a name and phone number

#thirty

This week’s newsletter is a follow-up to one I wrote earlier this year about the recent revelations surrounding my adoption. If you want to read that, you can find it here.

About a month ago I sat on the back patio of Civil Coffee to write one of my newsletters. It was the first time I had written anywhere that wasn’t my apartment since the pandemic started and that particular day it was unusually humid for LA. Instead of writing, the weather put me in a mood to look up flights to New York for my trip in November and mess around with other tabs that I had been ignoring but was now paying attention to avoid writing.

As I was scrolling around I decided to do a check-in with my 23andme relatives to see if any new way of searching for my birth family came to mind. This time in particular I was able to track down a lot more information about different supposed first cousins and even found my way to a Facebook profile. Suddenly, I was locked in and nothing else mattered as I felt my fingers clicking closer and closer to possibly revealing who my birth parents are/were. Whatever was going on around me at that back patio was now on mute as I feverishly found myself searching possible family names from company websites, friend’s lists and even an obituary (and yes in the mayhem I signed up for a free trial of Ancestry.com and appropriately forgot all about it until my card was charged two weeks later).

I always knew I would eventually reach out to someone on there, but that day felt like it was time to get things in motion. There was no big event (except I did tell myself I would like to get the ball rolling by my birthday) that made me think “finally it’s time”- just a muggy patio and an avoidance of finishing a draft of my newsletter. The new task was now drafting The Message to send to the relative I deemed would be the one who would best give me the information I was looking for. She was my cousin (once removed) and she lived in New York and that’s truly all I needed for a sign.

I’ve wrote about this before but having to be the person who makes all the decisions regarding searching for you DNA has’t been ideal. I hate homework and I love procrastinating so I knew I had to delegate sending the actual message to a trusted, close friend. And so I sent a draft of the message along with my 23andme password to my friend and said to please send the message whenever, just don’t tell me when you do it.

Part of the reason I did this was because I’ve had to handle a lot of rejection in my life. I’m very well versed in the “sorry, you’re not a good fit for this” email reply and I don’t think I would be able to handle the ultimate rejection from the person who started this whole thing in the first place. I wanted a go-between person so that whenever that message was answered, I wasn’t the first person reading it and whatever blow was headed my way could be delivered to me by a close friend who knows me well.

I closed my laptop and left Civil, my shorts now covered in sweat from humidity and adrenaline. I got in my car and drove maybe 3 minutes before I burst into tears. This whole search was finally feeling more real now that a message was in motion. I honestly don’t think I could have ever pressed the send button but I knew this particular friend would send it no problem.

A few weeks later I got Covid for the second time and it was by far worse than my first round. It blew through me and on Day 3 a hurricane (tropical depression, but let us have it) hit Los Angeles. I was feeling notably better and almost fully back to my old self minus the fatigue so I was very on my phone that day. I sat on my bed, most likely scrolling Tiktok, when I got a text from my friend asking how I was feeling and then followed it up with “ Also I wanted to let you know that I sent your message on 23andme to your cousin a few days ago and got a response…”

I read and re-read that message maybe a dozen times. I put my phone down and did that thing where you stand up out of your bed but there’s nowhere for you to go. I drafted messages back to her in my head and read that message again to be sure that this was really happening and that my Covid brain wasn’t playing tricks on me. 

My initial reaction was to ask if the message was good or bad and if she could send me a screenshot of the message before releasing my 23andme password back to me. She said the message was good and then I got these messages.

I immediately knew I wasn’t ready for that at that moment. I needed a little more time before this person who I’ve thought about my entire life had a name. I just needed a second and my apartment also knew I needed a little break because the smoke detector started going off in my roommate’s room and he had just left to go for a walk in the hurricane. I rushed into his room to find no smoke which then made me panic that it was actually the Co2 monitor going off. I was able to shut it off and realized his fan was circling in the humid air from outside, which is probably what made the alarm go off. I took a huge breath and sat in a chair in my living room I never sit in and stared at my phone wondering if it was time to learn my birth mom’s name and/or was I also dying of carbon monoxide poisoning during a Los Angeles, California Hurricane. 

