dying to know

Before I started this whole journey, I used to get asked alot whether or not I wanted to find my biological mother. The answer was always and emphatic YES. YES I DO. But aren't you afraid of what you might find?, they would ask. No, No I'm not.

I knew the day Mom told me I was adopted that I wanted to know who had given birth to me. It had nothing to do with a sense of loss, betrayal, or abandonment. It was just simple curiosity. Well, maybe complex curiosity.

I've already went into the whole "divided personality" perspective. That was part of my inspiration to know, but it went deeper than just wondering why I liked to read books all the time. There is something so fundamental about knowing who you are biologically.

As a child, I occasionally had wild fantasies about who my mother might be. Was she wealthy? Beautiful? Was I the sole heir to an island in Greece? Mostly, though, I just wanted to know her story. Why was I given up? I also wanted her to know my story. I wanted her to see just how happy I was and what I good life I had, and that I was really really grateful to her for the hard decision she made. I used to write her letters. Long letters full of the purple prose that only 10 and 11 year old girls are capable of. These letters detailed my life, my angst and curiosity towards her, how brave and strong I thought she must be. I wrote them over and over and over again, and they all went in the trash. Occasionally I would do something creepy and ceremonial with them, like placing them in the burn pile, or ripping them up into tiny pieces and letting the wind blow them out into road. It was my note in a bottle.

As I got older, I started to realize how difficult the journey was likely to be emotionally. I always said I would start the search when I turned 18. However, when I turned 18 I was in the middle of planning to go to college in Florida (which never happened) and my life was too emotionally stressful to take on anything else. So I started college and just forgot about it for a while. The next year I met my husband in a political science class. Two years later, I was planning a wedding. Suddenly, I was an adult embarking on a great big future. I didn't feel like I could properly face that future without first having a grip on the past.

If you were adopted through Catholic Charities, you can pay them legal fees of about $375, get both your adoptive parents notarized signatures, and they will do a 3rd party search. Even though I was a flat broke college student, the money was the easy part. Even though they had always known about my desire to find my Biological Mother, and even though they had always been very supportive, I was terrified of asking my parents for those signatures. The form sat in my bedroom for over a month. What if it hurt their feelings? Worse, what if they said no? What if they felt like I didn't love them or they weren't good enough for me? Hurting them was my worst night mare. Somehow in September of 2005, I got up the courage to ask. Mom and Dad didn't even flinch. They signed the form, I signed the check, and proceeding to wait.

Catholic Charities has one lady that does the 3rd party search and her name is Laura. She would email me with updates every so often, that there was no news yet and that it often takes several months to track people down.

One day in November, I went to the library with the rest of Dr. Browning's religion class to start research on a paper. The first thing I do when I sit in front of a computer is check my email, and that day was no different. I noticed an update from Laura, so I opened it. This, however, was not like the others -- they had found her. The email said we've found her, she lives in Columbia and you have a half brother. In front of 30 people in a crowded computer lab, I began to cry hysterically. I still remember the look on Dr Browning's face when I grabbed him by the arm and blubbered "I really have to go, I don't have a good excuse, but I really need to leave right now." He walked out into the hallway with me and I quickly explained - I'm adopted, they've been search for a couple of months, I just got the notice that they found my birth mother. I remember telling him that there were alot of phone calls I needed to make and some thoughts I needed to commit to paper immediately.

I remember walking to my car. I was parked on the street between Drury and Central High School out behind Burnham Hall and the first person I called was Ryan, then my Dad, then my Mom. I don't remember much other than saying over and over -- "They found her! They found her!" After nearly 20 years of wondering, I had found her. She didn't have a name yet, but she was real for the first time in my life.