I Have Three Great Daughters! A Letter from My Birthmother

Just two days after my birthmother, Irene, told my two half-sisters about me, she wrote me a letter. She sent it through the adoption agency, as we'd been doing all along.

"The good news is that, over Easter, I was able to be alone with our daughters and talk to them. I always knew we had great daughters. Now I know that I have three great daughters! Their first words were "Why didn't you tell us sooner?" So now we are all anxious to meet you." "They read your letters and copies of mine that I kept for them. They couldn't believe all the similarities. We laughed and cried and I am so relieved that they know the whole story now."

"Kate, we have so much catching-up to do. Everything has happened so quickly. After believing I would never see you again, it is so hard to realize that it is now a real possibility."

I wrote her back a couple of weeks later.

"I'm so happy that Peggy and Susan (now I know their names!) are accepting and supportive of this situation. I somehow thought that they would be. It must have taken a lot of courage to tell them, and that must have been hard. I will think of you the next time I think that I'm in a difficult situation. I'm really looking forward to meeting all of you too!"

"I laughed when I read that you, Peggy and Susan love to hang your laundry out. I've been doing that since I was a teenager. No one else in my family does it, but I love the smell too. When Justin (my son) was very little he used to say "Oh goody, crunchy towels!" He loved the way they felt and knew that they were brand new clean. I imagine we'll keep finding odd little similarities like this."

"We do have tons of catching up to do, but I'm really enjoying it. I am also amazed at how fast things have happened, after having dreamed of this for so long. I find that I have to stop and think about each step of the process, absorb it, and accept it emotionally. Each letter from you is such a gift. I can't thank you enough for being so strong. I'm so grateful to Leslie (at The Lund Home) for facilitating everything, she's really wonderful."

And off my letter went on its journey up to Vermont from Massachusetts to be put in a new envelope and addressed to Irene in Pennsylvania.