I can't remember the moment that I first decided to search, I know that our youngest daughter at the time, was still an infant, maybe only about 3 months old. We had gotten our first computer and slow does not even begin to describe the speed that this thing rang at. I started to search where most people do, on the Internet. I found thousands and I do mean thousands of web sites that you could post your search information (your date of birth, place of birth ect) and I posted it everywhere. In the beginning I didn't tell mom that I had begun to search for a couple of different reasons but the main one is because a couple of years before my oldest sister searched for her biological parents and when she found them, she wrote a horrid letter to mom that nearly devastated her and I swore that I would never do that to her.

In any event, I searched the net for what seemed like months. In the meantime, my husband's job took us all over the United States. He worked as a decontamination technician for nuclear plants across the country. We were in Columbus, Ohio when I made the phone call that would change my life. I called Lutheran Social Services, the agency that I adopted through and contacted a "search consultant".

I had heard of many different horror stories when it came to searching but my experience with Lutheran Social Services was very rewarding. They sent me papers to fill out and sign. Once I got them, I kind of put it off. Once I saw the papers it was like it made everything seem too real and too many bad memories came back. I wouldn't get the papers back out again until we were in West Memphis, Arkansas when I finally filled them all out and mailed them in. We moved from there back home to Missouri and then left on another job a few months later. I hadn't had any contact with the agency since Ohio and had decided to call them up.

Judy, the searcher, informed me that they had gotten all my non-identifying information, so I had her send it me in Arkansas. It was very enlightening to see my "mothers" signature on the papers, but the hardest part for me was reading the transcripts of the adoption proceedings. It was really hard to read the part where she gave her consent to take me away. But it was also somewhat comforting to read about the rest of my family, aunt's, uncles, grandparents and the like. I finally felt like I new where I came from. I think that I would have been happy with that information alone but later on that same week Judy called me back and told me she had located my biological "mother" and had talked to her. We were getting ready to leave for home in the next few days so I told her to send the papers to my house in Missouri but she gave me her name and phone number and told me that she would call my bio "mother" and tell her the situation. It took us a few more days than we thought it would to get home and get things back in order, but within the week Damon and I went to a pay phone and called my "biological" mother on the phone.

I would learn that she had married my biological father and they had three more children after I was placed for adoption. The one thing that I remember telling my husband is that the only thing that I don't think I could ever forgive is if she married my father and they had more kids after they'd given me up. Low and behold, that's exactly what happened. Anyway, we talked alot on the phone and a part of me felt like I'd known her all of my life, it didn't seem as though she was someone I had just met.

We sent pictures back and forth and talked for months before they made the long trip from Wisconsin to Missouri. I met my sister, my "mother" and my dad for the first time and it was a time that I will never forget.

Over the next six years we grew as a family. We made a trip up to Wisconsin where I met my grandmother on both sides and my grandfather on my dads side. I met all the aunts and uncles and even people that I had no relation to but had always known about me. We had our fights, my sister and I, my "mother" and I, but somehow we always made it back together. It was a long hard road to travel but we traveled it together. She swore that she would never leave me again, that she would always be there and that I could always count on her. I believed her which was a serious mistake on my part, a mistake that would nearly cost me my life years later.