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My wife's long lost side of the family...
Posted by Agit8r • 9/16/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: long lost family members, social networking
The other day, my mother-in-law stumbled upon my wife's biological father via a social networking site. Now my wife has been talking on the phone with him, and discovering cousins aunts, etc.
Anyone else have a similar story?
User Comments
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Geeze! I thought I would at least have gotten some heartwrenching account of being forced to serve as a comfort-aardvark to a throng of rabid Welch football fanatics! o_0
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Once upon a time, back before my de-aardvarking operation...
Wait, no. Nevermind.
It WAS sort of funny in high school, I had a friend who was in a number of my classes. He and I got along really well, and we hung out a lot with one other mutual friend.
We both knew our families had immigrated from Sweden in the early 1900s. But a funny thing happened when my Great Aunt Clara died.
HIS Great Aunt Clara died, too.
Having discussions with our respective families, we found out we were second cousins.
Which was funny and entertaining for us, though rather weird for our mutual friend to digest.-
wow. That is super coincidental. By friends, you mean you were just friends, right? -
Just friends. Nothing out of Deliverance or anything.
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haha:)
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Found my Grandad's younger brother and sister on facebook, we lost touch after Grandad died.
One lives in Australia, the other in Canada, so now I have lots of second cousins all over the place
Australian ones are coming over next year and we are all meeting up in Ireland, then I will be visiting Canadian ones the year after. -
I do genealogy.
In 1911 my ggrandmother died in childbirth. Her husband, illiterate and a hard-drinking man, gave the baby to a neighbouring family for adoption and farmed out the other kids to relatives. They never knew what became of their baby brother, but his name and story was passed down to me by my grandmother.
Through genealogy research and the internet I have met several cousins I didn't know I had (2nd and 3rd cousins, mostly) and I passed the information along to them. Earlier this year, my great uncle was found!! 98 years old and still spry and with all his marbles! All of his siblings have passed on, but he still has at least one nephew alive (my dad) and a heap of grandnieces and nephews, and now I have a whole passel of new cousins!
Ain't the internet a grand thing?-
well that is neat/bittersweet
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Here is a real Oprah story that happens to be true:
My sister became pregnant out of wedlock as a young teen and rather than have an abortion, she opted to carry it, give birth then give him up for adoption. For twenty years she carried a burden that gave her tremendous heartache. Often times you could sense a sadness, longing and uneasiness about her but she never discussed it. That was not until about eighteen years after she gave him up for adoption. One night during a heart to heart talk she revealed that she had thought about him every day for those eighteen years and now that he was old enough to legally search and or contact his biological parents, would he be interested in knowing. Would his adoptive parents have told him the truth or kept it a secret. Should she try to reach out to find him. To find out whether or not he survived those long painful eighteen years (for her)or whether something had happened to him. Did he have nice parents, were the parents still alive, was he normal, did he suffer any serious illness or injury? Who was he? Would she recognize him? What did he look like? So many questions for a sweet, kind, gentle woman who, do to unfortunate circumstances, made a choice that she came to regret for nearly twenty years that affected her life on a daily basis. After the discussion I had suggested that she should seek him out and at least put it out there. Perhaps he was just as interested in finding her and getting answers as much as she was. She was worried that he would not want to see her or know she existed and that would be even more devastating to her. Over two more years of unknowing and angst went by, she finally married and after a little more prodding by her husband she decided to take the plunge and search the Adoption.com website. Within 5 minutes she discovered a post by a young 21 year old kid that was currently away for his final semester studying in Italy who would then be graduating from Penn State University in the spring. As soon as she began reading the post she got chills all through her body and she knew right then and there that this post was from her son. He had placed the posting on Adoption.com only a few months before that and had given a synopsis of himself with a long heart felt letter reaching out to his birth parents. He was interested in finding his birth mother and father to know more about his heritage, health issues, who they were and what they were about etc. Well, then she became overwhelmed experiencing an array of emotions up and down the scale of happiness, excitement, relief, nervousness..you name it..she felt it. Now the question was, should she respond to the post? What would she say? What if it wasn't him? etc. I spoke to her either that day or the next and she told me what had happened. I was psyched as hell for her and said, Hell yes!! respond to that post. Her husband agreed and after she took a few days to collect herself she did respond. A few days later she got an email back from this young gentleman....let me cut to the chase...the bottom line...it was her son, he dearly wanted to meet her and get to know her. They met a few months later when he returned from Italy. That was about 6 years ago. He has since become part of our family along with his adoptive parents. They get together with us often and he has taken several trips with my sister and they talk all the time. He loves his adoptive parents and my sister just the same. What's wrong with having two mom's or dad's? We're all one big family now and it is great to have him back in our lives. Unbelievable, after 21 years it took her 5 min. to find her son. A powerful and moving story that also shows the tremendous powerful benefit of the internet in an everyday persons life. Good stuff. -
oh! that's nice. For some reason, I was thinking "travelocity gnome meets the Flamingo Family"
Someone I used to know back in highschool "friended" me on LinkedIn and Facebook, but I just ignored the request .. oblivious is sometimes better
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