What Happened When I Found My Birth Family at Age 70

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At my 5th birthday party, a playmate who lived down the street told me I was adopted.

Neither she nor I knew what a “dopted” was. I asked and found out.

In my experience, there is not much middle ground with adoptees regarding finding their birth parents. They either really want to know, or they really do not.

I was always in the “really do not” category. Based on whisperings I overheard as I grew up, I was quite sure my adoptive parents had known my birth parents and vice versa. And it was not a topic open for discussion.

My thinking was always that if my birth parents knew the details of my adoption and never reached out to me, then I was not going to potentially upset their lives by showing up. After all, when I was born, an out-of-wedlock birth was often hidden, the stuff of scandal.

Better left alone forever, I was sure.

Then, one day, my 15-year-old grandson came home from school with a project: to chart his family tree. Students were encouraged to use online genealogy sites.

His mother called me.

I had sent my DNA to two genealogy websites, not to find my birth parents, but to find out more about my geographical ancestry. No surprise, with red hair and blue eyes, my reports from these sites showed Irish ancestry. The reports also listed biological DNA matches to other people in the databases. My only matches were distant cousins.

My daughter-in-law asked if I would be okay with her doing some further research. I agreed because, after all, my history is part of my children’s and grandchildren’s history. They should be entitled to know more about it.

In Georgia, where I was born, the Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry, which is contracted by the state, offers services to help birth parents and adoptees who are interested in reuniting. I reached out to them as a starting point. Their response to my inquiry was that no original birth certificate existed for me. They also shared that the reason the birth parents gave me up for adoption was that they did not have the means to care for me.

After months of diligent digging, my daughter-in-law identified my birth parents. Her research included phone calls to the distant cousins and other people she had found through public records.

Both my birth parents were still alive and in their 90s. Not long after my birth, they married and had another daughter. They later divorced, remarried and had other children.

I was my adoptive parents’ only child. My adoptive mother was also an only child, and my adoptive father was estranged from his family. Growing up, I had no siblings, no aunts, uncles or cousins.

Now suddenly, with my discovery of roots, I had a full sister, many half-siblings and lots of extended family members. Wow! I scoured the online photos looking for redheads and resemblances. But soon my curiosity was dampened by my long-held belief that I was a family secret. Nothing we found indicated otherwise. My birth father died a few months after we discovered him. And I felt that if my 90-year-old mother had not sought me out in more than 70 years, now was not the time for me to try and open that door. So I did not try to contact her.

We found that my sister was a professor, with her contact information and bio on the school’s website. She and my half-sisters were also on LinkedIn and Facebook, posting photos and family information.

I decided to reach out to my sister. I was careful to write that I believed we were related rather than stating bluntly that I was her sister. I sent her my LinkedIn and website addresses. I included photos of myself at age 5, as a teenager, a mother and a grandmother.

No response. My daughter later emailed her. No response. I was not surprised. Emails can be mistaken as online scams or end up in junk mail. Though even if she read them, wasn’t I asking her to redefine her identity?

Accepting me as her sister meant she would no longer be the first and only child of her parents. Disrupting her privacy with a secret her parents had not shared might negatively shape her feelings about them. And what if I turned out to be the nightmare long-lost relative who is after money or determined to insert themselves into her life? I got it. After this experience, I decided not to try to contact my half-sisters or pursue the wider family.

I think of my birth parents as 20-year-olds faced with a life-changing situation that they handled in the best way they knew how at the time. They had more than 70 years afterward to examine their decision and to try and reunite if they felt they should.

I do sometimes wonder if there are parts of me now that would never have developed if I had lived the other life.

The experience pushed me in a direction I did not anticipate. It caused me to think deeply about who I am now and what is most meaningful in my story as I move toward my 80s.

I realized that I really do not want to be the firstborn, big sister or aunt in a large family. It seems too much; it’s not me.

My story today includes spending lots of time alone, writing, learning, never without a book in hand. The final chapters of my story will be filled with continuing to learn and grow. It includes wonderful friends and, more than anything else, cherishing my place in the stories of my two children and six grandchildren.


Are any of you adopted? Have you tried to find your birth parents? Let us know in the comments below.