Birthmothers Story - The Start of the Search

Life happened. We moved across the country a couple of times, spent some exquisite years living at the beach in California, moved back east to New England, built our home on 4 acres of land, finally got good jobs, successfully sent Jesse out in to the world on his own. All the while, somewhere, right in the center of my brain was this little voice that kept reminding me that "he" was out there somewhere.

Songs reminded me, especially Simon and Garfunkle and the Moody Blues. June always reminded me. Milestone birthdays really made me cry...2, 7, 13, 15, 18, 21. But I will never ever be able to search for him, to see him, to find out if I did the right thing, is he happy, does he hate me, all things that I thought about and questioned would remain unknown to me forever.

Then one day in 1996, when the internet was emerging in to mainstream life and I had access to it at work, I typed the word "Adoption" into the Yahoo Search Engine, and OH, MY GOD!!!

A whole new world was presented to me. A world of people looking for each other because they were part of the adoption triad. Databases to register in and tons of information about people seaching. It overwhelmed me. I started shaking thinking about the implecations, thinking about the possibilities and I was also quite scared, because remember the "never ever" part was programmed in to my being.

For a couple of years, I tried not to obsess about it. I did a lot of soul searching during that time. Did I really want to find him? What if, what if, what if. Was I really prepared for the worst...would I find that he died?...would he be in jail?... would he be a codependant addict? would he reject me?...would I even be able to find him? I tried to process each of the worst case scenarios, all the while keeping, again, another secret. I didn't talk to anyone about my thought process. Just read and thought and read and thought.

Then one day, I took the first step. I registered on a couple of sites. Still clueless as to the process, taking stabs at what I thought a search might be. Depressed and frustrated because in my research I found that Pennslyvania had closed birth records for adoptees and the amended birth certificate was given to the adoptive parents, not the original one. So, I had no name, only a birthday and even that over the years I lost track of whether it was the 16th or 17th. Not much to go on at all. Pretty sad. So, I kind of gave up, seeing this huge task in front of me...the proverbial "needle in the hay stack".

So, now I had new things to dwell on. 24 years had gone by and low and behold I was now grappling with the idea of maybe, possibly searching and Holy Cow, maybe finding him. WOWOWOWOW and how frightfully scarey. I finally told my husband what I had discovered that a search is possible and to ease my heart, I had to figure out how to do it and find him.

During this phase, I also had another truth to deal with. I had never told Jesse that he had a brother. Many, many times during his life I had wanted to, but just didn't know how and was afraid of what he would think. The stigma of an unwed mother in the late 60's and early 70's still surrounded my psyche, even though in my heart I knew it was silly. I just couldn't bring myself to say the words to him. But, here it was 1998, the new millenium was getting close, ideals and morals had changed, so I took a deep breath and with my husband at my side, I told my son who had always thought he was the first and only son that he was not.

All my worry was for naught. Looking back now, I know why. We had raised Jesse not to be judgemental, and silly me, had I gotten past my own doubts and self imposed worries, and taken a step back, I would have realized that Jess is our son and he would have been accepting of us no matter what. He was very pragmatic about the whole thing and wished me luck in my search.

So, now my family knew my intentions. I just had to figure out how to go about this.