“You’re different” is something I am frequently told. In retrospect, it’s the story of my life.
Growing up, I’ve never looked like anyone. My Italian mother and Scandinavian father didn’t share my dark, almond-shaped eyes, high cheek bones or silky hair. I distinctly remember staring at their faces and family photos in hopes of finding any resemblance, though I knew I’d never find one – I was adopted.
As a child, my adoption was never a secret and I convinced myself I was picked out from a cabbage patch. My parents regularly told me how much I was wanted – how it was me they had been praying for all along. In the beginning, it wasn't a feeling of "difference" I felt. They only made me feel special.
However, after being raised in a predominately Italian-American, and very Catholic, household – and loving all the traditions that came with it – I began to wonder about my own heritage. Eventually, as I became a parent, my questions and curiosities about my origins only grew more intense.
The search
To my parents’ dismay, as a child, I was constantly rummaging through their stuff. One day, I came across a filing cabinet in the garage, full of information about my adoption. If I were to ever experience the feeling of striking gold, this was it.
Upon finding the paperwork, my “real” mom became my fantasy. In my perfect imaginary world, I imagined I had a family looking for me. I dreamt about this beautiful woman, somewhere out there, missing me as much as I missed her.
But, as I grew up, I realized she wasn’t my real mom. She was my birth mom. Despite this awareness, I was still curious to know her and spent years researching and reading everything I could get my hands on about adoption, reunions, and prepared myself for the journey I knew I had to take.
I can’t recall at what point I started to really ask questions about my adoption. In doing so, I only felt as though I was betraying my parents’ love and efforts. But, as I stepped into the world as an adult, the face of every stranger on the street became the face of a possible relative and the burning thoughts of those papers stored in the garage felt as though the answers were within reach.
Finally, in 2004, I started a rigorous search. I contacted my adoption agency and discovered my adoption records were sealed and added my name to the agency’s disclosure registry. That meant I was willing to have my information released to a family member who also put their name on the registry.
I became quite the detective, learning how to navigate state websites and ancestry records. I spent my 20s completely obsessed.
From that paper work I had found in the garage, I poured over the information and posted any details I could find to an adoption message board on the internet:
My birth mother was 16 years old at the time of my birth. She had 3 brothers and 2 sisters. I was told she was of Norwegian-Irish ancestry. At the time of my birth she was 5’6” and 125lbs. She enjoyed sewing, drawing, and athletics; wanted to go into veterinary medicine. Her father was 6’, thin, had a high school education and worked as a mechanic. Her 3 brothers were 6’6”, 6’, and 5’9” all with brown hair and blue eyes. Her two sisters were both 5’6.5” and one had blonde hair and the other brown hair. One sister had blue eyes and the other brown eyes. Her mother is said to have dark brown hair, blue eyes, some college education, and is very pretty.
That was all I had, but within weeks, “search angels” began contacting me and asking questions via email in an attempt to assist with my search. My birth certificate, which was not an original, didn’t seem to help. It only bared my name as it appears now, and the names of my adoptive parents.
Have faith
A few months passed and I was contacted by someone who claimed they could access my original birth certificate, which would identify my original last name and possibly my birth mother.
“I’ll need a copy of your birth certificate and $75,” the stranger wrote in an email.
Against all rationale, I threw caution to the wind and did it. I invested every ounce of faith into this stranger knowing that it had the potential of ending badly. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen by giving some unknown person on the internet all of my private, identifying information?
*Insert sarcastic chuckle*
Whatever you do, please don’t do this! However, for me, this idiotic move is what cracked my search wide open.
And as it turned out, I was named Teresa – just like my Roman Catholic idol who won the Nobel Peace Price the year of my birth.
‘I am your mother’
Five years had passed since posting on the adoption message board. One morning, in 2009, I woke up and checked my email as I regularly do. As I scanned through the junk emails, one stood out, so I opened it.
“... I am your birth mother ... I only wanted what was best for you and I did not think a 16 year old mother was it ...,” she wrote.
I was stunned and in that moment it felt as though time had stopped. I collapsed in tears. It was as if I floated out of my body and could see myself on the floor from above. I can’t even begin to describe what it’s like to receive that kind of news after 30 years.
Say the words
It’s a strange feeling to dream or long for someone you’ve never met, but still feel an intrinsic connection to.
Two years passed since first making contact with my birth mother, and in 2011, while visiting Iowa, I decided it was time to meet. I jumped in the car and drove to the Minneapolis area to meet two of my siblings, Patricia and Billy.
Upon arrival, a wave of excitement and anxiety came over me as I pulled up to the house.
I don’t know that I could have run to the door fast enough. Strangely, I can’t remember much about that meeting, but I remember my siblings and I marveling at one another.
Patricia commented to Billy that I looked just like their aunt, as if I wasn’t even standing there.
I felt every emotion exit my body simultaneously – fear, joy, rejection, excitement, anger, happiness, despair.
I finally heard the words I had longed to hear – I looked like someone.
The reunion
On March 30, 2013, it happened. My then husband, children and I drove to Colorado to meet my birth mother.
We met at a small cafe in Denver. I still remember the moment I rounded the corner of the cafe and first laid my eyes on her. She was beautiful. When I met my mother, I had the same kind of feeling when I first laid eyes on my children. For me, it felt like the kind of love that fills you when you see your newborn baby for the very first time.
I couldn’t stop examining her. The way she smiled or squinted her eyes. The way she cried, and how she ordered French toast with eggs sunny-side up, like me, at two in the afternoon. I mean, what are the odds that we’d order the same meal and eat it in the same way by dipping our carefully cut toast in the yolk?
In those short few hours, I learned a lifetime of information about myself. Her face was so familiar, that, had I passed her in a crowd of a million people I would know she was mine.
‘Song for Zula’
It took a number of years to finally meet my mother after that first email message, but what really inspired me to take that trip to Colorado is that I had fallen in love with the lyrics from “Song for Zula” by the band Phosphorescent. I saw they would be playing in Denver, and thought I could check out their show and meet my mother along the way.
After meeting my birth mom, I went out that same evening to see Phosphorescent play. It was so surreal as I wandered the streets of Denver alone – the most unimaginable peace filling my head.
As I waited for the band to come on, I sat myself on the curb to smoke and a woman sat beside me. She asked where I was from. When I told her, she asked what brought me to Denver, so I told her my story.
Within minutes, we were wrapped in a long embrace, which triggered me to cry into her shoulder. Her friends came outside to find her and she announced my news to them, which spread like wildfire throughout the club. Strangers worked their way through the crowd to offer hugs and words of support that I could not hear over the music.
I have never smiled, nor cried, so much. That night was truly an experience filled with unwavering compassion and unconditional love.
That day, I may have met my mother, but it was that same day I discovered the overwhelming comfort of our humanity.
We may be strangers, but, deep down, I think we’re all kind of the same.