My wife was an infant adoption. She was raised in an upper upper middle class family and had a healthy relationship with her family. She has a brother 15 years older than her and a sister 10 years older.
When we received the news that we were going to be grandparents I started the search for my wife’s bio family. My daughter-in-law’s family has a genetically linked fatal neurological syndrome that could rear it’s ugly head if it were on our side of the family as well.
At about the same time we found my wife’s adoption papers that named her birth mother (not father). So I had a location, date and name.
I started with Ancestry.com to search. I found a yearbook photo of a woman with that name, the right age, the right part of the country and a resemblance to my wife. Her tag line under her picture was “I’m from the South, y’all.”
My wife did the 23 & Me thing and found out that she had over 1,400 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins in their system. Most of them were in North Carolina (my wife was born in Illinois).
I started searching Facebook and came up with three women who were the right age with the right name. I messaged each of them asking if they were the so and so who went to XYZ high school. Two months later one responded that she was.
After a series of messages back and forth it was determined that she was my wife’s bio mom. She had been born in NC, but her family moved to IL when she was a teen. My wife had a full sister and two nieces. Her bio father had remarried a couple of times and I think she is up to 4 half-siblings.
Both families started friending each other on Facebook, sharing stories and photos.
We found out that my wife’s bio sister was about to celebrate her 50th birthday on a cruise with friends and family. We asked the nieces if it would be okay to go on the cruise and surprise her. My wife got to meet her sister in a very happy moment.
About a year later we were able to fly her sister and mom to us for an extended visit. More happy tears.
The only shadow on the whole thing is the reaction of my wife’s sister - the one she grew up with. We have attempted to assure her that she is not being replaced, but she has issues and gives my wife grief about her “new family” all the time.
That is a fascinating story, and seems to be mostly happy endings. Thanks for sharing.