story and photos by Jill Anderson
I
I never gave the other women much consideration. Never thought about them missing out on important life events, or how they felt over the years. All I knew was I had two new brothers in addition to my older brother. Instead of bringing my younger brothers home from the hospital, we brought them home from an adoption agency. My parents, however, did think of those mothers who had courageously and selflessly given up their child for adoption, in hopes of a better life for them. Occasionally, as my brothers got older, they too thought of their birth parents. But it wasn’t until this past year that my brother, Mike, actually did something about it. He, along with his wife, Stephanie, started the process of locating his birth mother. With our parent’s blessing, Mike contacted the agency where he was adopted and was given a wealth of information as to what to expect; the very realistic chance of never finding his birth mother, the chance of rejection and the possibilities of hearing a truth Mike might not want to hear. But Mike and Stephanie pushed on. When they got word it could take months, Stephanie tried a different approach. They went through the Minnesota Department of Health which gave them Mike’s birth mother’s name (only because she had gone through the work to allow it). Then Stephanie got busy on the computer. Says Mike, “Within an hour she had information on my birth mother and possible birth siblings!” Mike was amazed at the endless information the Internet provided. Stephanie had located Mike’s birth mother, Connie, in the White Pages and under Intellus she found Mike’s birth brother listed. Without thinking, Mike picked up the phone and called the number listed and in no time at all was talking to a birth brother who, thankfully, had been told of Mike’s birth 45 years earlier. Mike was lucky; many birth mothers keep the secret from their family. In Mike’s case, Connie told her children back in 1995 of his birth, the same year she contacted the Department of Health to put her name on his birth certificate in case Mike ever tried to locate her. That pivotal phone call to his birth brother set things in motion. 28
Jill Anderson’s brother at his first reunion with his adopted mother, (left) Bunny and his birth mother, Connie. Pg. 29 - Jill growing up with brothers (left to right) Matt, Chris, Mike.
SPRING 2012 | her voice
HerVoiceSpring2012.indd 28
2/3/12 12:04 PM