Finding My Sister

 Friends and foes, this post has been some time coming. 

I pride myself on being open, on sharing myself. I don't do it to educate, though I've had people express gratitude for teaching them and that's a nice bonus; rather, I do it for people like me! I do it to show we're not alone and bring our stories into the light and demonstrate that there's power in vulnerability. But, being someone who is always so open can sometimes mean that there's very little that's just for me, that I can hold in my heart as special and precious and private. So, I didn't want to share this for the first couple of weeks. I wanted to keep it just for me. 

But now I'm ready to tell you. I found my sister! My full, biological big sister! I found her! And finding her has been so much better than I ever imagined it could or would be. 

Part of that is that I'm not a hopeful person by nature and part of it was fear and...wait. Let me back up.

I always knew I had a big sister. My birth father interviewed my adoptive parents and picked them for me. He told them I had a sister and then they told me. They never kept anything they were told from me, so I knew and I craved her my whole life. I didn't know her name but I knew she was out there. 

I was like little Fievel Mousekewitz lost and singing for his sister. Seriously. I remember seeing An American Tail in the theater at SIX years old and sobbing. Thanks a lot, Don Bluth. Just kidding. I love that movie! But I really did cry my tiny adoptee ass off. 

Fast forward to when I was a young adult, in the early days of the internet, I found my birth records (by a mistake by some admin, I'm sure, because I should not have had access) and found my first parents' names, but I still didn't know how to track them down or how to find her name. 

Then when Facebook opened up to people outside colleges (remember that?), I searched for my parents several times. I finally got a hit on my father (and that was enough info for me), but didn't see anyone on his page back then that looked like she could be said sister (I did see some gals listed as daughters but they were younger than me - I've since learned they're step sisters). I searched my mother a lot, but not only did she have a super common name (and I didn't know the correct spelling anyway), but little did I know she died long before social media. Alas.

When I was 32, and if you've heard this story, jump ahead to the next paragraph, my aunt and I were sitting in a Subaru dealership while she had her car worked on. We were bored and chatting about my adoption stuff and she decided to pull out her iPad and look up my parents' names on Ancestry (she's like a genealogy wiz and I am not, though I've learned a lot since heh). She found a photo of my birth mom pretty quickly, which is how we found she'd died years before. And on that photo of my birth mom (the first photo of her I'd ever seen!), she was holding a little girl (my sister!) and the caption listed my sister's name! 

I had a name! And then not much else. I wasn't that good at internet detectiving then, but I searched social media a bunch of times and that woman is just not on social media! She was a mystery! At some point, I did find an address on Google and, after crafting the perfect letter for literally months, I mailed it and, some months later, it came back as "no such address." WOMP WOMP. At that point, I was so defeated. I was like, if I had money, I'd hire a PI to go find her for me! I had no idea what to do. 

And then there was the fear. So much fear. Fear of secondary rejection. Fear of the unknown. I had no idea if  she even knew about me, let alone wanted to meet me. What if she resented me? What if she didn't like me? What if what if what if? I was drowning in what if!

Then, in early 2018, (and I swear I almost forgot I did this part but it just popped up in my brain as I was writing this) I was waist deep in planning my wedding and I was having my wedding dress altered by my cousin's friend (we'll call her D) and D was saying how much my cousin and I look alike (we don't, really, we just have the same voice and mannerisms from being raised so closely together) and I said something like, "We get that a lot, but actually I'm adopted!" So then, as all people do when they hear I'm adopted, she asked me a bajillion questions about it and I told her about the Ancestry photo of my birth mom. I told her I can't afford an Ancestry account to search more, but I'd like to. So she says she has an Ancestry account and she'd be happy to search. So I give her as much as I know (I had a printout of the photo I'd saved) and then sort of forgot about it.

The next day I wake up to a bunch of texts from D. She'd messaged the account owner who'd posted the photo and that person was my aunt! The aunt sent a couple photos of my mom (one was the one I already had with my sister) and D was texting them to me. I was in amazement. Then D started putting my photos side by side with my mom's to show how much we look alike (we do!) and then I threw up. Seriously, I barfed. I was just overwhelmed! I had so much going on already and just couldn't process it. So D told my aunt that I'd reach out later when I felt more ready. 

And then the next chunk of years were a freaking whirlwind in my life! Layoffs, jobs, travel, panic disorder, house buying, layoffs, pandemic. There was just SO much going on that I barely thought about finding my family. I remember most of my therapy appointments were mostly about keeping my anxiety in check and keeping the old beast of depression at bay. 

