Atlanta writer Robin Wright (second from left) stands with her mother, Rosalie Young (left), and sisters Tammy Young and Janet Young. (Photo courtesy Robin Wright)
All in the family Lesbian finds biological mom — and she’s gay, too
FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS Rosalie Young held birthday celebrations for a daughter she didn't know.
“We would say, 'Happy Birthday Robin' and say a prayer,” recalls Janet Young, who grew up knowing she had an older sister she had never met, a sister her mother lost when she was still a teenager.
Early in the 1960s, Rosalie Young gave birth to Robin Wright while still in high school. Young visited her baby daughter before eventually losing her parental rights. Wright was adopted by her foster parents and grew up in Massachusetts. She knew she was adopted and always wondered how different life might have been.
“My adoptive family was really wonderful, my mom and dad were great parents, but I always had this longing to find my mom,” Wright says.
Wright came out in 1974 at age 13. She told her parents two years later and began working in gay activism. Wright co-founded the Boston Alliance of Gay & Lesbian Youth and was a public face for Massachusetts Foster Equality. She is also a playwright and actress.
Before she moved to Atlanta, Wright's adoptive mother gave her what she believed was her biological mother's last name.
“I would sort of Google her, do name searches online,” Wright says. “Last year I had a Mastermind Group and I had finding my biological mother, my biological family, as one of my goals.”
AS SHE BEGAN TO UNCOVER more information, Massachusetts changed its adoption laws, allowing adopted children to view their original birth certificate. In the simple information hand-typed onto an official document filed in a government folder for more than four decades, Wright began to get the first picture of her biological mother.
“This is the first time that I pictured myself as a newborn,” Wright says. “I could see the time and weight and the doctor's name and where my mother lived. It's one of those things you take for granted, your parents tell you, ‘Oh the day you were born it was raining,’ or whatever it was, but when you're adopted you don't have that.”
Through several adoption advocacy groups Wright was able to find a name and a phone number. The address read Key West, and Wright couldn't help but wonder.
“My partner and I joked about how funny it would be if my mom was gay,” Wright says.
The number turned out to belong to Tammy Young, another daughter of Rosalie Young. After hours of mulling over the best way to contact her sister, Wright finally left a message
“I called and left a message and said, ‘Hello this Robin Wright. Can you call me back?’ and then I probably looked at the phone for two hours,” she says. “About midnight on the 21st of March she called me and said she would be happy to pass along the message to her mother.”
FINALLY MEETING HER MOTHER and sisters for the first time, Wright says she felt a sense a surprising rapport.
“I told her this was going to come out anyway so I told her I was a lesbian, and she was like, ‘I wondered if you had that gene,’” Wright says. Both her sister Janet and her biological mother are lesbians.
The women lead closer lives than they ever imagined. Young stayed in Boston as mother and child had a series of narrowly missed encounters in Boston's gay scene.
“At one point we lived blocks away from each other,” Wright says. “We went to the same parties, the same clubs, were probably in some of the same clubs at the same time.”
While her family was supportive when she came out, Wright says they also had their worries.
“[My father's] concern was that I was black and female and to put lesbian on top of that was just too much,” Wright says.
Janet Young says coming out to her mother was a frightening, yet positive experience.
“When I came out I was afraid to tell her. I don't know why it was just one of those reactions. She raised us to be open-minded, but it was great, it was wonderful,” she says.
On Mother's Day, Wright visited her mother in Key West and gave a sermon at her church, something that would have been unimaginable just a year ago.
For Janet Young, meeting her big sister is still something she struggles to put into words.
“It was overwhelming, it was kinda weird,” she says. “I can't describe it.”
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