Adopted And Searching

A three by five card was all my parents got when they adopted me: teenage mother, premature baby, three and a half pounds, and almost nothing else. I grew up loved, but I also grew up with a quiet, constant message ringing in my head: you’re different. That one word can shape how you attach to people, how you handle conflict, and how hard you chase belonging, even when you can’t explain why.

I walk you through my adoption story from Utah, including the LDS faith lens my family used to frame my place in the world. I share what it was like to have my origin story retold at family events, how frequent moves and early trauma affected my choices, and why my teen years spun into trouble, school changes, and searching for acceptance in all the wrong places. Then I talk about the shift that came with the U.S. Navy: structure, standards, and a sense of being chosen for something bigger, plus the life-changing stability of meeting my wife and becoming a dad.

The turning point lands in June 2014. I’m in Virginia, I’m up late, and I run a search I’ve run countless times before, except this time it works. I find a post on an adoption reunion board written by my biological mother on my 18th birthday, and she’s been looking for me for years. One email leads to a call, the timing collides with the birth of my second son, and a DNA test result hits my inbox like final confirmation. We talk nature vs nurture, identity, genealogy, adoption reunification, and what it takes to reconnect without blowing up the life you’ve built.

If you’ve ever wondered where you came from, or what belonging really means, hit play. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

https://www.wordsfromthewise.net/

Transcript

Gary Wise 0:28

All

Why This Story Matters

Gary Wise 0:29

right. Hey, good morning, everybody. Good afternoon. Good evening. Off a day, Ohio. All of the different uh salutations. Welcome back to the Words from the Wise podcast. I continue to be Gary Wise, the host for this podcast. And today's podcast, it's going to be an interesting one, at least for you know, I hope you find it interesting. For me, it's uh it's an important one. I'm gonna share with you all today uh the adoption story, right? So if you're interested in what it's like for a person, for a human, a human, a being, a man, to go through the experience of not only knowing that he was adopted, but then eventually reconnecting with biological family, then today is going to be interesting for you, hopefully, because it's going to be where I share the story of my path, right? For those of you that know, or for those that don't know, if this is your first time to the podcast, uh again, I am I'm Gary, right? I'm the person that hosts this podcast, works for the wise, started this podcast about a year ago, about 12 months ago. So as of right now, I'm filming and it is May of 2026. I started YouTube uh January, I believe, of 2025, uh is when I really said, Hey, I'm gonna start this podcast. Oh, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel. Then that morphed into a podcast. So I've been doing it now for about a year and a half. We're just under a thousand subscribers on the YouTube channel. So thank you very much to everyone out there that subscribed to the channel. Super exciting. Uh, and then of course, the idea behind this is hopefully for posterity, maybe one day my children, my grandchildren. I'm retired military, so I served 25 years with the United States Navy, right? That's going to be a part of today's podcast. Just for context, I joined the Navy in 1997, retired in 2022, and I immediately transitioned from being an active duty command master chief to becoming a high school Navy junior ROTC instructor. So literally, you know, July 31st, retired Navy date, August 1st, first day at the high school. Just seamless transition. And that was the plan. That was my strategy. That's what my wife, Erica, and I had decided to do with our with our life post-military. And that's it's an amazing career. I love doing this, this opportunity. I can't call it a job. I love working with the kids. I love going to this to the school every day. And it's it's so similar to what I did in the Navy that it's almost like breathing. Okay. Uh, but I but I do that full time, right? So I don't the YouTube is it's I'm not gonna call it my hobby, but it really is, it is uh creative outlet. And and I really appreciate those of you that watch the videos, listen to the podcast, uh, because I do believe as a human part of our our role on this earth is to share our experiences and hopefully help other people as they figure out their path on this world, on this earth, in this in this human form, right? Um, I'm also a dad, right? So I have two children. I have an 18-year-old son, and I have an 11-year-old son. So I have I really have a heart for parents, right? That are working on raising teens, adolescents. Of course, I'm working with them every day, 14 to 18-year-old children, cadets, students, whatever you want to call them. My wife calls them my broke best friends, right? Which is, you know, it's a good way to put it because I spend a lot of time with these students at school, and then, of course, on all the different weekend functions that we all get the chance to participate in. But I have a real heart for parents, and so part of my strategy for my content is to hopefully give some tips and advice to parents that I've found to be effective in my life or either in my classroom or at home. Uh, I'm a husband, right? My wife Erica and I have been together since 2001, married in 2002, and now it's 2026. And I will tell you that it has been an amazing journey. Uh, very, very awesome. She is my business partner, she is my partner in life, and and just having her support as I as I do uh this business. So the business is Wise Leadership Solutions, and and what I do there is I work to provide leadership ideas and or options andor training andor support to business people in my corporate area of Ocala, Florida, which is where I retired. But then, of course, Words from the Wise Podcast just became a way for me to get my message out there and hopefully make me easier to find for anybody who's looking for the experience that I have to offer. That's it, right? Now, today. Today's a special podcast for me because it's personal. Uh, of course, all my podcasts are personal, but even with the guests that I have on board or whatever it is, uh, this is personal because I'm talking about my own unique life experience. And, you know, I don't want to offend anybody. So I love everybody out there, especially my family. So I hope you watch this, hope you hear it. Hopefully, you're not offended by anything that I have to say. It's just this is through my lens, this is my experience, it's my story. But if you have any concerns, hit me up. I'm not hard to find, right? I check all the comments, I check all the messages, all my aunts have my phone numbers. It's easy to get a hold

