I was 5 years old when my parents told me I was adopted. They said my 'natural mother' couldn't keep me. A local doctor knew my parents wanted another child. He also knew a woman who couldn't keep her baby. My birthmother's only request was to have her child placed with a Catholic, Italian family. My adoptive parents fit this description. I came home with them when I was 4 days old. I remember feeling confused and upset about this news, and very different. I wondered who these people were, and where 'my' mother was. I felt independent and alone with this family who wanted to 'make' me theirs. I tried with all I had to be one of them, wanting nothing more than to fit in. My parents, brother (their biological son) and other relatives loved me as their own, but I was different - and I noticed.

I am hot headed, stubborn and impatient, while my adopted family is calm, relaxed and always in control. I am silly and not very serious; they are analytical and always think things through. The list goes on and on. My brother looks in the mirror and sees his parent's images; I see only my reflection. I wanted and needed to know, 'Who am I?' As I got older, I toyed with the idea of searching. I was told my birthmother gave me away out of love and her life had gone on. I was someone else's now. I had no right, she had no right, to search.

At the age of 39, I finally had the courage to search. I had to find the answers. I joined PACES and finally started to talk about adoption. These people understood me. I saw, for the first time, the birthmother's side of things; her feelings and longings. I was amazed that our feelings were very much the same.

I started to search in September of 1998. I was lucky in that I had my birthfamily's last names. I poured over birth records, old phone books and probate files until, through a lucky find of my birthmom's first initial, I found my family in March, 1999.

My birthmother Patricia had passed away almost 3 years to the day I found. Instead, I found her sister, my aunt. I called my aunt that March and asked if she had a sister named Patricia who couldn't keep her child. She gently filled in the pieces. I had a connection. My mother wanted to keep me but in 1959, unwed mothers where unheard of. Her father insisted I be placed for adoption, and my mother was hidden away until my birth. She was devastated. She tried to run away, but her mother pleaded with he to stay, hoping everything would work out. But in the end, I was placed for adoption and my mother was told to go on with her life. She was told she would forget, have other children, and that she had no more right to disrupt the life of the child she gave up. My mother married shortly after my birth, and did have another child. To my shock, I had a sister.