by Loves Editor | Celebs
She soared to the top of both country and pop music charts with massive crossover hits including “This Kiss” and “Breathe.” She was singled out as an influential role model for Taylor Swift, the 2011 CMA Entertainer of the Year. She hasn’t produced a new album in over six years, but the live debut of her new single “Come Home” was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation. Faith Hill, whose birthmother placed her in an adoptive home when she was only a few days old, was born to be a superstar.
Faith’s adoptive parents, Ted and Edna Perry, raised Faith and their two older sons in the tiny town of Star, Mississippi. They never concealed from Faith that she was adopted, but they loved and supported her as their own daughter. When Larry King asked Faith about her “troubled childhood” in a 2006 interview, Faith responded, “I actually had a pretty amazing childhood. I was adopted, if that’s what you’re referring to, but my family, my mom and my dad and my brothers, they are amazing.” She told Larry that she grew up in a “very stable, good Christian, God-fearing home.”
One thing that always set Faith apart, however, was her passion for singing. Ted and Edna supported her in every way they could, encouraging her to sing at church, family functions, and even the ever- popular Mississippi state tobacco-spitting competition. They urged Faith to go to college, but when she decided to drop out and move to Nashville to pursue her singing dreams, Ted and Edna helped her pack her belongings into an old pickup truck. Ted rode in the back of the pickup all the way to Nashville.
Her new life in Music City did not go exactly as Faith had imagined it would. “I really believed I’d just get on the Grand Ole Opry stage, start singin’, and be on a bus travelin’ the next day,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 1994. Instead, she faced rejection after rejection. To pay the bills, she sold T- shirts, worked as a receptionist, and packaged merchandise for Reba McEntire’s company. Faith had been known and loved in Star; in Nashville she was lost and alone.
During this lonely time, Faith began to wonder about her identity, to yearn to find her roots. She wanted to find her birthmother. “There was a period of time when I first moved to Nashville, like the first couple of years, that I was just simply lost,” she told Robin Roberts in an “In the Spotlight” TV special in November. “That’s when I went on a search for my birth family. And it was all by divine intervention that it happened. It was meant for me to find her. One day, if I ever feel comfortable talking about the whole story, I will.”
When Larry King asked Faith in 2006 what it was like when she met her birthmother for the first time, Faith replied: “I’m not real sure I could intellectually answer that question. But it was pretty amazing, I have to say. She’s a wonderful woman. And the decision to give me up for an adoption, I can’t imagine that as a mother of three daughters. I can’t imagine the choice to do that, and I am so thankful that she was able to give me the opportunities that I had. I was placed into an incredible home that is basically responsible for the way I am today and the backbone that I have in order to do this for a living.”
Faith needed a strong backbone as she struggled through her first few years in Nashville, but she gradually formed relationships with people inside the music industry. She was finally discovered by Warner Bros. Records executive Martha Sharp when she was singing backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr at the Bluebird Café, a world-famous songwriters’ performance space. Faith’s first single, “Wild One,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and stayed there for four straight weeks. She was the first female country singer to accomplish that feat in 30 years.
Faith’s career skyrocketed from that point, and her albums began to top the pop music charts as well. Her personal life took off almost as quickly. She had been through a couple of rocky relationships in Nashville, but she found love when she toured with Tim McGraw on his Spontaneous Combustion tour in the spring of 1996. They were married in the fall, and they now have three beautiful daughters.
Faith and her birthmother maintained a relationship for 15 years, until her birthmother passed away in her sleep in 2007. She also discovered that she has a full brother, and their relationship has helped her understand herself a little better. “We needed one another,” she told Robin Roberts simply.
In a recent Good Housekeeping interview, Faith tried to explain her need to find her birthmother: “I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me.” Like many artists, Faith has a passionate nature and feels things very deeply, but in all of her searching she has never harbored negative feelings against her birthmother. “I have a lot of respect for my birthmother and no feelings of anger or any of that,” said Faith. “I know she must have had a lot of love for me to want to give me what she felt was a better chance.”
by Loves Editor | Birth Mothers
I have shared this story many times; every time the sharing is different. In the beginning, I shared the story because my heart was broken – I needed to be heard, to have my pain acknowledged, to hear support for a decision that made me feel as though I had been ripped into two. Now, even after sharing this story hundreds of times, I still pause. It is hard to open my heart again, to reflect on what were the most beautiful, but also the most difficult, moments of my life.