But after I got through the first wave of pandemic and I was just home and unemployed, and my house was the cleanest it had ever been and I ran out of hobbies, I had lots of time to work on myself and start healing more and start thinking about my adoption stuff and family search again.

Then fast forward to 2022? Or late 2021 maybe? I honestly can't quite remember because the last like 3 years have been like a damn fever dream. Anyway, I was gifted an Ancestry test by a friend (and I wish I'd done it sooner but fear and money stopped me) and connected with that same aunt. It took me a bit to actually message but I finally did and, well, if you've been here a while, you know the rest of that part of the story. 

But I was still unsuccessful at connecting with my sister. The reasons aren't necessarily clear to me and so I'm not sure now, looking back, why it was so difficult to get that connection, but I was so close to thinking I'd never get to meet her. 

AnyWAY, you all know that this past June, I was invited to join a family reunion on my maternal side and I went and, while my sister wasn't there, at the reunion. I was shown some photos of her kids and I remembered her daughter's name, because it's unique, and the following week I looked up my niece (I have a niece!) on Facebook and messaged her. 

Look, I KNEW messaging on Facebook was a risky move in that my message would go to "message requests" and I know I hardly ever check my message requests, but I didn't want to just send her a friend request out of the blue, because if a stranger did that to me, I'd assume they were a bot and delete it immediately. So I message her and explained who I was and said I'd love to be her friend if she wanted. but no pressure.

"No pressure," I said! Because I'm so easy breezy lol. No presh, she says, flipping her hair like she doesn't have an anxiety disorder. Thank gawwwd for my Valley Girl accent and cannabis or people would never believe me that I'm so chill. 

ANYWAY, at the end of July, my niece wrote me back and wanted to connect and I sent her my number and then she said her mom wanted to connect so I said she could give her my number and then my SISTER TEXTED ME and the next thing I knew, we had a phone date and we were talking on the phone! I was talking on the phone to my sister and it was so cool and she was so cool! And OMG!

It also turns out she'd done 23andMe and was waiting! I could kick myself for not doing both DNA tests. 

But she is so cool! We've talked over text or phone every day since and I just can't believe how much we needed each other and I'm seriously tearing up writing this. She was wanting to meet me for so long too! It should be weird and it is kind of weird in a "we can't believe it took us this long" kind of way, but it's also not weird at all! There are SO MANY things we have in common, but also lots of things we don't, you know, like SISTERS. She's sent me lots of photos, every one of which I study like I'm going to have an exam later. 

With every photo of my sister, I picture us as kids, together, just being siblings, children, sisters who should have had each other.

Every photo of my mother I can see myself in and it fills me up in ways I couldn't predict. Like, it's not about if I'd have liked my mother or not, but it's more in that I can see myself so clearly in MY mother, in the woman I came from! I spent so long never seeing that and it's so healing to see it, even though it can only ever be photos. I just feel real, just grounded in existence for maybe the first time. There's a photo on her wedding day that looks so much like me, even the expression on her face, it's mind blowing.

And my sister been super open with telling me things I didn't know as well, even the hard stuff. So many people want to protect adoptees from our origins, like we're forever children in need of saving, but we just want to know our truths, our history, all of it, no matter how hard. We deserve to know where we came from! Even if it's all shit, it's MY shit! I deserve to know it and I deserve to be treated like I can handle knowing who I am and where I came from (what I can't handle is between me and my therapist lolz). So she's given me that freely and I'm so glad for it. 

It's so hard to describe what it feels like, but, even for this consummate writer, I don't necessarily feel like I need to! I'm just soaking up every minute of it. It just is and it feels right. 

I regret not trying harder to find her sooner. I regret not pushing and for being fearful. I regret every day lost, but we're here now and that's what matters. She lives far away from me, but we'll find a place somewhere middle-ish to meet. I can't wait! 

But I do still have anger that we were kept apart. I'm not saying my adoption wasn't the only option for me, because I think now that it was and I'm not going to fantasize about changing the past, but I know there are ways to keep siblings in touch. There are better ways!

We have two other half-siblings still out there (also adoptees) and we'll keep searching! I have clues on one sister that's the eldest of us and just crossing my fingers that eventually works out. I have no idea where to look for the youngest, but maybe one day she'll do a DNA test and at least we have both DNA sites covered! 

But I'm so happy to have my full sister. 

I truly hope it's okay I share this! That's my mother and sister on the left and me on the right.