Part 2 :: The Search For My Birth Family
Roughly a week after I seriously began searching for my birth family, I connected with my biological half-brother. During that week, I did more research, Facebook searches, and google searches than I have ever done in my life. I even reached out to the attorneys who handled my adoption, as I had suspected they were unable to help me. South Carolina, where I was born, has some of the strictest laws regarding the opening of adoption files, and unless you need a kidney they rarely make exceptions. Most of my search was based on one document that had the name and birthdate of my birth mom, Sherry, and two of my biological siblings, Kyle and Brittany. I used the names to run hundreds of google and Facebook searches. I had no idea what they would look like, and most of the pages I came across were private. Four days into the search I came across a white pages link that matched my birth mom’s name and listed possible relatives with my siblings’ names. But of course, no phone number or addresses were listed. By day five I had literally scoured the internet and continued to come up empty-handed. Five days in and I was honestly ready to quit.
At this point, I had decided that I would do one more Facebook search using each name I knew one last time. If it turned up empty I would be done and feel ok about moving on with life. Of course, this is when I happened upon a profile I hadn’t seen before. I clicked on it and while there was no picture I had a feeling that this was her, this was my birth mother. I went to her friends list and found accounts with names matching what would be my biological siblings’ names. Suddenly I full on panicked. I put my phone down and told my husband I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t send the message. So he sat down by me, pulled out his phone and held my hand while he typed out a message to Kyle. Just a simple, “this is who I am and this is the info I have” message. It took maybe two minutes for a response. “Yes!” he said, “that’s us, and we’ve been looking for her too… We were just talking about her on her birthday”.
After that, I corresponded with Kyle for a couple of hours talking about our lives and about Sherry. I asked if he thought she’d want to talk to me. He said he was sure she would. And then he called her to give her a heads up that I’d be calling.
I dialed Sherry’s number and waited sweating bullets with each ring. When she answered I told her who I was, and told her that I’d had a happy and beautiful life. I told her about my amazing parents and siblings, and then I told her about my husband and my daughter. I told her how having my baby changed my perspective and how much I appreciated her decision to place me for adoption. The conversation lasted all of 15 minutes. We didn’t cover too much ground in that time, but in those 15 minutes, I got a lot of closure and resolution to a lot of frustrations and questions I’d always had. I also found out I had two more biological brothers, that were omitted from the adoption papers in error. In the past few weeks, Sherry and I have spoken and texted a few times. In that time we’ve covered everything from favorite foods and colors to talking about my birth dad. I’ve been able to talk to Kyle and Brittany more and get to know a little bit more about them. All of the reconnecting has been awesome, but inside I was really struggling.