I was nineteen, tall with brown hair and brown eyes. I was studying to become a singer, struggling as all college students do with growing up…church, school, work…and a boy. It had been a little under a year since I had lost my virginity in a disappointing and deeply sad moment. On the outside, no one knew that every day since that night had been filled with constant regret, anguish, and despair. I had never intended to lose my virginity, to become a girl desperate for the attention of a confused, verbally abusive boyfriend. How confusing it is to be in a controlling relationship! Where I had once felt strong, I was now weak. Where I had once felt confident, I was now ashamed. Where I had once looked with joy into the future, I now faced each night in tears. I felt shattered and as though, no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not pick up the pieces.
I tried to leave. Over and over and over again, I tried to leave. But, isolated from friends, ashamed to be near my family, and afraid that if I shared my bruised heart with anyone it would become even more broken, I returned to him over and over and over again. I simply wasn’t strong enough to leave on my own.
I began to write in my diary, writing out prayers for deliverance, for a chance to try again. I prayed, “Lord, if you want me, you are going to have bring me back. I cannot do it by myself. Do anything, ANYTHING to bring me back!” It was a prayer of desperation, the most dangerous one I have ever prayed. To this day I look at the words in my little diary in awe, for in there I see how the prayers of a girl who could not longer believe in herself turned to God for answers…and found them!
Very shortly after this prayer, I found myself in kneeling in church. In the Catholic Mass, there is a beautiful moment when the priest lifts up the Eucharist, the moment when the bread is consecrated as the Body of our Lord. On that day, I gazed upon that little, white host and heard the words, “This is my body, broken for you.” And, quite suddenly, I felt nauseous…and dizzy… and the world started spinning…
Only a few short hours later, my shaking hands held a positive pregnancy test.
My singing career was gone. My family was devastated. My boyfriend started shattering before my eyes, falling apart under this new, added pressure. My once flawless reputation was destroyed. And yet, in the middle of some of the worst pain of my life, was the most joy. I LOVED my baby! From the moment I knew of her, I loved her. She was beautiful. She was perfect. She was the answer to my prayer…
The strength of a mother goes beyond the strength of a lonely, hopeless girl. I couldn’t make good decisions for myself but, by golly, I was going to make good decisions for my baby girl! My grandparents opened up their home and, at 24 weeks, I moved out to be with them. Shortly afterward, I applied and was accepted with scholarships to a nearby school and swiftly started the fall semester.
I stumbled around those first few weeks, struggling with major decisions and still reeling from the blows that had already been dealt. Yet, this was also a time of great discovery for me. Whereas before, when I had had little trials, I had felt bitter and miserable, now I felt a profound sense of peace. My life was still in pieces around me but, for some reason, I felt an inner peace that was able to sustain me through the toughest of times. And, of course, these tough times focused mainly on what I was going to do with my beautiful, beautiful baby. She meant the world to me; I loved being with her, touching her, carrying her, talking to her, and loving her with everything that I could possibly give. In the end, it was God who ultimately guided me to a decision.
I had asked God to show me where to go and what to do. Yet, even in this asking, I firmly believed that God helps those who help themselves. God could have given me some great sign from heaven telling me what to do; I preferred to think that if He gave me a sign it would be when I was actively searching for one. I determined that if I could find a good family for my beautiful little girl, my little Annie, it would be God will. And He found me a family; a beautiful, wonderful family that could take care of her as I never could. I struggled with every aspect of this decision, but the constant reassurances, the little things that would happen to show me that everything was all right, strengthened me in my decision. Thus, on Dec. 22nd, 2006, eleven days after giving birth to the most beautiful baby in the world, I watched as she was taken out of my arms and placed in the arms of her adoptive mother.
That initial pain, the knowledge that she was gone….. MY BABY GONE!!! I was faced with emptiness, with the knowledge that I could not be her mother, the empty, pitiless fact that I could not be with her every day, watch her grow, or simply be there to love her. It struck me down. If my family had not been there at that moment to literally hold me up, I would have collapsed to the ground in pain. Pain roared into me and left me voiceless, shaking with this terrible, horrible sense of loss and emptiness that cannot be described.
And then something – Someone – lifted me out of my despair. A sense of peace flooded my soul. I started becoming aware of the people around me, sobbing as they held me and supported me in my pain. I felt GOD touch me and give me the knowledge, an absolute knowledge, that this had been His will and that I had done right. My little Annie was safe and would grow in a family that would love her and take care of her. I had done the best I possibly could, and it was ok to rest now.