Growing Up Knowing I Was Adopted

Gary Wise 6:12

of me, if especially if you're family, right? Uh, you know, I was born in 1977. Uh, and when I was born, I had a very unique birth story, and I've always known I was adopted from the minute from from my earliest memory. Matter of fact, probably my earliest memory is somebody telling me that I was adopted, truthfully. I mean, just think let that sink in for a minute. Your earliest memory is somebody telling you you're you're not the same, you're different, right? And that's that for me is an emotional thought when I let myself really think about it. Uh having the thought that just from the early, my earliest memory is, and I know that the people that were telling me this, they were trying to convey to me that I was like special or that I was so loved, or that this is all part of God's plan, but but how I remember it, how I think I processed it was you're different, right? You're not you're not exact, you're not the same. I mean, just just being honest, you know, and and this is a story that was always reminded to me at almost every family event that we I went to as a child, right? So as a child, it was almost tradition that my family, as we all came together, somebody at some point would retell the story of how I came to become a part of my family to me, right? Like I needed to remember it some for some reason. And I think it was, I don't know, did they want me to appreciate it? Did they want me to value it? Did they think that it was going to um help me better connect with God? I don't, I'm not quite sure, but there's some pieces of this for you to understand. Uh, my family was LDS or is LDS, so Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, uh, Mormons, for those of you that don't know that terminology, we all lived in Utah. Um, and I was born in Utah, and I was adopted through the LDS Church Social Services or through the LDS Adoption Agency. So that's that's number one, right? So that's our foundation, and a big piece of their belief system is this idea of a pre-existence. So they believe that we all were spirits in this area in heaven before we came down to earth, and that we were all already a family in particular family groups, right? And part of the mission on earth was to come down to your family. This was something that I have been taught since I, again, earliest memories. There was a movie, a play called Saturday's Warrior, uh, that reinforced that for me as a child. There was this a play, the LDS play called My Turn on Earth that my mom used to play when I was in the house. And it was literally about these spirits stressing out about were they going to make it to their assigned family to have the life experience they were supposed to have. And I remember thinking, like, but what if you don't? Right? But what if you don't go to your family? How can how can that what if that doesn't work out? Because in the in the the plays or in those movies, there was always this nuance that a baby may not be born because the mother may decide to not have a child, or there was a curveball and that somebody may not get their opportunity at life because of some sinister, nefarious being, right? That was a part of the conversation. And again, I'm listening to these plays as a young child, or even you know, from the age as early as three, four years old. I remember that my chin on earth play that was like a cassette tape. Literally, I would go to bed listening to this because there was music, right? And I think the idea that my mom was trying to hit home was this was all a part of God's plan that I was supposed to come via this adoption route. And that was God's plan. And I this was supposed to be reinforcing that I was where I was supposed to be. But there was always a part of me that was like, but what if it wasn't? All right, so back to the unique part of my birth story, right? Because this is gonna matter in the future. So when I was born in 1977, I was born to a teenage mother. That's one thing I knew, right? My parents literally got a three by five card, I have it out in the storage shed somewhere. A three by five blue card, and that was all the information they got about my biological background, right? A three by five blue card. Okay, and I was born on July 18th, and back back in that year, right? And when I was born, it was to a teenage mother. That's one thing it said teenage mother. Uh I was born, I weighed three and a half pounds, so I was a premature baby, a primi is what they call you, right? I was born three

LDS Beliefs And Feeling Different

Gary Wise 11:54

and a half pounds to a premi to a teenage mother, and I had a clubbed foot. Now, the clubbed foot thing I didn't know about, I didn't find out about that until much later in life, and actually through the reunification with my biological mother, did I find out about the clubbed foot? So that's gonna matter in the future, right? But I didn't know that, but I just knew that I was a premi baby, I weighed three and a half pounds, and to a teenage mother, right? So born in July, put into the NICU, put into the put into the hospital system, and I eventually went to my family at some time after that. Now the story goes, my mom and my dad were unable to have children. My mom had had some medical complications. She had unfortunately had to have some surgeries. My dad was in the Navy prior to this, and due to my mother's medical conditions and all of these other challenges in life, plus them wanting to have a child, and now that they weren't able to have a child biologically, they wanted, they knew they had to adopt, and they felt like the military lifestyle was not conducive to adoption. Right. So they decided to get out of the service and they decided to go back to Utah and work towards adoption. And then they're living in a trailer down in Orem, Utah, which is where they were living at the time. And they get the phone call. Hey, we got a baby for you to come pick up. Right. And the whole family, right? My whole family. So my dad's sisters and brother, uh, everybody. I mean, this is a huge deal for their fame for our family, right? Because my dad was the oldest child of my grandparents, and he did not yet have a baby, right? His his next younger sister had already three children, right? His next sister after that already had four children. No, three children, three children, right? So my dad and my mom really wanted a baby, and they were just they were kind of feeling like they were missing out on this opportunity. So the whole family posse up, drives to wherever they drive to to receive me from LDS Social Services, right? And and as a baby, as a newborn, or I think I was about a month old at the time because I had to get stabilized in the hospital, but I was still super tiny, probably you know, five pounds at that point. I don't know. I was born, I believe, about three and a half, or not three and a half. I was born about three months early. Right. So just for context, for anybody else out there who's dealt dealt with having babies that were premature or uh have dealt with anything of that of that conversation, just weighed three and a half pounds, was about two, three months early, and had some complications at when I was an infant. Now, here's a one of the other things that was always reinforced to me why God brought me to my parents. My dad was a hospital corpsman in the Navy, retired, got out of the Navy as a second-class petty officer, and immediately became a paramedic, right? A licensed practical nurse, an LPN, and a paramedic. And so part of the good news of them of my story was that my dad was medically able to take care of me appropriately when I was a newborn, still outgrowing whatever challenges I had as a little baby, as an infant. Right? Okay, so now they have me. I'm with the family, and away life goes. And life was really life, it was good. I'm not gonna act like I had a bad childhood because I didn't. Well, it I would say from birth up until about kindergarten, man, we it was great. My parents bought a brand new house out in Twilla, Utah. My dad worked at the Army Depot, he worked on the base as a paramedic. I do remember actually going to the base to see my dad when he was a paramedic and like building fortresses with the other paramedics out of cushions, of couches, and like just being a part of this emergency medical uh community. Right. Uh now my dad eventually uh decides that what he doesn't want to do is he doesn't want to stay in emergency medical response. And the reason for that was because he uh he had responded to an accident where a three-year-old uh was unfortunately hit by a vehicle. And I was about a similar age, and my dad just, you know what, he did not have the heart to want to keep continue on in medicine and always have to respond to when people are just going through some tragic times. Now, one other piece of information that I want to just double back on when it comes to my personal story is that one of the things I've I've told myself from the earliest I can remember is that I had to come into this world a fighter. This is just as you've told me the story, Gary, you were born premature. Gary, you were born three and a half pounds, Gary, you were born with these medical complications that your dad had to be the one to take care of you, and God put you in that position because you needed that extra kind of support. But there was something about all of that that I translated into, especially as I got older, that I had to survive. Right. And I felt like I came into this world struggling to survive, like I had to be a fighter. And then, oh, by the way, you know, as a dad, when I look back on the importance of like your child is born and you want this skin-to-skin contact, you want to build this connection. I didn't have that, right? And again, as I've gotten older and I processed this information and I've cataloged it into my story of who I am, I I rely upon some of these experiences for strength. Like I recognize when I don't always connect with other people or when I don't always feel this idea of what I think love is supposed to feel like,

