I have always known that I was adopted, and I was brought up an only child. When I was 15, I was rebellious, and opened my adoption papers, and saw my birthmom's name, Charlene Plough. I kept the name in the back of my mind.

When I was 25, I had given birth to my first son. As I was reading his birth announcement, which was late getting into our local paper since he was born in a neighboring town, next to the birth announcements were the obituaries. I saw a Henry
Plough, and read that he had four children, one of them named Charlene Simms, and I knew it was her!! She lived in a town about four hours away. Among her siblings, she had a sister named Catherine. I thought how cool, I have an aunt with the same name as me!! When I was 33,(1999), I finally got the guts to contact her, after being prodded by one of my friends, since I was happy with my life, and had no desire to find my bio-family.

I found out some surprising news, Charlene was not my bio-mom, Catherine was!!! She had used her sister's name to give birth to me because of some extenuating circumstances! I also found out at that time I had 6 more siblings! I flew to meet
my bio-mom and siblings, and during that visit, I found out I had another sibling that was also given up for adoption.

In 2000, I contacted him, and we all met that summer! Even though I live across the country from them, we still keep in contact. I would not discourage anyone from contacting their birthparents, but I would advise people to be prepared for negative as well as positive reactions, because all reunions are not as happy as mine was! There are many more details to my story, but that is the jist of it! Thank you for
the opportunity to share!

(I did change a name just in case!)

Credits: Kathy Butler