I believe, with all my heart, that in giving my baby life I found and discovered my own. Those precious, beautiful nine months were so painful, yet I would not take them back for the world. As I write this, my little girl’s fifth birthday is in only a few weeks. So much as happened in these five years. There has been so much joy, so much love, so much growing, and, yes, so much pain. But that deep sense of peace, that RIGHTNESS about my decision has never left me. This birthday, as with all of her birthdays, I will spend the day trying to write her a letter. Sometimes the words pour onto the page. Others, I simply stare at the blank sheet with a full heart, but an equally blank mind.
I want to fill those letters with words of love. I want to fill those letters with wisdom, insight into the little troubles of her life. I want to share with her about my life, to let her know that I am all right. I want her to know that my life is good and beautiful; that, through my beautiful Jesus, I have discovered sweet, perfect healing which I would have never dreamed was possible after the hurt of letting her go. I want those letters to be like arms, to wrap bands of love around her little heart so that she knows she is very precious, very beautiful, and so very, very LOVED. The time is swiftly approaching when I am to write another letter. Perhaps, this time, I shall write a thank you.
Thank you,baby girl. You saved my life. I love you.
Love, your mother… Natalie
by Loves Editor | Adopted Children
I grew up in Oregon with two of the most wonderful, loving parents for My Gift Of Life with Duke and Beverly Ricketts. I had always known I was adopted; I can’t remember ever not knowing. It was never a big deal. I was never treated any differently by anyone in my family or extended family. If anything, I always felt being adopted was something quite special. After all, I was chosen. I was truly wanted. I was a special gift from God to my parents and my parents were God’s precious gift to me. Wow. I guess I never really understood how amazing and wonderful that truly was until I grew older, had my own children, and experienced life.
Last year, God started me down an interesting path, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
In January, my friend, Janey Rose, who has adopted two children herself, asked me to come speak to a bible study group she was leading. It was a study written by an adoptive mom. All the women in the group had adopted at least one child. Janey wanted me to come, tell my story and have them ask me questions. I couldn’t imagine what I would have to say that these moms would be interested in, but I finally agreed. Well, I had the most wonderful time. I told them about my completely normal existence. I listened to their stories and realized they all wanted what I’m sure my parents had wanted: to have their children grow up knowing how deeply they are loved. It was such a fulfilling experience for me… I was excited to tell my parents.
When I told them what I had done, they were so interested to hear what I had to say. You see, while I had grown up knowing I was adopted, it was never something we had ever truly discussed. We had never talked about my feelings about it. They are my family, my everything, but they didn’t know how wonderful I felt about being adopted. This little bible study group had just brought I new level of admiration and appreciation to my family. It brought out wonderful dialog and expressions of love.
Throughout the years, many have asked me, “Do you want to find your real parents”? Hmmm, “real.” Yes, “real” is the term most use without even really thinking about it. I would simply answer, “No, my parents are my real parents.” To me, the rest was just biology. This is my family. How blessed I have been with this family!
Over the course of the year, I had also been thrilled that my mom and I seemed to be getting closer than we had ever been. I had always been a “daddy’s girl”; into my sports, a tomboy, if you will. Mom had tried to teach me to cook and sew. While I picked up some of it over the years, I really wasn’t connecting completely with my mom like I had started to last year.
In late July, I was at home, in Mom and Dad’s house with some friends of ours. They were looking at some of our old pictures on the walls. My friend, Jennifer, commented that she just could not figure out the whole “resemblance thing.” She kept at it, so I told her that I was adopted. She felt bad, but I asked, “Why?” It wasn’t a secret; it had just never come up in our conversations. My girls, who were 5 and 7 years old, heard the whole exchange. Over the next week or two, they asked a lot of questions about this adoption deal. They were trying to figure it all out.
And then it came. The phone call. It was August 10th,8:00 in the evening. My husband, my girls and I were all hanging out together. It was someone from the State of Oregon, the Human Services Division. My birthmother was searching for me. My birthmother. The woman who gave birth to me wanted to find me. I was positively stunned.
I needed time to think. I needed time to feel… I was so numb. I didn’t feel myself. I was so emotional. Suddenly, my life was different. I was afraid, but my wonderful mother-in-law, Marianne Gowen, had asked that I not make my decision based on fear. She was so right. The last several months peaked in my thoughts. I knew it, I just felt it. This was from God. All the signs, these last several months, pointing me to this door. I had to open it and walk through.
