This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours.

Send them to Our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites.

Blair Lynn's personal story of growing up without a father at home reflects the experiences

of millions of Americans.

Blair beautifully told her story in her book, Finding My Father, and she's here to share

it with us.

Here's Blair Lynn. The section on my birth certificate reserved for my father's name is Blank.

After my mother found out she was pregnant with me, she actually decided that she wasn't going to keep me.

And so she went to the doctor, the local doctor,

and they said she was too far along in that small town to have an abortion. In order to do it,

she would have to go to a larger city, like Chicago or Detroit. And at that time, she didn't

really have the resources to be able to do that.

And as she was sorting it through, she found herself actually going and talking to a Baptist pastor,

someone who she didn't know, who the family didn't know, to try to get some advice on it.

And the pastor tried to convince her not to go through with it.

And so she then decided, well, I'm gonna give her up for adoption.

I'll have her, but I'm gonna give her up.

And so when she had me, she actually went to the hospital alone

because my grandmother, mama, her mother, wasn't happy that her daughter

had had or was going to have two children out of wedlock. And so she went to the hospital,

had me, and right when she had me, she told me that all I did was I stared at her.

Like, I just looked at her.

...