An article at NorthJersey.com, titled A Birth Mother’s Priceless gift to an Adoptee on December 27 2006 piqued my interest.

I was attracted to the article because the freelance writer of the article, Carol Barbieri, is an adoptee who also found a grave at the end of her search. The difference between her story and my own personal story is that I was 15 months too late, she was 10 years too late. The writers natural mother committed suicide where my natural mother ignored all the early warning signs of cervical cancer until they couldn’t be ignored any longer. In essence, committing suicide herself just in a different manner.

The author of the article has assumed that by the number of times her natural mother changed her name and address over the years she didn’t want to be found. She had to follow the paper trail to piece her history together. While piecing together various documents she had an old arrest report that she learned her natural mother gave her a priceless gift which was the names of her other children.

The author is also a twin and raised with her twin sister. Being adopted they had wondered if there were “more” out there somewhere but since they were adopted they figured it would be impossible to find out since they no only didn’t know their own names but the didn’t know the names of any brother or sisters they might have.

With the information from the arrest report the author and her twin sister were able to locate and reunite with a sister who lived just a few blocks away, a sister and brother currently living in the same town and their houses were off the same highway two traffic lights apart.

The assumption of the authors natural mother not wanting to be found proved to be true and learned that from the youngest sister who by the way was the only one out of seven who grew up with the natural mother and she shared that the natural mother “fought hard to keep us apart”. This sibling believes it was to protect herself and that the natural mother didn’t want the other children to know about the mistakes she made.