My Birth Details And Early Medical Fight

Gary Wise 18:10

part of that I attribute to possibly my birth story, and that I was put into this space of having to be independent even at a day old. Right, even at a day old, I had to come into this world and fight to live. Right. And then as I would went through this life of everybody of my people that I loved reminding me that I was different, I would then translate that into I love them, but I'm different, and I've got to figure this out, right? And I would I remember when I was a kid, I would get into arguments with my cousins, for example. And I would always wonder, was I being, were we fighting because I was different? That was a con that that was literally something that I would think about. Right. I remember when my little sister was born and we adopted her, right? And one of the areas that her and I connected was that we were both different. Right. We would talk about it. Her and I would talk about this as children. We would talk about how different we were from other people, and then we would we would sit there and like daydream, but what if we had the same biological mom? Right? Because we did know they knew much more information about my little sister. They had a couple pages on Christy, right? They uh for me, they had a three by five card, but for Christy, they had a couple pages of information, and so we would we would sit there and daydream, like, well, your birth mother was a teenager, hers was early 20s, so she theoretically they could be the same person. And what if they made sure to place us together in the same house so that we could grow up together? We we would have these conversations as children, trying to figure out how we who we were in this world. And every time uh we would get into a place, especially with extended family, where we were either insecure or one of us felt more loved than the other one, or just uncomfortable, we would almost always fall back to we're different, and maybe it's because of that difference that that complication arose. I looking back on it, I don't know that that's true or not. I don't believe it's true, I but I will tell you that for both myself and for my sister, that conversation or that thought was almost always there, right? And it's just one of those things. I remember being a teenager when I started acting up and and and not agreeing with my parents. Um one of the thoughts that I was having into my head because we just were so not similar, right? Now, nature versus nurture is an important part of my story, right? Uh, but I will tell you, there are natural characteristics that I just did not share with my parents, and I and I will tell you as a as a parent now who is raising two biological children in my home, my two sons, there is truth that you inherit certain characteristics from your parents. It's just truth, right? And as I eventually met my biological parents, there was a lot of synergy there, a lot of connections just through natural tendencies, right? Which was, I feel like some of those challenges I had with my mom and dad was because some of the areas that naturally we just didn't align. But then, of course, I was nurtured by them uh to have a lot of similar perspectives and just some of those eventually confirmed. And I struggled with that. You know, when I was going into kindergarten, my dad decided that he didn't want to be a medical responder anymore. So we went down to Arizona to uh for my dad to attend DeVride Electronic Computer Technical Institute. And we did that for two years. So for two years, Arizona, and that's where I did I did kindergarten in Twella, Utah. I did first and second grade in Arizona. And we actually moved in between first and second grade. And this is the beginning of a process where I'm going to move. My family is going to move every summer between my kindergarten year of school and my sixth grade year of school. I'm going to change schools every year after this. And then from sixth grade to seventh grade, I'm going to change schools for junior high school. Now it's not what was me, but my parents were trying to find a better life. And so I was raised in this household in the 80s where my dad and my mom were hopeful for ways to provide better for their family. And they were into uh self-help gurus, they were into meditation, they were into subliminal thinking and listening to those tapes that have water with subliminal undertones that are going to help you to, you know, eat better and do your homework and all these things. My parents were, you know, they were they were children of the 50s and 60s, and they were into some of these thinking, right? And they were trying to program Christina and I to be aligned to those thoughts. Plus, they were hoping to help themselves. Um, when we went down to Arizona, that was the first time I got exposed to a lot of different cultures. It was the first time I was exposed to, you know, I'd say, you know, street gangs was Arizona, right? Uh I remember second grade hanging out with kids, running around, and just talking in a certain way that was not the way I was speaking in Utah, right? Um, unfortunately, Arizona was where I first was where I was, I would say, put in unfortunate circumstances for a young child that I would be devastated if my children were ever put in those positions. And it wasn't my parents' fault. I don't blame anybody. I just was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, and it caused unfortunately lifelasting complications that I continue to have to always deal with, right? But at second grade, first grade, there was a lot of freedom, right? We lived in apartment complexes, we lived in different neighborhoods, and I just had a lot of freedom to get to the wrong places and do the and do the the wrong things or have things happen to me that were just not appropriate, right? Which is ultimately why I believe a lot of us parent differently in my generation with our children, because we were so much more free-range when we were younger. We no, I survived, right? I survived. And oh, by the way, I was always carrying that cross of, and if you do something wrong, you're possibly going to be you're going to be held accountable. And then trying to process how do I atone for these things that might have happened to me when I was seven years old or six years old, that I don't fully comprehend. And how does that change you for the rest of your life? It's a deep conversation. I've had to unpack it many, many times. And the truth is, I almost always just pack it back away again and try to move on because you just can't resolve it. Right. But I say all that to just say that here I was coming into this world kind of solo, trying to figure out things, knowing that I'm different. And oh, by the way, going through these experiences and not having a lot of people I can share this information with. Uh, eventually I do end up having to share with my parents, but because I get into trouble later on in life, because unfortunately I'm confused. That's just part of the childhood journey, right? And I have to figure out those things, but it's it's complicated. I remember moving back to Utah in third grade, living with my grandparents. We lived with my grandparents a couple of times during my life, uh, as a during my life. We just a couple of times. We came back to Utah because my grandfather had some medical problems, and my dad felt like he had to come back home and help out his mom and his dad and be there for the family. The problem was my dad had done two years in this computer school, had accrued all this debt to go to the computer school, but now doesn't have access to the job opportunities, goes back to the medical field.

