The Reason Joni Mitchell Gave Her Daughter Up For Adoption

Joni Mitchell is known for timeless songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Summertime," but many may not know that she was once a mother for a short period of time. Before she became a famous folk singer, Mitchell attended Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary, Alberta. The native Canadian met a student named Brad MacMath and became pregnant with their first and only child together. When Mitchell gave birth to her daughter, whom she named Kelly Dale Anderson, she was only 21 years old. By that time, she and MacMath had gone their separate ways and she was completely solo.

Mitchell kept her daughter's birth a secret, even from her parents. The "Free Man in Paris" singer held the information tightly to herself for decades, hoping for the chance to reunite with her daughter one day. Mitchell poured out her sorrow into her songs, and it was later revealed that "Little Green" from her album "Blue" was about her daughter. "I was opened up. As a matter of fact, we had to close the doors and lock them while I recorded ['Blue'], because I was in a state of mind that in this culture would be called a nervous breakdown," she shared in an interview (via Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers). After news of her secret daughter became public, Mitchell finally opened up about not having the means to take care of a family back in 1965, and the pain she endured over the adoption.

While the 1960s were a time of cultural revolution, it still wasn't a period friendly to unwed single mothers. In a 1997 article published by McClean's (via JoniMitchell.com's Library of Articles), Joni Mitchell was not only single when she was pregnant with her daughter, but she had no money to her name. Mitchell's ex Brad MacMath had gone off to California and she was too ashamed to turn to her parents. The singer-songwriter gave up her baby, who ended up being adopted by David and Ida Gibb, who named her Kilauren Gibb.

Mitchell opened up about how her pregnancy made her turn from art to music in a 2017 interview. "I got pregnant. I was the only virgin in art school, right? You've been holding onto this precious thing and I just kind of stupidly let it go," she recalled. "At the time I had her, I was destitute ... There was no way I could take her out of the hospital into a blizzard with no job, no roof over my head. There was no way I could take her, and there weren't even foster homes available at that time." Miraculously, Mitchell and Kilauren managed to find each other after 32 years and while the reunion was happy, their relationship wasn't always smooth sailing.

Back before social media existed and internet sleuths were around to help reunite long-lost relatives, Joni Mitchell had to find her daughter the old-fashioned way. After a former roommate spilled Mitchell's pregnancy to a tabloid, the news became public and many claimed to be her daughter, per The Los Angeles Times. Kilauren Gibb, who was already searching for her biological mom and had vague information about Mitchell through Canada's Children's Aid, was able to match what she had found with facts about the "Both Sides Now" singer. Gibb called Mitchell's manager, and the two finally met face-to-face in Los Angeles in 1997.

"We both were very excited about meeting. I'm thinking, 'What if she doesn't like me? Probably she won't like me. You know, there's going to be issues here,'" Mitchell reflected in a 2009 video shared on YouTube. Unfortunately, there were some unresolved feelings for Gibb. "[She] had abandonment issues and she was pretty rough on me and conscripted my granddaughter, but we've worked through all of that. We reminisced about all the little tricks we pulled and the ways we can hurt each other. That's over. We're going to see each other soon," Mitchell shared with the Toronto Star back in 2013.