I took a week to get back to the state. Another week to turn-in the paperwork. The next day, another call from the state. “Here is her information.“ I had it. I had never been curious before, and now I had the key to finding out so much more! I waited for her to call me. It was a short couple of hours. My life changed!
Our first conversation was pretty basic. Where do you live, are you married, do you have any kids. A few other things. But what’s that? I share blood with a sister and a brother! Wow, this is unbelievable!
On September 2, 2004, I met her, Baxter Billson Shelfer, the woman who gave me life. This wasn’t just biology anymore. This was an incredibly unselfish woman who chose to give me a better life. This was a living, breathing, God-loving soul who gave me the most incredible gift I could have ever imagined.
God had carefully prepared the way for me. He waited until we were all in the places we are today. Ben, Baxter’s husband of 35 years; Scott, my new brother; and Spencer, my new sister; and actually everyone surrounding the situation has been welcoming and loving, with arms wide open. This has been a dream.
This has done nothing but enrich our lives. God has given us all the ability to love endlessly. The more we love, the more that comes back to us. It’s true. We now have more people to love and that love us. My daughters have more people to love them, unconditionally. As a parent, I could ask for nothing more!
Although this has been a rough road on my dad, I see how God is working on him. Prayers are helping him come to grips with these new people in my life. Mom, well, Mom has been nothing but wonderful and supportive. She feels incredible gratitude for the special gift she was given. My life was placed in her hands. Wow. It’s hard to put into words all the emotion that follows that. I’ll just leave with thank you. Thank you Baxter, thank you Mom and Dad, thank you Almighty Father God for this incredible gift of life you gave to me.
by Loves Editor | Celebs
When people become famous, long-lost relatives often come out of the woodwork. That became a particular problem for country singer Rodney Atkins— who released his fourth album, Take A Back Road, last week — when he became the spokesman for the National Council for Adoption in 2008. People were coming up to him with bags of hair wanting DNA tests, and he couldn’t easily determine who his relatives were. Atkins was adopted as an infant and didn’t have any contact with his birth family.
“I needed to close that door,” said Atkins, 42, in a recent interview. So in August of 2008, Atkins went through the proper channels and reunited with his birth mother in Nashville.
“It hit me at that moment, walking in that room, getting to know her,” Atkins said. “She’s a wonderful, beautiful lady. I realized that the reason I needed to do that did not have anything to do with my parents. I’m glad I did that really, really, really for her. She’s been carrying that around, wondering what happened, and I could tell it was such a relief.”
His birth mother got pregnant at 19 after what Atkins described as a traumatic first date. She hid the pregnancy from her family, and ultimately chose to give Atkins up for adoption instead of having an abortion. For privacy reasons, Atkins did not want to reveal her identity.
“I just wanted to tell her thank you, because she had some other alternatives to end that situation,” said Atkins, pausing. “I might not be here. So you don’t want to take it for granted. … She kept saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I kept saying, ‘Thank you.'”
His birth mother went on to get married and have another son of her own. Her son revealed to Atkins that every year around springtime, his mom’s mood would change, and he never understood why until now. Atkins’ birthday is in March.
His adoptive parents, Allan and Margaret Atkins, have been completely supportive of the reunion. They even traveled down to meet Atkins’ birth mother and brought some memories with them.
“My mom put together pictures from the time I was an infant to a few years ago to catch her up and let her see what my life was like,” said Atkins.
Atkins reveals a lot about his idyllic upbringing in rural East Tennessee on his new album, Take A Back Road. The title track recently spent multiple weeks at No. 1 on the country charts and talks about taking the long way home to escape the stress of modern life.
Other songs, including He’s Mine and Growing Up Like That reflect his role as a father and the hard-working, family values he hopes to pass on to 10-year-old son Elijah. Atkins sings about the people who have meant the most to him in his song, Lifelines.
“If I spent the rest of my life getting even with the people that had helped me out, I would never settle the score,” said Atkins.
He now includes his birth mother in that group. Atkins said it took a lot of courage for his birth mother to go through life with this secret, and even more courage to reveal it to her family.
Before her own mother died recently, she was able to introduce Atkins to his grandmother.
“She had to tell her after all these years, ‘You have another grandson that I never told you about.’ I can’t imagine what she’s been carrying,” he said.