Moving Every Year And Early Trauma

Gary Wise 26:55

Check. You know. But coming back in third grade to Utah, I was different. I remember uh just going to elementary school in Alpine, Utah. It was just different. I was I was talking different than the other kids. Those two years in Phoenix, Arizona really had an effect on me, right? Really had an effect on me. Had my first girlfriend, had my first, just had some life-changing experiences, you know. I remember we moved down to uh Provo, Utah, fourth grade. And I a big thing about Provo, Utah was behind our apartment complex that we lived in was the boys and girls club. And so my parents used to let me go to the boys and girls club, and that's when I started, that's when I smoked for the first time. That's when I learned how to shoot pool. That's when I just first started getting more involved and being in areas that are a little bit more mature than I needed to be, right? And I'm sure my parents thought, hey, it's the boys and girls club, that's a good place for you to go. And and I believe it is. I just don't remember there being a lot of supervision outside of the Boys, Boys and Girls Club, or on the way to the Boys and Girls Club, right? It was just me and the kids that I was hanging out with. Um, you know, then we moved down to Magna, Utah, fifth grade. And Magna was that that was a tough area, tough part of town. And I got more involved with friends outside, you know, and ultimately I was really already walking this line of am I going to try to be the best kid that I can be and grow up to be a missionary someday and be all into the church? Or am I going to uh try to connect with a friends group and try to have people in my life that are going to accept me, make me one of them, and choose me. That was literally what I was processing. And I remember we moved to South Salt Lake in sixth grade, and I got into Boy Scouts. I got into Boy Scouts sixth grade because I had hit the age requirement to get the fish in the Boy Scouts. And I had always done Cub Scouts. Cub Scouts was a part of my life growing up, it's just part of the religion, right? If you know anything about the Mormon Church, you know there's a lot of things happening. You're going to be in a lot of different things during the week. And Cub Scouts was always a part of my life. But when I got into this Boy Scouts, right, I just went all into this Boy Scout thing because there was a lot of independence, there was a lot of opportunity. And, you know, I just found the the merit badge sash the other day when I was going through my uh through my stuff in the storage shed. And literally in two years, so from sixth grade to the summer after seventh grade, I went from being a basic Boy Scout to being a life scout, which is one level below Eagle Scout. Right? I had a I have a merit badge sash still, just from this, from my shoulder to my waist, just full of merit badges that I earned. That I went through this process of doing the research, contacting the people within the Salt Lake City area, riding on my bicycle to go find these people and earn this merit badge. I went to summer camp uh the summer before seventh grade as a leader. Then again, the summer before eighth grade, I didn't go. Right? I didn't go. That was it. So all of sixth grade, all of seventh grade, but then seventh grade changed me. Seventh grade changed me because I went to junior high school and I went from being this full out Boy Scout, hard charger, leader of an organization, playing a major role to going to junior high school and getting more involved with my friends at that school that were from not from my elementary school, but from other schools in the area, and being more concerned about what was happening during lunch and in between classes and of course after school. And I let scouting go and became more of a functional part of my neighborhood team that was in South Salt Lake, Utah. Right. But again, here as I look back on it as an adult, I'm just trying to feel welcome. I'm trying to feel like I belong. I'm still struggling with being different. When I came back from Arizona, I was different than my cousins, right? Because I had been exposed to things in Arizona that just made me different when I was having my experiences in in Provo or Magna or now South Salt Lake. These were not things that my cousins was were doing, they were having, they were doing in their areas. And I was just, I was just different. Um so eighth grade, I started getting into trouble at school, right? And outside of school. That was the year that my mom started being afraid of me, locking the doors at night, locking her and my sister away. The summer in between eighth grade and ninth grade, my dad, he worked at the emergency medical room up at the VA hospital now as an RN, and would literally make me go to work with him every night and sit in the ER all night long because they were afraid to let me stay at home because my mom would lock the door for her and my sister. I would just leave the house and I would go outside. I would leave, right? And so I spent that whole summer uh basically stuck to my dad's hip, him trying to save me, trying to keep me from going down the wrong path. I remember we would do a whole midnight shift, you know, from eight o'clock at night to eight o'clock in the morning, or seven o'clock at night to seven o'clock in the morning, whatever that shift was. And then we would go to the University of Utah from my dad's college, he was going to to try to get his bachelor's degree as an RN, because unfortunately, he had his education in computers, that wasn't working, and so now he needed to get an education, a bachelor's degree in nursing, so he could get more money for his family for himself, right? And the and the VA was paying for it. And so I would go sit with my dad in these classes up at the college and basically fall asleep. Right? Well, you know, long story short, I get into trouble in ninth grade, and they moved me to go live with my grandma uh to finish ninth grade down in Alpine, Utah at that local high school. And again, I'm different. And my grandma and I, we had a complicated relationship. I love her, I love her so much. But when we had come back from Arizona, I'd gotten into some trouble just being just not knowing what I was doing, being just confused and appropriate. And a part of that trouble got me a very traumatic beating one time. And it really changed a lot of my psyche, right? Because took me out to the middle of the of the mountains, and just just me and her and all hell broke loose, right? It was tough. My parents, that was a compromise, fracture, and trust for them and my grandmother. Um, my mom was very broken by it because how dare my grandmother put me in that position. My grandma was just doing what she thought was appropriate, what she thought would be best. Uh, no one's perfect. Her and I eventually got past it, but it did again. Am I different? Right. When I caught that beating that time and I was out, it was it was pretty traumatizing. And I was third grade, right? When I caught that beating, and changed some things in my mind, right? That was when I can look back and recognize compartmentalization of certain areas of my life. So when I get sent to live with my grandmother in ninth grade, it's just her and I. Just her and I. My grandfather, unfortunately, passed away in seventh grade. And so my grandmother and I lived together in ninth grade, and that was therapeutic. You know, that was therapeutic for us. You know, we got the chance to really bond, to really connect, and to have that time to ourselves. But of course, I was different than all the other kids in that part of town because they lived in a little more rural area, and I was kind of from a more urban area, and so I was kind of bringing that energy and I like being uh known for that space. I'll just be honest with you. I

