, “Frankly, no.”
Throughout the paperwork, I’m referred to as “Shirlie Anne Jones’ daughter, Linda Lee,” and it catches me off guard each time. Being Shirlie Anne Jones’ daughter is entirely foreign to me, and the idea of my ever having been Linda Lee Jones is bizarre.
Toward the back of the file, a “Developmental Examination” page caught my eye. At that point, I was in a foster home run by Mrs. Person in Far Hills, N.J. A psychologist gave me a Gesell Developmental Scale test to assess my early abilities against normative data. At first, I read it with only passing interest because how much can you tell about a 5-week-old infant? But as I skimmed the report, something shifted. It described a very real baby, one I saw clearly in my mind’s eye. Someone I recognized as myself.
Linda Lee is an alert, happy, emotionally sensitive baby…. She has a relaxed grip on the rattle and gives a specific facial response to sound…. She smiles readily … and gets quite excited when the examiner talks to her.
I could see myself holding the rattle, and the description of me smiling easily, being visually alert, and having a particular facial response was familiar. So were the comments about my being emotionally sensitive, enjoying interacting with the examiner, and making a good impression. I connected with this. I saw myself in that baby and recognized Linda Lee Jones as me.
I was born with traits I still have, and they came from Shirlie Anne Jones and my birth father. I am their blood. I came into this world as someone else before I was given a new identity by the people who adopted me and changed my name to Janet Lucile Leef.
A few sentences later, when I read, Linda Lee Jones was released by her mother on July 30, 1954, I became unglued. I was officially Linda Lee Jones when I was released, not a vague “Baby Girl Jones” waiting for an identity. I had a name and a heritage. I was Linda Lee Jones, relinquished by my mother — my legal and officially recognized mother, Shirlie Anne Jones, who signed the release form. The social worker noted, “[Shirlie] again did not display any emotion, thanked me for all my help, and said she felt quite relieved.”
I couldn’t shake the image of little Linda Lee lying in the middle of a crib shaking the rattle for the examiner. She was a newborn alone in the world, sleeping temporarily in a foster home far away from where she started or would end up, waiting for an agency to nullify her heritage and assign her to strangers. My breath caught. I felt small and scared. I wanted to weep for that little lost baby, Linda Lee. For me.
Suddenly, the room felt close. I pushed damp hair off my forehead and struggled for air. Shuffling the papers together, I stood, unsure my legs would hold me, and found Gloria in her office. “Thank you so much for letting me read this, Gloria. It really meant a lot to me.”
“I know it did.” She smiled with an understanding I didn’t yet have.
All I wanted now was to get home. I hurried out to the fading afternoon and sat in my car as I gathered my wits to drive into rush hour traffic. There was no looking at foliage color on the drive home or grooving to The Boss. I was melting into unfathomed sadness, sinking into my seat as grief gathered in my brain and dropped through my center like lead. It was excruciating and I didn’t know what to do with the intense emotion. It was primal. There was no language for what I felt. There had never been. It happened long ago before I could think in words. I called Rick but could barely speak. “I hurt so deeply” was the best I could do. He stayed on the phone with me for the rest of the drive home. We didn’t talk much, but it felt good to know he was there, listening and wishing he could ease my pain, waiting for my car to pull into the driveway so he could wrap his arms around me.
By the next morning, every part of me ached, it was difficult to breathe, and my brain was completely fogged. The hurt reverberated through me like the tolling of a large, low bell. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself lying in the crib, and I repeated the name over and over: Linda Lee Jones, Linda Lee Jones. Who was she? Who am I? Why didn’t my birth mother want me? All connections to my bloodline, my biological family, had been denied. The identity I now held had been randomly assigned through an agency.
Lingering, wordless grief suspended in me like smoke. Pulling on an oversized sweater, I wrapped my hand around a cup of tea and looked out at the sky, my thoughts diffusing into the pale light.