Rudy Owens’ phantom kin: two of his biological cousins and one of his paternal biological grandfathers, on his biological father’s side (date of photo unknown, 1970s)
For no reason other than my curious mind, I went down the rabbit hole of phantom biological kinship today—May 18,2025.
I call it “phantom kinship” because most U.S. born—and nearly all intercountry— adoptees’ biological relations are outlawed. This legal denial of biological kin connections ensures this broken system continues and that it will never have a moral and legal reckoning, like what has happened, partially, in the United Kingdom and Australia.
As I explained in my book on my own story, illustrating the larger post-World War II adoption system, I have kin I barely know.
Two of my kin are half-siblings, on my biological father’s side of my biological family. I met one of them in fall 2014, which is the subject of the first chapter of my book.
I have not met my second half-sister, the younger of the pair. I would still like to meet her, as she is one of my closest biological relatives. I am not sure I will, based on how the oldest of two of them reacted to meeting me.
Naturally I think of my siblings, regardless of how I’m viewed by my paternal side of the family as a bastard—in its fullest sociological sense of being an agent of chaos, a form of contagion and harm.
On this day I randomly did some online sleuthing and quickly found where my still-unknown and youngest half-sister lives.
For people who are not adoptees, you will never understand this, and I will not try to explain it to you. Severed kinship is like a ghost limb—it exists, and yet it doesn’t exist. You think of it, and yet you will never know its meaning so long as the relationship is hidden or never made.
My deceased kin who never met me
During my research today, I also found other kin I had never met. They include two of my biological cousins on the paternal sides of my family.
They are the son and daughter of one of my deceased biological father’s also-deceased older sisters. I’m nearly 100 percent certain these “phantom cousins” never knew I existed. However, this older sister of my biological father knew about me. The siblings, my “phantom cousins,” have died. They both had chronic diseases and passed away before the death of their mother (my aunt) in 2013.
One of the photos I found, of my now deceased “phantom cousins,” includes my biological grandfather. He too never knew I was born. I can’t confirm that, but from what I know, my secretive existence was mostly hidden from him too.
The first photo shared, at the top, is very old, of these brother and sister “phantom cousins,” with my biological grandfather. It probably was taken in the early or mid-1970s.
I never met this biological aunt, thought I met another biological aunt, a sister to her and my biological father. That too is described in my book. And she is dead now too.
These sisters knew about me from family stories told about me. Most of these stories were lies, which solidified my “bastard” status after I met my bio-dad. It is a messy story, and I am not sharing the details to entertain or titillate readers who want cheap thrills from dark secrets about adoptees, just for selfish and puerile pleasure.
I mostly never show my severed-kin photos. As I continue to age, I am changing my tradition about sharing family photos of biological kin. The ones I shared here are long dead. My goal now is to educate the few who stumble upon them.
Rudy Owens’ biological grandfather (photo date, unknown), the father of Owens’ biological father, and the author, Rudy Owens, with photo of him from September 2024
I know how these two “phantom cousins” died. Their natural deaths would be red flags to anyone who by legal right knows their family health history.
I also wanted to share a photo of me, taken in 2024, in Helsinki Finland, next to my paternal grandfather on my biological father’s side.
I described what I could learn and wanted to share in my book too about him.
He was a small-town veterinarian, who raised his family in a Midwest state, not too far from where I grew up as well. His last child, my biological father, also grew up in that small town before he went to college and then a graduate dental program to become a dentist.
In 2007 I even visited inside of their old home, where he raised his family. It’s in a small city, and the genealogists who were my tour guides that day knew a lot of stories about him and the secrets that only small towns can nurture, unspoken but widely shared in whispers. No one in my father’s biological family, that I am aware of, know I ever visited the town where this family lived for decades.
It’s my past too, but just as phantom kin, never fully known or recognized by my severed biological family.
