Finally.

I cannot recall how old I was when I first knew. I remember sitting with my mother, I believe in the spare bedroom of the house we lived in at the time, and her telling me... you're special. We chose you. We couldn't have children so we prayed and waited and searched and hope and we chose you. An adopted child. It has always been my identity. When I would look at my adoptive family and see that I was big boned, pale, blonde and my adoptive mother's family was olive-skinned, dark, small and my adoptive father's side, while closer in appearance was still so very different, that blank was filled with ???. And ??? was the great unknown of the birth family I had out there somewhere. It was the missing puzzle piece. Life shaped me. My family raised me and was loving and left their fingerprints in my clay, but the chemical makeup of that clay was the one thing they could not contribute to. It was something I always wanted to know. Needed to understand. It was the missing link in my personal 'who am I?' I was born and adopted in Missouri, a very closed adoption state, through Catholic Charities in St. Louis. When I was in my early 20s my stepmother and my adoptive father gifted me a detailed report from them that showed what percentage of drugs were used during the labor, some of the believed racial genetics that made up my family, a history of scoliosis and leukemia and that my birth grandmother on my birthmother's side had died when she was young, and when all the other family members around them had died. It was astounding how much, and yet still how little, it told me. It even listed every time that my birth parents had come in to inquire about me, to leave details. It mentioned my birthmother coming and saying she was married and having a baby, and my birthfather years later coming in to pass along that he had a rocky mental health and had been in institutions and wanted it to be known just in case it could be pertinent to helping me ever. It let me know they had come looking at some point. Prior to that report, in the late 90s I joined a grassroots organization called the Open Missouri 2000. Their goal was to have Missouri adoption records open to adoptees by 2000. This state is still closed so I know that has never been achieved, but I hope they have had some impact in helping people since my time with them. I made my own online forum and webring, back when those were still a thing, reached out and left information on adoption.com and at ISRR. And eventually, my fire faded and dimmed and I stopped being so proactive as life threw other setbacks at me that I needed to handle. I never stopped hoping. In 2011, I worked at a call center. We weren't allowed to have our phones out, but we would still sneak peeks. Facebook wasn't quite as big for contact then as it is now, but I noticed I had an alert to a message and figured I'd check it on break as we were busy. Then a coworker, who I was Facebook friends with, told me she had received a message asking her to tell me to check my messages. "I know who your mother is. I am your sister and I have been looking for you for 10 years. I hope you're still interested in finding her." I saw that opening line to a paragraph of information and then I couldn't see. I saw dots dancing in my vision, put my phone on away and ran to the break room thinking, "I have to call her. I need to reach out. She left a phone number. I have to call her." But my ears were ringing and I was shaking. So I ran to the bathroom for privacy and called my adoptive father, woke him up in bed and started bawling. I picked him first because it was late and because I knew my adoptive mother had always seemed to show a fear that I would replace her because of my searching. He just laughed off my concerns in his sleepy state and clearly wanted to go back to bed, too asleep to really understand why I was freaked out. So I went to my boss and got permission for a break, probably confused the man because I was crying almost too hard to speak. And then I called her. She had found out about me when she was younger but my birth mother would never talk when asked, told her not to question her, and shut her out. My birth mother was afraid that I wouldn't want to know her. That my family wouldn't have told me I was adopted or that they wouldn't want her back in my life. Years later she had told my younger half-sister, and had given her my birthday. It was that night. My younger half-sister went to my older, gave her the date and she searched and found me here on adoption.com on a profile so old from the 90s that I had long lost the email account tied to it. But it had my name. And my name is uncommon. She loves to retell the story of how she looked me up on facebook and went, voiceless, to try and call for our younger half-sister up the stairs who was helping her babysit her children. She got her downstairs and pointed at my profile picture. They saw our mother in that photo. In my face. I got permission to take a break from my job for a long weekend and went to stay with my adoptive aunt in St. Louis and she dropped me off at a restaurant to open a whole new chapter in my life. I see my face looking back at me when I talk to my birth mother. No one else understands how confusing and new it is, even now after six years. It makes my heart race. And she and I both cry because when I was little An American Tale was the hit movie and when I would watch it, when she would watch it, we'd both go outside afterwards and think... 'somewhere out there... maybe they are looking at this same moon right now.' Fievel is our bond. She confessed once to my older half-sister that on my birthday she would retreat from them all, would curl up somewhere, and would cry. And now every year on my birthday I reach out to her and thank her for being amazing and I remind her... you don't have to cry today. We never have to cry again. But of course we do. At least now they are tears of happiness. And for the record, my adoptive mother called me after I had first met them all and told me... 'I am so happy for you right now. Don't you worry about me,' and then she started crying and said, 'After I lost my mother, all I had was my sister. So whenever you lose me, I'm so happy to know you have sisters and another mother, that you have people there. I'm happy for you.' So thank you, adoption.com, for unlocking the great ???. I know I didn't mention much about my birth father here. I know who he is now and his new wife doesn't want their family to know about me, so that's not as pleasant but it's still an answer. It was a key in the lock and adoption.com helped fit the two together. To all you who are hoping and waiting, watch the moon. Maybe you have someone out there who is watching it too. I wish every one of you the very best in your searches.