Authors Interviewing Characters: Julie Ryan McGue
Authors Interviewing Characters: Julie Ryan McGue
Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging is not just another tale of an adoptee’s desire for personal history. This is a real-life story of twin sisters–adopted at birth and raised together–who face the daunting task of locating and connecting with birth relatives because one of them develops serious health issues.
In their fifties when the probe launches, the sisters hire one expert after another–a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist–until they access the family background they crave. What the sisters discover on the other side of their quest is both healing and astounding.
Years after connecting with an assortment of her birth relatives, Julie Ryan McGue, interviews her character, Shirley Wilkinson.
Julie Ryan McGue: Thank you so much for doing this interview with me, Shirley? How does it feel?
Shirley Wilkinson: I’m nervous. A lot of folks still don’t know I’m a birth mother. It’s been a secret I kept from my entire family until you hired the intermediary to find me. It took a long time for me to set aside the shame of being an unwed mother and reveal the truth to people I care about.
Julie: She smiles and pats Shirley’s hand.
Even if anyone you do know reads this interview, it’s not likely that they will know it’s really about you. You would have to tell them. Shirley Faye Desjardins Wilkinson, your character’s name in Twice a Daughter, is not your real name.
Shirley: chuckles softly and twists her wedding ring.
No, it’s a name you made up, Julie, because of how protective I am about my privacy. How did you come up with the name anyhow?
Julie:
Shirley was one of the most common names in 1933, the year you were born. I selected the middle name, Faye, because it was one syllable and sounded nice with Shirley. Your maiden name Desjardins is French for “from the gardens.” I wanted your character’s name to have the same French connection as your real last name. As far as, Wilkinson, the last name I selected for you… it was purely random! Do you like it?
Shirley: she giggles, looks at Julie, and the two share a conspiratorial smile.
It’s not the first time I’ve gone by an alias.
Julie: her return smile is broad, knowing.
That’s true. The name you used when you lived in the women’s home in Chicago–when you were pregnant with Jenny and me–was a fake. Assuming an alias makes it impossible for people to track one another. Your alias was why I had so much trouble finding you. In the late 1950s, assuming an alias was something birth mothers were encouraged to do. How did you select yours?
Shirley:
I picked my alias, Ann Jensen, because it was common and wouldn’t provoke any questions about spelling. At that point in my life, I was trying not to call attention to myself. I wanted to be as inconspicuous as I could in my ‘condition’, and then get on with my life.
She clears her throat and reaches for water.
Julie: Pause. She takes a drink,too.
My sister, Jenny, and I have wondered about our birth names: Ann Marie and Mary Ann. Did you give them much thought? Were they a play off the alias you chose for yourself?
Shirley:
It’s hard to remember. I suppose so. I have blocked out so much from that time in my life. It was traumatic. Unbelievable, really. I just wanted to get through it, and I truly feared being discovered. My family would have disowned me. As a school teacher, my reputation needed to be impeccable. If the secret came out–that I had gotten pregnant and been unmarried–I would not have been able to find employment and support myself.
Julie:
I changed other names in the book besides yours. For the same reason: to protect the privacy of those who are living and one that is deceased. What is the most amazing thing about not having to pretend anymore that you are a birth mother?
Shirley: Julie matches Shirley’s wide grin.
Being able to celebrate your birthday with you and your sister. I never got to do that with you until you turned 52. We’ve made up for lost time, haven’t we? The other special moment is being able to acknowledge that I am a mother of twin girls. Hiding that from my family for all those years was very painful.
Julie:
What is the one thing that you would do differently if you could?
Shirley:
Closed adoption law did not afford us any contact with one another. After you and Jenny were born, I never got to see or hold you. I never wrote to you through Catholic Charities and shared pictures with your adoptive mother as you grew. Those things were not my doing, but the missteps of the closed adoption experience. I resent that now.
Open adoption is a much better option for birth mothers today. Birth moms are part of their child’s adoption plan, have steady contact–if they wish it–through the agency and adoptive parents. It’s a much more humanizing process. With adoption, the loss of motherhood never goes away, but it seems to me that open adoption makes it less painful.
Julie:
And, I would add this: open adoption allows adoptees access to their medical history, background, and genealogy. I had to wait until I was middle-aged and located you, Shirley, in order to have access to the vital information most people take for granted.
Shirley: she reaches for a tissue
I’m glad you found me, and I’m glad we fixed the wrong.
Julie:
Every person has the right to know where they come from and to whom they belong. Denying a child the basic facts of their identity and keeping that from them for a lifetime is one of the cruel facts of closed adoption.
I’m a better person for having solved the puzzle of my existence. And the funny thing is that once I collected my medical history, my health issues ceased. Makes me wonder what my body was telling me.
Shirley: Shirley grabs both of Julie’s hands in hers.
I’m so sorry that it was so much work to find me, but I’m so glad we are in each other’s lives now.
—
JULIE RYAN McGUE is an author, a domestic adoptee and an identical twin. She writes about finding out who you are, where you belong and making sense of it.
Her debut memoir “Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging” (She Writes Press) comes out in May 2021. It’s the story of her five-year search for birth relatives.
Julie splits her time between Northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida. She is currently working on a collection of personal essays and another memoir.
Follow Julie at https://www.juliemcgueauthor.com.
www.facebook.com/juliemcguewrites
www.linkedin.com/in/julie-mcgue-a246b841
Twice A Daughter
Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers—which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues.
To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren’t happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents—and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background.
Julie’s search for her birth relatives spans eight years and involves a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey’s end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest—one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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