My Reunion Story

When my adoptive Mom died, I knew very little about my birthfamily. The Adoption Disclosure Registry (ADR) of Ontario searched for my birthmother in 1990 and could not locate her. They found her sister but could not disclose what the search was about and the sister would not co-operate without knowing the reason for the contact. The worker asked the sister to forward her name and number. When there was no response, they assumed that my birthmother didn't want contact and they closed the case. It was a very unsatisfactory end as it was based on assumptions. For me, my birthfamily was now real. They had talked to an aunt of mine who said my birthmother was alive and living somewhere in the United States. The shadows were suddenly people. I wanted the ADR to finish what they had started but they refused. They would not give me any information, not even which state my birthmother was living in.

This was the lowest point of my life.

In the next few years, I contacted a number of agencies asking that they find her. I asked that they simply ask if she wanted to reunite and made a point of stating that I was not asking for them to disclose any identifying information. All I wanted was that they complete what the Adoption Disclosure Registry had started. All refused to help including the International Red Cross and the American Embassy.

I wrote countless letters to every Genealogical Society and Family History Society I could find, without success.

I didn't know where to turn to and I was searching for someone with a very common surname.

I spent months painstakingly putting together families from city directories that might have possibly been the one I was looking for. It was an impossible search and I came to the point of packing it all away and simply giving up. It all seemed so hopeless.

Then my adoptive Mom passed away.

Since her death, the information has simply come to me from several unrelated sources. Every time I surrendered, the phone would ring and something would pull me back into the search. I received her name from three completely unrelated sources of information. I think the Angels were on the case and nothing was going to stop me from finding her.

In a mind-boggling sequence of events, on my birthday Feb 6th 1997, I received her first name from an Angel. It was the greatest birthday present I have ever received. More information came on Valentine's Day wrapped in love.

Armed with these facts, I unpacked my research and realized that I had the "family" included in the countless pages I had gathered in the past few years.

With the help of another search Angel, I accessed information which gave me her parents' names. Another phone call to a central cemetery number gave me the dates of her parents' deaths, and then the final phone call gave me the information from the obituaries. I had her married name and where she was at that time in the United States.

I had already been in touch with several search Angels in the US and we had constructed a list of possibilities. Now I knew which one on the list was my birthmother.

I picked up the 500 lb phone and nervously dialed the number. Her husband answered and was reluctant to put her on the phone without knowing the reason for the call. I knew I couldn't tell him and finally mentioned I was calling from Canada. He went to get her. It seemed like forever passed in the few minutes it took for her to come to the phone. When she answered my best friend, who was listening on the extension, started to cry.

I spoke to my birthmother for the first time on March 23rd, 1997, but it was obvious that she couldn't talk and she promised to call me back.

She told me later that she was expecting the call! She had started to think of me last winter and couldn't get me out of her mind. She prayed that God would bring us together. This was happening at the same time that I was receiving information about her.

After my initial call, I could do nothing but wait. I prayed an impossible prayer that somehow I could find a friend of my birthmother's who could call California and find out what was happening. In the meantime, my birthmother's old best friend from her military days, Norma, asked her daughter to search for me. This is still a mystery as to why at this particular time, this elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease would suddenly decide to search for her old friend's daughter.

Norma's daughter just happens to be a member of Parent Finders, a Canadian Triad support group. She found me on the Canadian Adoptees Registry and Classified on the internet and I was contacted by Alice MacDonald, the list owner on May 1st, 1997 the day before my deceased adoptive Mom's birthday, which was May 2nd.

The best friend was simply looking for me to tell me my birthmother's name. She had lost contact with my birthmother and hadn't spoken to her in 44 years. They were such good friends that the best friend had tried to adopt me but they couldn't locate her husband in time as he was posted overseas with the military. The baby who had been such an important part of these two women's lives reunited the two of them the day before Mother's Day, and on Mother's Day, I received word that my birthmother definitely wanted contact.

After four missed collect calls and three months of agonizing waiting, my birthmother and I connected on Canada Day, July 1st, 1997.

I flew to California and simply walked into her arms in the driveway of the Holiday Inn in Modesto on October 1st, 1997 after 52 years of separation!!! There have been rivers of tears before and rivers of tears since but in that moment, we both felt only peace. I was Home!

I believe in my heart that finding her has been a gift from God and the Angels, especially two: my adoptive parents.

How else can I explain all of the information simply coming to me within six months of my adoptive Mom's death?

It is impossible for all of this to have happened in such a short period of time.

I believe that my adoptive Mom has given me the greatest gift she could after death - my birthfamily, so that I can do what I set out to do, help my birthmother heal!

I am complete. I am at peace. I have come home!

May God do the same for You!