Lost and Found: Finding my birth family

I began this blog shortly after connecting with my birth family.  Unfortunately, my birth mother passed away in 2008, but I have connected with the two people closest to her: her older brother and his wife, and my biological half-sister. The connection was because of AncestryDNA. I've been married since 2006 to a wonderful and supportive man.  I gave birth to fraternal twin boys in 2009, who were the very first biological family members I ever knew. I currently live outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

I have always known about my adoption.  I was born in the summer of 1969, and it was a closed adoption.  I grew up in Northern California, in a small farming community called Lodi, and the closest city was Sacramento.  In the early 1970's, it was not very common to find mixed-race children, but that's what I am.  My mother, according to my Adoption papers, was listed as Irish.  My father was listed as Korean.  I was adopted by a Japanese-American family.  My father is the youngest of 9 children.  I grew up surrounded by many aunts, uncles and cousins. My parents still live there, and so do pretty much all of my cousins, aunts and uncles.

Our story is extraordinary on several different levels. The first coincidence is that my closest biological relative (my uncle and his wife) just happen to live in my hometown of Lodi, California.  That, in and of itself, is so amazing.  What are the odds of that happening? So, naturally, my parents met my birth family before me.  My dad and my uncle sent me several photos of their first meeting, following by a lunch with both my parents and my aunt and uncle.  In addition to the joy of finding a family I have wondered about my entire life, to see my parents who raised me, and who I love very much, come together with my birth family is beyond every dream come true.  This discovery has had the best possible outcome anyone could have hoped for.  

My biological uncle saw that I showed up as a close match on Ancestry, and he sent me an email around New Year's Eve 2017, and the email heading was appropriately titled, "Who are you?" which made me laugh immediately. It was around January 2, 2018, when I spoke to him on the phone for the first time.  I figured out who I was, and it was very scary, but I told him, "I believe your sister is my  mother."  I heard silence, and I thought for a moment he never knew his sister had another baby, but he clarified he could not recall, so he asked his wife if his sister had a baby in San Francisco in 1969, and I overheard her say, "Yes, she gave the baby up for adoption." There's my validation right there. I am that baby. He and I talked for hours that night, about everything and nothing. I asked him why he was, of all places in the world, living right there in my hometown? He told me about his children, my first cousins, and their children.  He told me little things about my mother, about where they grew up, where our ancestors come from, and about our cousin in Oklahoma, who happens to be a genealogical genius.  I told him about my family, how big it is, and that I was raised by wonderful people.  It was all of the "getting to know you" kind of stuff. We talked quite a bit by phone and by texting.  Before long, I was communicating with my aunt as well.  

I know that these connections don't always have happy endings.  I knew that my mother married about a year after I was born, and she had two other daughters from that marriage.  One was born in 1972, but she unfortunately died when she was just 16.  My youngest sister was born in 1975, alive and well living in Arizona.  My husband's goal was to get me connected with my half-sister as soon as possible, so with my fiery husband at my heels urging me to ask my uncle to contact her and let her know that she has an older sister she's never met. Fortunately for me, she was very interested in connecting with me.  She did know about me - she said our mother mentioned that she had a baby in San Francisco on several occasions, but gave no other information - so I was relieved that I was not a hidden secret.  In fact, she told me that her father, our mother's ex-husband, was also adopted, and actually encouraged her to "try to find the baby".  

The second coincidence is my name, Lanie.  The story is, my parents basically made it up.  They heard other variations and just came up with Lanie.  The irony is that my Aunt's name is Elaine, but she is frequently called Lanie. In fact, my sister and her daughters call her Aunt Lanie.  My uncle told me my mother was very fond of his wife, and she liked to call her Lanie, too.  He asked me if that was a name his sister gave me, or if my parents did.  My mother, at birth, named me Amy Lee Armstrong, but it is another strange coincidence that I ended up with the name that I have.

The third coincidence, which I'm still completely floored by, came when I looked at the first picture my uncle sent me of my mother.

This was the first photograph, from 1959, that was sent to me, and before I even looked at any faces, my uncle explained in the email my mother was the fourth from the right.  She is probably about 15 years old in this picture. As soon as I saw her face, I was in shock. That's my mother. The woman who gave birth to me. I couldn't stop crying.  It was like looking in a mirror. I thought I'd look like her a little bit, but I was not prepared for this. Just as a comparison, here is my senior picture from high school, taken in 1987, which is still on the wall in my parents' house.

There were other pictures that followed, school pictures, and other candid pictures taken with her brother when they were children and teenagers.  It is so hard to express the feeling of seeing my birth mother as a young girl.  And the fact that I look exactly like her is uncanny. I've never resembled anyone, and just to know that she was on this earth, and I am just a younger version of her.

The story is just beginning.  There are so many feelings and emotions that come with being adopted.  I am happy to report that I will be going home at the end of February 2018.  My sister is flying in from Arizona, and staying with our aunt and uncle.  I will be staying in my old bedroom at my parents' house.  The journey has just begun.