Finding A Sister...I Never Knew I Had

When you're adopted--and the adoption records are sealed--you grow up with questions, and "what ifs" and what might have beens.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I can't imagine any adopted person not feeling this way, at least a little. For me, those feelings were always on the back-burner. Sure, they'd creep into the front of my thoughts from time to time, but my adopted family never gave me an excuse to need to find my birth family. I always thought, maybe one day, I might find those people responsible for my existence. I also thought that if I ever did come in contact with them, then it would be "meant to be."

After my mother passed more than a decade ago, those back-burner thoughts spent more time front and center. Then, for Christmas years ago my wife bought me an Ancestry.com DNA kit. I wondered if by taking the test, would questions be answered, "what ifs" figured out, might have beens realized?

I thought I might find my birth parents, or maybe their families, since my parents may no longer be living.

I never thought I'd find a sister, a sister who was also put up for adoption a few years after me, a sister who submitted a DNA test for the same reason--to find her parents, and maybe their families.

We found each other.

Last night we spent an hour texting each other for the first time. It was, in a word, fascinating. I won't include what we discussed or what we discovered--it's too personal, but even though neither of us found parents or siblings of parents, we both found another person on this big earth, people neither knew existed. It's a wonderful, surreal, exhilarating, and a little lonely experience. I'm glad we found each other--at least a couple of questions answered.