Teen Trouble Dropping Out And Searching For Belonging

Gary Wise 35:40

like being the kid with that reputation of kind of being a tough guy. And I would be happy to back that up. So when I get out of ninth grade, my parents decide, hey, we get you got to come back up here with us because this is not gonna work long term, even though by 10th grade I was all the way invested in everything else that was going wrong because ultimately I'm still different and I'm I need to find my way on this world. That's how I felt. I felt like I need to figure out things in my life, and the things that I think are a priority are not my parents' priority, so I gotta figure it out. So between 10th and 11th grade, I go to four different high schools. Four different high schools before I drop out. Separate conversations, separate stories. Maybe someday I'll tell you those stories. But four different high schools before I drop out. And then I'm dropped out of high school by the age of 16, right? Because in Utah you go, you know, 10th grade, 11th grade, and then 12th grade is high school. But I'm dropped out, age of 16, no high school, and I move out of my parents' house at the age of 16 years old. Move out of my parents' house, move down the street, and start living with people that I believe are trying are choosing to accept me for who I am now, not worried about I'm not, I'm not putting such thought into it. Like, did God bring me here to this moment? Is this part of God's plan? I'm not having all those thoughts. I am just trying to find the space where I can be who I am and feel accepted. And I remember my dad, the day I moved out, my dad said, uh, Gare, if you're gonna live under my rule, my roof, you gotta follow my rules. And I said, Well, then I'm gonna move out. And he let me move out, right? Like, what are you gonna do? Uh, I mean, I I would probably not I would not have I would not say that to my child, but that's what he said to me. And I think it was just his parenting style, and I'm not trying to knock it. I had to be a tough time, right? I I don't I couldn't do it. I don't even know how they did it. Uh they ended up moving, right? My parents ended up packing up and moving that very next summer, moving away from where we lived at, and I stayed there while they moved away, you know. So here I am, teenager, adopted kid, trying to figure out life, been through all these different traumatic experiences, running around buckwild with my friends. You know, every day is a new day. We gotta figure out every day how we're gonna eat, how we're gonna get money, how we're gonna figure out life, right? I'm working a variety of part-time of part-time jobs. You know, I start, I got my first, I got my first job when I was 14 years old delivering papers, right? So, I mean, I've always had a job. Um, but then every day was just a unique experience. The food was not guaranteed, right? The it was just every day was a unique experience. And so from 16, I went back to my mom and dad's house. Um, I believe right around 17 years old. So about a year later, went back down my parents' house, uh, tried to go back to school again, got arrested, got kicked out of that school. Uh, just life was lifing, right? I did it a period of time living with my aunt and my uncle, uh, and at their at their area. The school district figured out who I was, and they said, we don't want that kid in our school. They kicked me out of that school, right? Like I just, it was a rough time. It was a rough time in my life. Um, my cousin Rich had come down and said, Hey Gary, why don't you come live with me up in Ogden? So I moved up there with him. We got an apartment or we had a place to live in a basement apartment, and that was a fun time in my life. It was eventually during that stage in my life that I ran across the United States Navy recruiter and joined the United States Navy. Right? Thank, thank God. Thank the Lord. I joined the Navy, right? And I've done multiple videos about my Navy career. It's just the biggest thing to understand when I joined the Navy. Uh, again, I'm this guy who's looking for belonging. I'm looking to be connected, I'm looking to be accepted, right? I I got initiated, I mean, from Boy Scouts into my local neighborhood crew, into an older, more elite neighborhood crew, if you will, right? Um, trying to find friends that are going to be, you know, family, right? And love me for who I am or care about me for who I am, and not just and not focus on my differences, right? And I get to the service, and it really just worked well for me. Similar to the Boy Scouts, I enjoyed the structure, but when I got overseas to Japan, of course, like every young sailor, I hated the Navy and away you go, right? I'm not gonna worry too much about all those things, but what I will say was I I found success, right? I found success in the Navy. Of course, a major part of that success was meeting my wife, right? That was huge. Meeting my wife, Erica, and beginning a family, huge, huge, right? Having a person that committed to me, I committed to her, and we were going to be a team for the rest of our lives. And then I remember, so we got married in 2002, but we didn't have our first son until 2007. So Erica and I got five years of just her and I, which I do believe was an important part of our journey because that's an important time in our lives. That we were trying to have children before 2007. It just wasn't that easy for us, right? I remember my little sister having multiple children, and Erica and I were just like, you know, what the heck? She's like, I mean, not trying to be a hater, but how does this work? We're we're doing, you know, we're a military family, never missing a deployment, never missing it underway, financially doing okay. But children just wasn't, it wasn't coming as fast as we would have liked it to have come. But eventually, 2007, we had my oldest son, healthy baby boy. And I remember thinking this was the only person in the world that was my blood. That rocked me when I actually let that thought come into my mind. Like, here was a human that was my my DNA, my blood, right? And that was so powerful. You know, I was able, I was blessed to be there for the whole pregnancy. I was not sure what he right, so for the whole pregnancy, for the birth, was able to do all the things, you know, the skin-to-skin contact and the and the the bonding and all the things that you were supposed to do. And I was super into all of that because I wanted to just make sure that I did everything in my power to make sure to make sure we were locked in, because I've always had this nuance to me where I just felt alone. I just felt alone, felt different, felt unique, felt felt not like everyone else. And whether it was, you know, going through initiations as a teenager, I mean, even when I picked up Navy Chief, when I went through the chief petty officer initiation, right? Uh, I wasn't planning

