Finally Finding My Mother

After decades of searching, I met my mom and began an amazing new chapter

Some days feel like fairy tales.

The day each of my kids was born. The day I married my best friend. And the day I finally met my mom.

This day, August 14, 2022, was the culmination of twenty years of looking for my biological mom after first commenting in an adoptee forum (now defunct) in August 2002.

I was adopted in a closed adoption in South Carolina in 1989. In closed, adoptions, adoptees have virtually no rights to the information contained in our original birth certificate, including the names of our parents.

I always wanted to know more, and the birth of the internet gave me new hope. When the first adoption forum for South Carolinians appeared on the web in 2002, I was one of the first to create a profile.

I made a post: “Adoptee seeking birth parents” and the search began.

Through those twenty years, I searched public records, did deep dives into the social media profiles of people who had my original surname, and dug through microfiche at public libraries, finding dead end after dead end after dead end.

To say it was very frustrating would be a gross understatement.

I’d typically get buried in it, twenty-plus tabs open on my browser, before I’d get too frustrated, sigh, shut my laptop, and shelve it for another day.

I had papers in a folder full of scribblings with dozens of names, leads, and hints, all of which ended in disappointment.

I really began to believe that I would never find my family.

My life over those twenty years was a busy adventure. I served four years in the military and went on to own my own business. I raised three children, largely alone, and then had a fourth. I moved many many times, for better jobs, better schools, and a better life. I married… and divorced.. and remarried.

I had a distant and then non-existent relationship with my adoptive parents. I went to a total of seven different therapists untangling the abuses of my childhood and slowly shifting my behaviors and mindset to provide a better and more healthy future for my own children.

And I lay in bed more times than I could possibly count, wondering and wishing for a relationship with my real family because anything would be better than the ‘family’ I had, right?

Sometimes people would be supportive of my search, and sometimes they would chide me and tell me to “let it go” and that it would be more productive to reconnect with my adoptive parents and ‘restore’ that relationship.

People who never stepped foot in my childhood home and had no clue about the abuses I endured within it would condescendingly tell me how to live my life and admonish me for cutting contact with the people who facilitated and actively engaged in my abuses.

Because of this, sometimes a year or two would go by between my searches. I would begin to internalize this idea that finding my family was impossible and that I should let it go, but the driving desire inside me to know my real roots was too powerful. I always came back to the search.

I finally found the identity of my father in the fall of 2020. The pandemic was in full effect, and once I found his name, I began earnestly searching for some contact information. I ended up finding some cousins on Facebook, and one of them gave me my father’s phone number. I tried calling it once and got the voicemail.

I didn’t leave a message.

I had no idea what to say!

He was living in a senior rehabilitative facility after having a stroke, from what I was told, and when I called the office for the facility, they told me they really were not accepting new visitors due to Covid restrictions. The facility was also a nearly eight-hour drive from where we lived.

I was already struggling with postpartum depression after having my youngest child and then coping with a global pandemic, having all of our children home, doing school virtually, struggling with their own mental health issues… I thought of my father daily but couldn’t find the mental and emotional space to carve out time to keep trying him on the phone and have a conversation with him.

I told myself and my husband that we would drive down as soon as the pandemic restrictions lifted. I started making some loose plans, hoping the restrictions lifted soon so I could solidify some dates.

But I waited just a little too long.

On April 26, 2021, my father, Donald Lee Howard, slipped from this plane. I never heard his voice. I never met him.

The loss of my father caused me to spiral into the deepest depression of my life. For the first time, I was unable to pull myself out of this dark hole. PPD, “pandemic blues”, and the shock of losing my father before I was ever able to meet him was all too much.

There were days on end I could barely drag myself off the couch. The ongoing pain was indescribable. I contemplated the unspeakable… more than once.

I felt hopeless, and I had never been hopeless.

Nineteen years of searching was just up in smoke, gone, as none of my father’s side of the family knew where my mother was. They weren’t even sure if she had the same last name. Searches for her name turned up nothing.

I had reached my worst dead end yet.

Once again, with a mighty effort, I put aside the search. I had to get better. I began walking, journaling, meditating, and taking antidepressants for the first time in my life. For some odd reason, taking pharmaceutical relief felt a little like giving up. I couldn’t white-knuckle my way through this one- it was too great for me.

I turned inward and began nourishing myself and caring for myself in a way I never had before. I was (and still am) in a very supportive relationship. My husband was consistently not only supportive of me by being an equal partner in caring for our baby and also being a really great stepdad to my older kids, he buoyed my spirits countless times as he gave me the space to process this hurt and do the healing I needed to just get back on my feet.

He gave me, for the first time, unconditional love at the very moment I needed it the absolute most.

He saved my life.

Slowly the darkness began to lift and I found my footing once again. And after the storm clouds cleared, the drive was still there… the desire to find my roots. I did finally have my mother’s name. Surely there was some way I could find her because, thankfully, the one thing I hadn’t found with her name was an obituary. There was hope, and time, yet. I began researching private investigators.

One day, I opened my laptop and began searching once more. This time, the stars aligned, and like a magical scene from a Disney movie, everything gently and perfectly fell into place. In my hushed bedroom lit only by the glow of my screen, the final piece quietly dropped into my inbox. I had an address.

I had found her.

My other main source of support and assistance during the last year of this search was my best friend, Teri. When I finally located my mom and got the address, Teri jumped into action, offering me a bed at her home, which was only a little over an hour from my mother’s current address, so I could come down and stay while I went out to meet her. She then followed me and videoed the moment we first saw one another, embraced, and reunited after 38 years apart.

I don’t think I could have mentally managed the logistics of travel with the enormity of the mission of my trip, and I certainly wasn’t in a mindset to take photos. These photos were taken by Teri and are some of the most precious photos of my life.

Words can’t describe what it felt like to see my mother’s eyes and her smile, and to finally embrace the woman who gave me life. To have my son with me and watch them embrace me was almost too much. We both shed a lot of tears. The depth of healing that happened at that moment was indescribable.

A twenty-year journey was finally over, and the birth of a new relationship was finally beginning.

A few short months after meeting Mom, I asked if she would like to live with us. After losing almost four decades with her, I didn’t want to lose another day. On Thanksgiving weekend, she moved to Virginia with us.

My mother’s story is hers to tell, but she finally has her own kids and grandkids to love (and spoil). She has gone to the theater, museums, amusement parks, and elegant restaurants; she has taken her first walk on the beach and her first dip into the ocean. It would seem this reunion has opened up a whole new world to her, as well.

My story is proof that magic does still exist, and with enough perseverance and commitment, anything is possible. It’s proof that when your ancestors keep calling to you, listen and answer them. They are trying to guide you home.

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you like my content, please consider subscribing… click here and follow along as I explore the themes of parenting, political ideologies, religious deconstruction, life as an adoptee, and LGBT allyship and family.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee? Or further, become a member for exclusive content and more!