A daughter’s journey: Monmouth native finds birth mom
There was something Karen Stephens knew about herself when she was a child that stayed with her well into her adult years.
“I always knew that I was adopted,” Stephens said. “I don’t recall a time when they told me that. I just always knew.”
Many of those who are adopted do not know who their birth parents are. It is often kept a secret for varying reasons. For adopted children, it can often lead to unanswered questions and a longing to know more about who they are and where they came from.
That was the case for Stephens, too, until earlier this year when she found her birth mother.
Karen Stephens was adopted by the Frey family in 1963. At the time, the Freys already had one son and were told they’d be unlikely to have a second child because of health complications.
Despite those complications, Elene Frey had a second child the following year. The family would adopt another daughter in 1967, something Karen never forgot.
“I was the one who got to go because I was going to the same place where they got me,” Karen said. “I got to sit in the front seat, I got to pick out a special baby doll. It was very important because we were coming from the same place.”
While Karen grew up in a loving home in Monmouth, Illinois, she always wondered about her birth family.
“I had always wanted to know who my birth family was, for anything else, to understand my medical history as well as be able to say ‘thank you’ for what they did in my life in terms of giving me to mom and dad,” Stephens said.
The search began in the mid 1980s, about the time she graduated from Bethel College with a degree in nursing. Karen said she had been told by her father that she would need to ask him because the original birth certificate had to be changed and it was sealed.
“I remember I was 22 years old, and I marched myself into his office up on the square, and I said I wanted to know,” Karen said. “He told me that my given name