About eight months after the reunion, Atkins received a birthday package in the mail from his birth mother. She had learned that Atkins had played baseball as a kid and idolized Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey. The package contained Garvey’s MVP card, a baseball and a Dodgers jersey, all personally autographed by Garvey.
Atkins was stunned. He called his birth mom and thanked her profusely, saying she did not have to do this.
“She told me, ‘You have to understand, Rodney, to me this is your first birthday.'”
by Loves Editor | Featured
A mother and a daughter, who had never seen each other in the flesh, were reunited after 51 years apart. As word spread around the airport of what was about to unfold, a crowd gathered and watched as Donna Geil, 67, of Brownsville, embraced her long-lost daughter Cricket Koch, 51, of Garland, Texas. “They’re like two peas in a pod,” an onlooker said. “My daughter sat next to her (Cricket) on the plane,” another spectator, her eyes filled with tears, said. “I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s just such an amazing story.”
Geil and Koch, their eyes also wet with tears, held each other for several minutes before Koch met two other virtual strangers: Geil’s husband, Jim, 66, and her other daughter, Kasundra Pierson, 41. Koch greeted each of them with a warm hug. “My heart is pounding,” she said. “The wait on the tarmac seemed like forever.” “I always wanted a sister,” Pierson said. “It would have been nice to have her all along but I’m so happy that I’ve got her now.”
Back in 1959, in Lancaster, Calif., 16-year-old Geil became pregnant by the man she thought she was going to marry. “I thought I was madly in love,” Geil said. “When I told the father, I thought he was going to say, ‘Let’s get married.’ But he took off.” Geil said she knew she couldn’t properly care for a child and neither could her mother, who was raising Geil’s younger siblings at the time. She decided to give the baby up for adoption. “I knew I had to do it and I don’t regret it, I wanted her to have a good life,” Geil said. “But I always prayed for her and asked God to give her a good home.”
Koch grew up as the only child in a Air Force family that lived in Panama, Albuquerque, N.M., and Texas. From a young age, her parents told her she had been adopted. She was in seventh or eighth grade, she said, when she first felt the urge to try to find her mother. “When I told my dad, he teared up,” Koch said. “ ‘But I’m your dad,’ he said. So I decided that, out of respect to him, I wouldn’t search for her.” After her adoptive father died, Koch decided the time had come to try to find her biological mother. “I’ve wanted this for almost 50 years, so I decided I had to do it,” she said. “I would have never been able to forgive myself if she had died before I got a chance to contact her.”
Koch found Geil thanks to a company named Worldwide Tracers. Last October, the mother and daughter spoke on the telephone for the first time. “I heard her voice and I just said, ‘Hello, it’s me,’ ” Koch said. “I teared up and I was trembling on the inside. It was just a feeling of overwhelming joy.” Mother and daughter talked for three hours that night. Both agree it was almost like they’d never been apart. “It felt like we’d known each other forever,” Geil said. “It was never awkward, it was comfortable. … Like a mother and daughter talking should be.” They’ve been in daily contact ever since.
Koch said she never felt resentment toward her biological mother for putting her up for adoption. In fact, she admires Geil for having the strength to do what was best for her, Koch said. “Having had kids myself, I think it would have been torture to give up part of myself like that,” she said. “But because of her, I never wanted for anything and I’ve had a great life.” After giving birth to her second daughter, Kasundra, Geil said, she began to wish that the baby had her sister by her side. “It was then I realized how important children were,” Geil said. “But I couldn’t try and find her because I respected her adoptive parents and because I was so thankful for what they did for her.”
Koch will spend nine days with the new branch of her family. She has never visited Oregon before, and because “she’s a bit of a city girl,” Geil, who lives on a farm, said she’s going to introduce her daughter to rural ways. “I’m going to take her out to shoot some coyotes,” Pierson added with a laugh. “We’re going to go to the coast, visit Crater Lake and everything else,” said Jim Geil, Donna’s husband. “Basically we’re trying to cram 51 years into about a week.”
Asked why she invited members of the media to the airport reunion, such a seemingly intimate moment, Koch said she hoped it would encourage other people to seek long-lost family members. “My message is that even 51 year later, you can still do it. There are people out there who can help you,” she said. “I’m just glad other people are getting to hear about it,” Jim Geil added. “You hear so many negative stories. It’s always nice to share a positive one.”