The Navy As Structure Family And Identity

Gary Wise 43:10

on becoming a chief. I was going LDO, right? I was working the plan for my family. And when I went through Chief's initiation, once again, that really resonated with me because these people are accepting me into their organization, into their fraternity, right? And I was in. I was in. Like I'm I'm still in, right? I'm still I'm still pushing the line for the Navy chief, right? Of course, it's heartbreaking when you get hurt by some by people who are supposed to be a part of that organization, but that's life. Right? That's life. Uh, but I remember again when Hayden, when my son was born, when Hayden was born, only person on the earth that was the same genetics as me. Big deal. So a couple years goes by, and we moved to Japan, right? Erica and I decided to go to Japan. And I started looking for biological family members when I came back from Japan the first time in the year 2000. So I had always spoken with my mom and my dad growing up about what if I found my biological family, right? I even had met a kid one time in like third or fourth grade who had freckles like me, and he was adopted. And I went home tell my parents, like, what if he's like my twin? Right. And they separated us at birth. And we were we were supposed to find each other because it's God's plan that we're gonna find each other in fourth grade. But you know, but again, these are the kinds of things that I'm having thoughts about as I'm growing up. So I would talk with my parents about what if I ever found my biological family. And I every time I had the conversation with them, it hurt my mom, it hurt my mom because then she always felt like she wasn't good enough, and that I was trying to find someone to replace her. That sucks, right? That's tough. And then my dad, um I don't think he felt that hurt by it. I think he more understood, but I still think he was worried about my mom. But we would have those conversations. So when I came back from Japan, the first I joined the Navy in 1997, went to the US as Bellow with Insassable, Japan, came back in 2000, and the internet's a thing. The internet has popped up. Oh, mind you, I went to Japan on my 20th birthday. I landed in Japan, my 20th birthday, July 18th, 1997, right? So I'm now 23 years old, coming back from Japan, and I bring up, hey, what if I use this internet thing to try to find, reconnect with somebody who's looking for me? My parents are open to it, right? Now, of course, by this point, you got to remember I moved out of the house at 16 years old. Now I'm living sporadically in their life, right? From 16 to join the Navy at 19, shipped out at 20 years old to go to Japan. Now I'm 23, so it's seven years downrange. They figured out life without me at this point. They're now focused on my little sister, her kids, and Gary is just he's okay. And by the way, they did not want me to get out of the Navy, they did not need me to be a problem on their couch, right? They were so glad when I chose to stay in the United States Navy because they did not need to worry. They were so worried about me throughout my teenage years, they did not need to worry about me during my adult years, right? So they were happy I was staying in the Navy. So when I came back and said, what if I try to find biological family? They were supportive. Uh so I would look, I would look, I would use the internet and I would go on different websites, I would do different searches, I would do things like, you know, the the hospital I was born in, my birthday, all these things. I would do all these things, and for the next, you know, from 2000 and from 2000, year 2000 until the year 2014, I would sporadically look for people that were looking for me. But I was never consistent, I wasn't super focused on it. It was just something that would kind of come across my my mind, and then I would not find anything. So you they knew no information about my biological family, and I knew I had nothing to go off of just a three by five card that gave me no information, right? So now 2014, 2014, June, 2014. Uh, we are now at this point in time in Norfolk, Virginia, living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I am a Master Chief Petty Officer, damage control master chief at this time. I am uh an instructor at the damage control fire schoolhouse there in Norfolk for senior enlisted damage control. So I'm a firefighter for the Navy, and I've risen to the to the to the top of that career field, right? So I joined the Navy in 1997 just as a Hellion hooligan with a GED high school dropout. And now at this point in my life, in 2014, I'm a master chief. I've gotten my bachelor's degree by this point, and I'm working on my master's degree at this point in organizational leadership. And I'm doing that because I'm planning to apply for the Command Master Chief program, and I wanted to be the best command master chief that I can be. So that's why I chose to get my bachelor's organizational leadership, right? And I'm actually literally taking a class at this time that's requiring me to write a paper on nature versus nurture. I couldn't make it up. You cannot make this up, right? I'm literally going through a college class and I'm writing a paper on nature versus nurture. Oh, by the way, my wife at this point in time is nine months pregnant with my second soon-to-be son. Nine months pregnant, like ready to have the baby any day. Okay, and it's uh 20 June 2014. And I'm up at night. My wife, at that point in time, she's so far pregnant that she's just like, let me go to bed first, let me get to sleep, come uncomfortable before you come to bed, right? So I'm up later than she is, and I'm playing Xbox at the time, right? Playing Xbox at the time, playing a video game, and I uh I put the video game down. It's like literally midnight. And I pick up my iPad and I do something that I have done countless times before. I I I I go to a search engine and I put in like the hospital name, my birth year, adoption, right? Boy, and I hit enter. And for the first time in ever, I get a hit from an adoption.com like board, right? It's a post from my 18th birthday. So think about that. My 18th birthday from before even before I went to Japan, even before I joined the Navy, is how long this post has been out there in the world, right? And this post basically says, baby boy, are you still out there? Uh today would be your 18th birthday. Uh, and again, this is me uh remembering, right? I don't have it memorized per se, but basically it's just the the biological mother was putting a post out there on this billboard for a baby boy born on that day in that hospital. First time I've ever had that hit happen. I do not know what was different about this day. It was God, right? But God. God finally decided to line it up. And then you just can't, you cannot convince me otherwise, y'all, because this story is crazy, right? So I get this hit, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like this is a mom looking for a son born on the same day, same hospital. I wonder how many boys were born on this day in this hospital that will put it for adoption. Crazy. So then what I'm able to do is click on this person's name and see all their posts, right? So when I do that, there's posts. This person's been posting on this reunification board, right? Almost annually on the birthday. And one of the first posts that this person ever put out there was about was the was the history, right? Was I was a teenager, you were born, you weighed three and a half pounds, you were a premature baby, you had a clubbed foot. If you're still out there, I'm looking to find you, I

