Ann Hince | Birth Family Commonalities

61 - Ann Hince | Birth Family Commonalities

Heather: Hi, Anne. Thanks for joining me on my podcast today.

Ann: Thanks, it's lovely to be here.

Heather: Would you start by giving a little introduction about yourself, please?

Ann: Sure. My name is Ann Hince. I live in California. I've lived here for 33 years. I grew up all around the world. I was born in England. I have two boys. I've written a book and I'm sharing my story. That's me.

Heather: Well, thank you. Now we are here to learn more about your story and you were adopted and can you share what that looked like as you, as a child? Like if you knew and how that dynamic worked within your adoptive family.

Ann: Well, let me share my adoption story first. Cause it was to me. You know, fitting all the pieces together is pretty wild. It's an interesting story. So, my birth mother was in New Zealand, she's English, but she was in New Zealand. She was engaged to a man and she decided to break off the engagement. And I was conceived that night and as she left, he said to her, "tell me if you get pregnant. And so she left for England within a few days, and on the way there, she went by boats, and on the way there, she realized that she was pregnant. She had no intention of ever telling him. So she carried on, on her way to England. She actually hitch hiked across Canada in the winter and eventually made it back to England.

And. I was born there. And when I was born, I was actually born with my right foot up against my right shin. So I actually had to do six weeks of physical therapy before she handed me over for adoption. And I was adopted into a family that had just suffered a trauma because they had my brother, who was adopted like an older child, he was two at the time. Then they adopted another little girl. That birth mother changed her mind at six months, which was, you could change her mind up to six months. So they had just lost that little girl back to her birth mother. And I was the replacement into that family.

So, you know, they had to do that first six months with a baby over again, and then not know if my birth mother would change her mind as well. So. That was kind of trauma that was stored in me subconsciously. But the other part of that story is that at the adoption itself, my mother had been handed the wrong adoption papers for a moment.

And so she saw the little village that my parents lived in, and there was only one big employer in that village. So she thought, okay, well maybe he works for this company. It was a big company called Cable and Wireless. And she had a cousin who worked in the same company and they put out a company magazine.

So she actually was able to find out where I was. Cause we moved around the world to multiple different countries. And she, she knew where we were at each point in that journey, which was kind of nice for her cause she had something of me. We weren't actually told, we were adopted until I was 13 and my brother was 15.

So that was quite a long time. And it was obviously quite a shock at the time, but it actually fit some pieces of the puzzle fit together, you know? Cause I had certain traits, you know, my brother had certain traits. I was always good at art always, but they never really. You know, they were never really proud of that.

They didn't say much about it. It was kind of almost an embarrassment for them because you know, people would ask, "so, so who'd she get this art ability from?" Right. But they wouldn't want to say because they hadn't told us that we were adopted. So it, it fits some things like that together.

Heather: Yeah. so how did you feel once you found out that you were adopted, how did that affect you? Okay.

Ann: It's actually hard to remember, but on some levels, it actually felt really good. Cause both my parents were alcoholics during my teenage years. So life at home was hell . So to actually think, oh, you know that maybe there's a mother out there that that really would love me in a different way.

Things would've been really different if I wasn't in this family. So from that point of view, it was different. I mean, my mind started working out things, you know, it's like what could be what's what else is out there from this other family that I don't know about? So there were a lot of questions.

I actually found out my mother because she knew my family's name and because she'd followed us around, she actually contacted us when I was 17. Now that was illegal at the time, you know, you're supposed to wait till 18. And I had planned to try and find her when I was 18, but she contacted my parents, which was really traumatic for them. But, and they asked me if I wanted to go and meet her cause that's what she wanted. She wanted me to meet her parents before they died. And I was so excited. it's like, absolutely, absolutely. I want to do that. But I, it was hard to be excited about that cause I knew how much it hurt them.

Heather: What was that like meeting her and her parents?

Ann: That was huge. Um, we actually had to travel, to where they lived in England. So it was a yeah. A trip away, which was difficult. My dad was a difficult person had anger issues, they were both alcoholics. So working all around that, um, we actually met in a bar in a hotel bar and, it was one of the hardest things I have ever done is actually I didn't look at her.

