Meeting my Birth mother, a thread

So here’s a little backstory for the live tweet. I was adopted at birth. My birth mother wasn’t in a good place emotionally to raise a child and so she placed me for adoption. That’s the cliff notes. For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to track her down. I managed to do so

But not before finding about 4 different women who could have been my mother. The first two were wild guesses, and only barely fit the profile of who I was looking for. The third was a bit more informed, but still wrong. She was the wrong age and had several kids older than me.

The fourth one was the one that had me convinced. She had the same name that was listed on my adoption records, and, according to public records, had been in Asheville (where I was born) at the time that I was born. This one had me excited. But her age wasn’t listed anywhere

The age is the really important part, because as it turns out, the woman I had found, who lived in San Diego, was in fact not my birth mother, but my birth mother’s mother, who tried to claim my birth mother on her taxes, and thus my birth mothers name was listed as a dependent

That had me extremely frustrated. Because, and I found this out later, my birth mother had cut ties with her mother almost 10 years ago, and had cut ties with her. What it looked like to me, was that my birth mother filed taxes in San Diego and then disappeared. I was wrong

I completely forgot about the possibility that my Birth Mother could have gotten married in the last 19 years. Something I should have thought about sooner, because, as it turns out. She had gotten married. And changed her name. I was tracking down the wrong person.

So, I went back through a couple of documents from my adoption, and found two very important pieces of information. One, a phone number for my birth mothers emergency contact at the time, her aunt. And two, documentation of people who had met with the adoption agency.

The latter turned out to be the key in the puzzle, as it listed a close male friend that had visited my birth mother in the hospital almost every day since she was admitted. The agency wanted to know if he was the father.

He was not, but it got me thinking. “What kind of male friend would visit a pregnant woman in the hospital nearly every day for two weeks?” Someone who was more than I friend. So, being the absolute cyber stalker I am, I looked up his name.

At first, I only found articles about a murder in Florida. But then I found a Knoxville yelp review. It was for a restaurant run by someone who fit the bill to be this friend. So I looked up his name on Facebook, and narrowed the search to Knoxville. There were two results.

One was a “have you seen...” page for the murder suspect from Florida, the other was someone who was married to someone with the same first and second name as my birth Mother. So I went to her page... the resemblance was unmistakable. It had to be her. So I sent her a message.

And I got a response. And that’s how I found my birth mother. One of the weirdest experiences of my life to be sure. And I’m meeting her tomorrow. And it will all be on this thread... I can’t sleep. This is wild