The 2014 Search That Finally Worked

Gary Wise 52:40

would love to meet you. I hope you're doing okay. Just oh my gosh. And it's like one o'clock in the morning, and I am just like, oh my gosh, the whole story of my life might have just opened up crazy, right? So I'm looking at all these posts and this person's name, and so I'm like, well, at this point in time in life, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn, there's other social media spaces that I can go to. So I uh I go to Facebook and not on Facebook, right? I go to uh I'm searching different search engines, and again, I've done this before looking for different things, and I find a picture of this woman on a uh a 55 plus like hiking uh group in Grand Junction, Colorado, which is my parents' original hometown. My grandparents lived in Grand Junction, Colorado. I would go to Grand Junction, Colorado almost every summer to spend weeks and or months with my mom's side of the family, right? And come to find out, this woman actually lives about 15 minutes away from my grandparents' house in Colorado, right? But at this point in time, I find a picture of this woman, and we are identical. Like it is uncanny how much we look alike. It is unincredible. I find this picture of this woman, and I'm we are literally, I am this her spinning image. You know, I remember when I was a kid, my people would say I look like my mom or my dad, and I would just kind of be like, Yeah, you know, they don't know I'm adopted, right? But when I looked at this woman, like we are there's no mistaking, and I'm like freaking out, right? I went back and I woke up Erica and I was like, Erica, oh my gosh, like I have found my biological mother. And Erica's like, are you serious right now? Like, we're about to have a baby, bro. Like in a day, two days, three days, four days. What are you doing? Like, why right now is this a thing? And I'm just like, babe, like, I don't know. It just worked. I don't know, but I found her, and she was just like, I mean, to her credit, I woke her up, middle of the night, nine months pregnant, and like this is a big little drop, right? I was freaking out. Told her, she's just like, Well, what are you gonna do? I said, I don't know. I'm sorry, what do you do? Just go back to bed, right? So I go back out to the living room and I join this 55 plus group, right? With a dummy name, like with a dummy name. Like I put in some very basic information to get access to the group. So I'm looking for a way to hopefully connect with this person and talk with her, right? Um, and I get access, and there's a website, there's an email address. So I email the person, and I was just basically like, hey, you know, I found this post on this website, just so happens that I was born on this day in that hospital, very similar birth story. Uh, do you have any other additional information that you could provide for me to help me kind of validate possibly that we're connected, right? Because I think we might want to talk or we might we might have some things in common, seriously, right? And I didn't know the clubbed foot thing, just so you guys know, I didn't know the clubbed foot's part of the storyline. That was not uh in the story I was given as a kid. And oh, one other piece of the pie is in June, and earlier in June that month, for Father's Day, Erica had bought me a DNA test. Okay, she had gotten me a DNA test for Father's Day, and those results were they were that that test was submitted, and the results were pending. Okay, so uh that that's out there. I also uh had looked on social media using a few different uh websites and found like people that was this person's brother or sister. So I kind of messaged them on Messenger via Facebook and like, hey, I was adopted. I think this person might be somebody I would like to talk with. If you have any way for me to get a hold of this person, that would be great. Because I didn't know if this email was even gonna be viable. I just didn't know, right? So this is a Friday night. Go to bed finally, one, two o'clock in the morning, go to bed. Wake up in the morning and I get an email first thing that morning. I remember like it's like the title is like, Are you him? Right, are you him? And there's this whole email from this from this lady who's basically saying, you know, you've been she's been looking at me for so long. Oh, and I had sent uh in my email, I had sent a picture of myself, pretty sure, right? I had sent, or I'd sent a link to my Facebook or something along those lines, but I wanted her to see me so she could see how similar we looked, right? And uh she sends me this whole email basically saying, I don't know what other information I can give you. Uh, but this is the story, right? And she's like, I don't know if you're him or not, but I'm super excited. And I saw this picture of you. I don't know how you're not him, but I also don't want to be too overwhelming. I don't want to be too uh assuming, and I just want to be, she's really just doing a good job being like in like we're both freaking out. Let's be honest. She'd been hoping to meet me since probably she'd given me up. And I, you know, who knows, right? This was incredible thought. Sorry, remember, I get that email and I immediately call my parents in Utah, and I'm like, hey, uh, I think I might have found my biological mother. And they're just like, no way, you know, that's crazy. No mind you it's 2014, right? A lot of life has happened. We've all been living, you know, our life, we're we're just all in a better place. And they're like, that's very cool, man. That's very cool, Gary. And I was like, hey, this is, you know, I'm about to get on the phone with this person. I think last opportunity, are you okay with this? And they're both just like, yeah, we're good. Go for it, bro. And then I asked him, I said, Hey, one question I have is, did I have a club foot? I remember my dad was on the phone with me at the time, and he goes, Hey, Nyla, that's my mom's name. He's like, What was wrong with Gary Leo's foot when he was a baby? And my mom is in the background, like, oh, he had a club foot. And I was like, Oh my gosh, guys, like I had no clue. Okay, so I get on the phone, uh, not even an hour or two later with my biological