I couldn't look at her for quite a while. We were sitting at a table and I hadn't been able to look at her. My eyes were down, they were facing down to the floor and I actually had to consciously try and raise my eyes and it was so hard to do. It was physically, it felt physically hard to do, to raise my eyes and actually look at her.

but I did manage to, and you know, she, we looked like each other. It was it was pretty wild. Plus I liked a couple of drinks. I used to like, like tomato juice, also called tomato juice in England. And, um, I used to drink a drink called Chiana Bianco, which none of my other family drank those. And my mother liked both of those two drinks. So that kind of blew my mind and. I don't normally wear, I always wear blue now, but at the time I didn't wear blue much. And I, I had one light blue shirt for some reason I chose to wear it then. And my mother was wearing a light blue shirt. So things like that were just really weird.

Heather: Yeah. So one of the things in family history, and that's more apparent with, those who are adopted is this concept of nature versus nurture. Can you talk about how, how that was in your self as you were comparing these things that you were raised up with and then these attributes that you're starting to see that had nothing to do with what, when you were raised up?

Ann: Yeah. The, the real way that I started to see, that was the difference between my brother and me and our parents. Right. So both of my parents smoked, chain ,smokers and alcoholics drank all the time, every day you for years. My brother who came from a different family, he went that direction, He started smoking, he started drinking, it felt natural to him. It seemed like it was natural to him. It was not natural at all to me. I had no interest in either of those two addictions, I guess. So to me, that's, that was very much nature versus nurture, my nature from now what I know of my parents now, my mother, for sure, um, didn't smoke. Didn't really drink. But my brother, eventually he managed to find his birth mother and it's heartbreaking, but she would never, she would never see him. She wouldn't meet him, even though she, they actually went to her house, they stood outside of her house. She wouldn't answer the door. And, you know, I can't imagine how heartbreaking that would be.

to me, that would kind of indicate that maybe, you know, maybe he was the result of some abuse of some form and she couldn't bring herself to do that. So I think that lived inside my brother, you know and it made it easier for him to go that down that route he's actually already passed from, from drinking too much, organs failed.

Heather: So you met your birth mother when you were 17. What did you know about your birth father?

Ann: Well, she told me that it, it could have been one of two men, which made it very difficult. She had a photo of one, and she thought it was probably him. This was the one that she was engaged to, but she had had a one night stand with someone else. So she wasn't entirely sure. She thought maybe after meeting me that it was the person that she was engaged to.

And she didn't think that he had a very good character. It was very controlling and domineering, and that's why she decided she didn't want to marry him. She was seeing his traits as she got to know him better. so that didn't feel that great and to be honest.

And, my adopted mother actually died when I was 19. So I had two years of the overlap of two mothers. And then it kind of felt like I'd been given back to my birth mother. It was kind of a strange experience. So I, then I started to, I tried to find my birth father. I searched, you know, I actually, his last name was herd H E a R D, which is like a fairly common name, unfortunately, and I I'm in California, but I actually went through the phone books in England where I thought he was from and actually called from California, called all the Heards that I could find in that area of England and never got anything back.

It was a long time. It was years and years actually went by. And, um, it was actually only, Ancestry, such an amazing tool, but I went, my son actually, he had his, um, blood testing on Ancestry and, and, you know, they show you who might be related to you and a Heard came up and it turns out it was my father's cousin.

I got in touch with him and that, you know, that allowed me to, okay, so this is definitely this father. It's not that other one night stand. It's definitely this person. And I found out about him a little bit from this cousin, but he had no idea of where he ended up. He knew he'd immigrated to New Zealand or Australia and he couldn't give me any more information.

 This year Ancestry had like a week where they let you look through all records for free. So I thought, well, I'll look for this Clive Heard on Ancestry. And I, and I did, I found out that he had died in 2013, so that was a little sad.

He'd lived his whole life without knowing I existed at all. And I saw his gravestone. They would show you a picture of his gravestone. And it said, it said mother to this, this other, his daughter and grandfather to her two sons.

