Ready for some happy news?
Gather round, for your Aunty Judianna has a story about high school, the amazement of the internet, Wyatt Earp, the magic of science, the wonders of modern medicine, the power of love and the miracle of all things working together in a divine plan. /1

Once upon a time, many decades ago, I was a nubile young high schooler. Perhaps a little too nubile. In May of 1974, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. My puritanical father ordered me to give her up for adoption. I was 17, terrified, and had no place to go, so I relented. /2

Every May on her birthday, I’d go quietly crazy not knowing if she lived, if she was happy, if the Catholic adoption agency summoned by my dad had kept their promise to place her with a wonderful family that could give her everything I could not. Did she hate me? /3

Did she cry because she thought I didn’t love her and threw her away?
As most of you know, I’m one of the premiere skip tracers on the planet. I can find anyone anywhere. But I never believed I had the right to look for her. /4

Back in those days some people never told their kids they were adopted. I certainly wasn’t going to show up on her doorstep saying “guess who?”  I never stopped loving and missing her. Always felt guilty that I didn’t fight harder to keep her /5

but in retrospect, she’d have had a pretty rough start with an idiot 17 year old living under a bridge or something. 
So I did the next best thing. I registered with every adoption reunion site I could find - first by mail and then, when it was invented, on the internet. /6

Decades went by. No contact. 
I was never able to have more children. 
Back in 2004, (17 years ago) my late husband and I got little Mr. Wyatt Earp - who just happened to be born on ... the same day in May as my little girl. /7

So at least I had a birthday I could celebrate each year and that made that date a somewhat happier one. 

As a skip-tracer, some of my saddest cases were those that I had to inform my client that the birth mother they were searching for had passed away prior to their search. /8

Their anguish was palpable. And, as JudiannaWatchers know, yours lovable truly damn near died last year. Which brings us to New Years Day. I went to bed on NYE a widow and an orphan - and on New Years Day, I got a message on one of the adoption sites I was registered with. /9

My daughter found me. 
I’m a mother. A mother-in-law. And I have three handsome grandsons. On the year of his 17th birthday, little Mr. Wyatt Earp has started a new heart medicine and he will be able to meet the little girl I relinquished in MY 17th year. /10

In addition to your prayers, I truly believe that one of the reasons I survived 2020 was so that my daughter could meet me. /11

One more postscript - she told me that they kept her in the hospital for weeks after she was born. They said she had a heart murmur. (Aack!) She’s been checked and re-checked. Her heart is fine. /12

She thinks it was that her heart was broken and angry that she was taken from me - and I have vivid memories of her screaming at the top of her lungs when they ripped her from my arms. /13

I was begging for them to give her back to me, told them I’d changed my mind - but the nurse just walked out of the room with her (& me) crying and took her out of my life for what I thought was forever. 
My new forever just started. /14

Just thought we all could use a little happy news these days. Thanks for reading. /End