I am not joking when I say I had no intention looking for my biological family. I also have no ill intent when I say that out loud. Knowing I was adopted my whole life and being raised by the most selfless people as parents, I have always felt a sense of peace and contentment with my family dynamic. The most specific point in my life when the thought realistically crossed my mind was in high school. I was about 15 years old and my mom and I talked about the idea of searching for my biological family. We were sitting on her bed escaping the hot Phoenix summer day when I started to tell her about my curiosity. She understood and validated my interests. I distinctly recall her reassuring me that it wouldn’t hurt her feelings if that was something I pursued when I became a legal adult. Less than a year later my mom unexpectedly passed away and I remember telling my grief and loss counselor the curiosity spark diminished. I was in a place of confusion. I didn’t want the reunion to be a “replacement.” I didn’t want the reunion to be a cover over my grief. I didn’t want to forget my mom.
November 2017, during World Adoption Month I was asked to do my first Facebook Live with an adoption group regarding my upbringing as an adoptee. I was asked if I was interested in finding my biological family especially because I am now an adoptive parent as well. I confidently explained that my curiosity hadn’t changed, even as an adoptive mama.
It was a Tuesday evening, five days before my 34th birthday, April 2018, a friend reached out to me asking about my ethnicity results that I received from ancestry.com back in November 2016. I couldn’t remember the exact percentages as I hadn’t logged back in, in over a year and a half since the only reason I did Ancestry was to find out my ethnicity. I racked my brain to remember my login information and there it was, a message in my inbox. I click to open and I see that someone had contacted me back in November 2016, just a few weeks after I got received my DNA results. I began to read the message with an open mind. A man on the other end asking me questions regarding my past. Simple questions that most people know but I have never known about myself. I close the windows without responding because, again, I had no ambition to take this road, so why now? Only moments went by before I reopen that message. I couldn’t shake the thought that I had this in my lap and chose to disregard it. Who is this man? How are we connected? What does he know about me that I have never known? Can he help my life come full circle? According to our DNA match and without knowing much about the criteria of the matches, this stranger could only be my uncle or grandfather. I responded and we exchanged messages a few times but I kept finding myself at a dead end because I knew nothing about my closed adoption.
My mom isn’t alive to fill in the blanks and my dad was working hard at racking his brain for distant details. As I continued to converse with this man behind the computer, I decided to go back to my DNA matches to try and put pieces together. I see that we had another close relative match in common. I immediately screenshot the results and sent it asking if he had reached out to that person around the same time he first reached out to me. His reply: “no, why would I? that is my mom.” As if a huge unexpected wave from the ocean came crashing into me I realized without a doubt this man is my biological uncle. The other match, the other match is my biological grandparent. I immediately divulge that with excitement but not without an enormous lump in throat. His next response: “Wait. So my brother, is your father or my sister is your mother?” All I could reply was “yes.” At this moment he is simultaneously texting his brother, jokingly harassing him about having another daughter. I am quickly encouraged to make a call. This call to his brother; my potential birth father.
Just minutes or a mental millennium later, at 10:00 pm on that same Tuesday evening, five days before my 34th birthday, I am sitting on my bed, talking on the phone to a man who was so accepting, so eager to help me, so kind, so excited. Only a few moments into our conversation, I laughed and that very chuckle took him high speed through his past to a women he was able to name my biological mother. At that moment, this man was identified as my birth father.
To be continued on Thursday, Oct 11.