I went back to my room and started watching Below Deck: Down Under, put it down, opened Tiktok, put it down, and then walked outside for a second to watch the rain. I texted my adoptee friend in New York needing that instant surge of camaraderie that only me and a handful of other adoptees are able to share. I’m so lucky to know a few adoptees because this feeling can be so isolating. And people who aren’t adopted, love to think they know about adoption or the feelings surrounding it or the story they would like to see unfold. But I’m not a movie, I’m just a person trying to be alive.

A few hours later, I texted my friend telling her I was ready and to send over the message but with the identifying information blacked out. She sent it over and the message was very nice but I did feel my world beginning to collapse into a new reality as I read the words “your birth mother is my aunt, (name).” My whole life this search had always seemed impossible, too much, out of my bandwidth. I never thought I would ever have a name or a cousin with my DNA responding to my messages. It felt almost too casual, like when you ask someone how they know someone and they reply “oh yeah we went to college together.” My cousin went on to say that she has been in contact with my birth mom and that my birth mom asked to pass along her phone number. My birth mom has always only been my birth mom- but now she was an aunt, a phone number, and a name. 

I eventually caved and had my friend send me the whole message. I think getting the information bit by bit helped me to digest it the best way I could in that moment. I won’t share her name here but she does share a name with one of my best friends growing up, who I instantly texted. We use to stalk our crushes in high school and now we are using those skills to track down my family. 

And if it wasn’t that my own life had just been shaken up, my phone’s alert system started blaring a warning for an earthquake. I sat crossed legged on my bed glancing at this shake alert screeching from my phone telling me to take cover. I didn’t move an inch except to silence the alert that broke up my stream of birth mom detective texts with “did you feel an earthquake?” texts. I never feel them in Highland Park so I believed it was just a mistaken alert with the hurricane going on but it turns out, there really was an earthquake. So the day I found out my birth mom’s name was also the day I had Covid and LA had a hurricane and an earthquake. 

There is so much I want to tell her

A few weeks later it was my 37th birthday but my first birthday with a name. My first birthday with the knowledge that she knew I’m looking for her and we both exist to each other and aren’t some nebulous concept. I book ended my birthday with a flood of tears, for both being grateful to have this life and wondering what’s going to happen next. I haven’t sent a message. I haven’t even saved the number. I’m still raw and I could feel a weight on me from the moment I woke up on my birthday that no amount of birthday texts could shake. This was my first birthday where my deepest insecurities were being called to the ring through a phone number that also shared my area code. 

And through all of this, I think of my mom, the woman who raised me, the most. She called on a day leading up to my birthday to simply suggest I serve fruit at my birthday party. I welcomed this suggestion and had to choke back tears because I love her so much and sometimes feel like a failed daughter for living so far away. She called again a few days later to suggest another fruit and I wanted to hug those suggestions because they felt like something more tangible than just an item to add to a grocery list. In the past I might have been more callous and told my mom “I have it covered, okay!” reverting back to child rebellion of trying to prove to your parents that you got it and don’t need their help. But I let her parent me every moment that week, wanting to hold on to her for as long as possible being so proud to be given the chance to be her daughter and hoping she knew how deep my love for her was. 

It was an extremely emotional week and I am still taking it all in. I am still crying and I am still running scenarios. I feel outside of my body, like I’m telling someone’s else’s story waiting for them to give me the conclusion over drinks. I have shared this with many of my friends in person but throwing in a little nervous laugh to comfort them because of the gravity of the information. I am writing about it here because I’ve shared the first part of the story and now I am sharing maybe the middle? Who knows. I’m scared she’s reading it because she knows my name now. I’m nervous I’m putting too much weight on this and just need to rip the band-aid, but I can tell you for sure I have not regretted how long it’s taken me to get here.

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