First Call DNA Proof And What Comes Next

Gary Wise 1:00:08

mother. And I'm I'm I'm being a little bit coy here with names or whatnot, because I do eventually plan on bringing her onto the channel, right? So I'm just I'm not putting all the information out there quite yet. Not everybody's gonna watch this one up front. Uh, they may see the first video will be when her and I have a conversation here on the channel, and we go through this from both of our perspectives. So I'm not giving all of the goods up quite yet. But one thing that was interesting was her middle name was the same middle name as my dad. She's living in the city that my parents grew up in, and the place that I used to live in every summer, and literally 15 minutes away from my grandparents' home. Our names sound they're right, airy, right? I'll put it like that. They we we have almost very similar sounding glass names, and of course, we're damn near identical. Right? So we get on the phone, we're having a conversation, just just incredible that we found each other. I mean, literally, but God, right? So that night, Saturday night, my wife Erica and I go to the hospital because my son Lincoln is going to be born, right? Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I've got a son born in Naval Medical Center San Diego, and I got a son born in Portsmouth Naval Medical Center, or Naval Medical Medical Center, Portsmouth, whatever you want to call it. We are just your stereotypical Navy family, right? My boys are born six years apart to shore duty to shore duty and two different hospitals coast to coast, right? And uh I'm communicating with all of both my parents, my mom and dad, and with my new reunification biological mother about the baby being born, right? And she's just ecstatic that I'm even having the conversation with her. Now, mind you, there is concerns, right? There's concerns like we don't really know each other yet. We don't know how this is gonna go. We don't know if we're gonna be healthy with each other's lives. We don't know, we we just don't know a lot of things. There's a lot of unknowns, and that was definitely some things my wife and I were concerned about, especially with having kids. But up front, this is super exciting, right? My son is born early Sunday morning, right? We're spending the Sunday at the hospital. I believe we get home on Monday, right? And on Monday, I go into my office to go on baby leave, right? Which is the two weeks we get to after having a baby. But when I go to work to go on baby leave, I check my email, and literally in my email inbox are my DNA test results in my inbox. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I open up the DNA test results, and right there, in case I needed any more uh validation, assurance, anything else in my DNA test results, there's an identified blood first cousin with the exact same last name as my biological mother, right? And there you go, you know, and there you go. It was just an incredible reunification, you know. The emails in the inbox Monday morning. I'm I found her Friday night, Saturday spoke on person. Uh Monday morning, DNA results in my inbox. And God just, you know, he gave me access to the to the story of my life. And it's it's only the beginning, guys. Because it gets it's a it's an it's a it's a process, right? I'm gonna wrap this video up right here pretty soon, but I but I will tell you the next few videos that are gonna come out are going to go through the process of how this reunification went, the emotional ups and downs of it. I'm gonna have her on the podcast so we can talk about life and how we've how we've moved forward. Now it's 2026. You know, one thing that's cool is that my younger son has never known a day on this earth without having her in his life. She's been such a blessing to my family. God's plan. I don't, you know, I think so. I think so. Uh I do want to thank you all if you're listening to the story, if you're sharing in the energy, if you are if you're paying attention to the content that I'm putting out there, I really appreciate you. I'm looking forward to having her on the show and getting her perspective on it and giving her an opportunity to share her side of the story, plus however much she would like to share about her life, because I will tell you it's an amazing life, right? And oh, by the way, remember I talked about earlier about I was doing the college class of nature versus nurture. Her and I, of course, not only have we gotten to know each other tons over the years, uh, but also having a lot of conversations and the amount of things that we have just naturally that connect us is amazing. Right. Um, and then of course, there is going to be the conversation for the biological father side of the household because I do also get to God also opens that one up for me too. So that will be in a future video. So please continue to stay tuned. This these videos will be my focus uh from for the for now, right? For my solo content. I do got guests still lining up to be on the show, and I'm still gonna continue to work them in because I value the conversations and hearing other people's perspectives. But I I do have a series planned, just kind of on the journey of life and just hopefully sharing with people that are out there. So if you're an adoptee who's interested in finding your biological family, if you have any questions, I'd be open to have to talking with you. Feel free to hit me up. If you are a person who had gave a child up for adoption, hopefully you check out the future episode where you get to hear her perspective and how that all went. Um super excited to share these stories with you guys. Definitely a little scary. Um you always want to try to make people feel as comfortable as possible. I don't want to offend anyone. But and also, you know, hopefully my grandkids someday will get to see this video and relate. You know, so thank you guys very much for listening to my voice. I'm gonna go and wrap it off here.

Thanks Staying Connected And Closing

Gary Wise 1:06:50

If you like this kind of content, do the thing, right? Like, subscribe, contact your brother, comment on the videos. I really appreciate y'all. Y'all have a great day out there, stay blessed. I'll talk to you later. And I know I was born for that. I know I was born for this. Don't give it the critics, my words of life is it's a force that they can stop. They just don't get it, I think they forget them. I know. I don't born for that.