For the last 16 years, I have searched high and low for my wife's natural mother. To keep the suspense to a minimum, we found her! There were a lot of twists and turns, but somehow I was determined to "right" what I considered a terrible "wrong" on the part of many people -- the state of Florida (whose officials failed to do their homework by not verifying the birth mother's information and keeping faulty records), the natural mother, lawyers, doctors, hospital workers, and others. My wife's mother gave the hospital a fictitious name in 1958, which made the search seem impossible until I got a lead that offered just enough to turn the tables. I also owe a tremendous amount to a private investigator whose commitment to this search was inspiring. The investigator was from Kinsolving, and they were worth the money, because they worked as a team with me to the very end, and then even after my wife made the call of a lifetime.

We have yet to arrange for a personal reunion, but the phone call was warm and accepting. Few people outside of the adoption ring can understand the tremendous emotional upheaval associated with this Medieval system that denies adults their most basic rights to happiness.

My message to the readers out there is to keep hope alive, because it is indeed possible to get to the truth. We didn't even have a name to begin with, which is the most difficult situation to be in, yet we eventually met with success. Now my wife knows her heritage, her ethnicity, and more about herself than ever before. When you finally get to the point wherein you get a name, there is so much you can do online these days that took so much more work in the past! Good luck to everyone. Never give up hope. It is more painful, in my opinion, not to know the truth than to find even the ugliest truths. In our case, however, the truth has set my wife free.

Dr. Vic Shayne
Boulder, Colorado