On a Sunday morning in January 2005, readers of the North Carolina newspaper The Charlotte Observer opened its classifieds section expecting to see the usual assortment of Dyson updates and sectional sofas. Instead, they were presented with an ad posted by 43-year-old Jenna MacFarlane. It read: “Healthy, self-supporting, loving woman w/o family, seeking adoption by mature parents. Seeking to give/be accountable to a supportive family group.”
MacFarlane grew up in Los Angeles with her biological mother and father and two younger brothers. Things began to deteriorate when she hit her teens: her parents estranged themselves from their families, and instructed MacFarlane and her brothers to do the same. MacFarlane sparked further discord by maintaining communication with her grandmother and, at age 33 and following prolonged familial struggle, she and her birth parents ceased contact. “I knew in my heart that they would not open up to me,” the now 61-year-old tells me over Zoom from her home in North Carolina. “Particularly my mother. There was no hope. She was a talented artist and a wonderful storyteller. But she just didn’t want her children around, and I knew that.”