So. I was excited. It's like, I've got a half sister, so, but I don't know how to get hold of anyone. So I actually contacted the cemetery and asked if they had someone on file for who, worked with the, the gravestone snatch and they did. And, you know, it went back and forth. It had to push them several times, but eventually they did. They, they called the person on file and it was my father's old neighbor and friend they'd known each other for 20 years and this man actually had helped my father write up his story, his life story and all these, um, stories. You know, his life summary and all stories from his life. And he had them on his computer so he actually has sent them to me. So I got the whole summary of my father's life.

I found out he was an opal miner in Australia and he did have a daughter and she has two twin sons. And so just in the last few weeks, he actually sent me her email address. And so, um, we've been getting to know each other, which has been really fun.

Heather: Yeah. So what else, what did you learn about your father?

Ann: I learned a lot of things, you know, he was, he was an opal miner that's actually believe it or not, there's a Facebook group for miners from that part, from Lightning Ridge in Australia. That blew my mind. So I actually put a post on there. Did anyone know my father? He was called Castro. They called him Castro cause he had a big black beard and.

Heather: okay.

Ann: And there were people on there who knew him and told me stories. And I've spoken to some people in Australia who knew him, but what my mother said about my father was correct. He was a very flamboyant character. Um, Yeah, in some ways, very controlling.

And so there were a lot of negative traits as well, which was, you know, interesting to find out. And I found out that from my half sister too, that, um, she and her mother left him when she was four and really never heard from him again for about 40 years be until just before he died.

yeah, so that was interesting to know, but by given the recent things with war and Ukraine and those things happening. One of the most interesting things to me was after the beginning of the Ukraine war, I actually thought, well, I'll read one of his stories. And there was one called Bomb. And I started reading and, and it was the story of when he was five, how their house and their business, cause they were joined, was bombed during the Blitz in Bristol, in World War II.

It was an amazing story. It was, it talked about all the smells, the sounds, the sight, just full sensory experience of what he went through at that time. And, you know, we are going through that now. We're seeing similar things in Ukraine. So that, that blew my mind. That that that story must live inside of me because it lived inside of him. And I think it comes through us. Right. I think I think of it vibrationally. And so, and so I've worked with that to, um, to release some of that inside of me.

Heather: And has it made a difference to learn like about your father? Has that opened your eyes to other things that you might be carrying that you didn't realize?

Ann: Well, some fun things, right? One of the things was my art ability, right? He used to paint. He used to paint opals. He used to carve rocks. And I have loved modeling sand, like when I go to the beach, I'll, I'll make sand sculptures. And he would do that in rocks. And I found out that my sister used to do portraits, just like I used to do portraits. In fact, within a few years of each other around three years or so, she drew a pencil portrait, a detailed pencil portrait of an old man. And I drew a detailed pencil portrait of an old man. And that was so fun to, to recognize, to put all those pieces together.

But one other really fun thing that I only recently realized a few days ago. Is this room that I'm in here it's got two different color purple walls, a blue wall, and the ceiling's green and it's got color lights and it's just full of color. But most of the other house, the rest of the house does not have a lot of color. My sister also has a house that her hallway, she has colors, colored blocks on the wall and the yeah, the wall and the ceiling. That's almost like an opal, right. An Opal it's like you find it in dirt, in rock and you open it up and it's full of color. And so both she and I have a representation of an opal inside of our house.

Heather: That is neat.

Ann: Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. My birth, I was born in october. My birthstone is in Opal.

Heather: mm-hmm

Ann: My, my adopted mother's name was Patricia. The lady that my father marries. So my half sister's mother, her name is Patricia. So there's so many we're. So we're connected in so many ways that it's really fun, but I, because I have them, some of the stories of my father now I have work that I can do now on a deeper level because anything, I know any experience that I know about like stories that I've heard about those live inside of me, because I've heard about them. So I can work to release any feeling that comes up in me. As I hear about those stories or retell 'em inside my mind. And I know that that releases dis-ease inside of me.

Heather: Okay, well, thank you very much for sharing your story with me.

Ann: Thank you. It's been great to be able to do that.