Happy Reunionversary: 9 Things I've Learned in 5 Years of Reunion
My necklace of our matching pair. I had already known my original mother's name for several months before we reunited. As is the practice in my birth state, most adoptees can have their original birth certificates and know their mother's name using the established government channel. We are forbidden to reach out on our own as the civil and criminal legal consequences of doing so are thoroughly explained and signed off on before our records are unsealed. My mother, my first mother, had given me permission to see my original birth certificate. I received a copy of her handwritten permission letter addressed to the Department of Children's Services. I traced my index finger along the curly writing imagining that she must be so nice. Saturday marked the 5th anniversary of the first time I heard my mother's voice since infancy. Our "reunionversary" was something that took me a year to put into words . In the past four years, I haven't written much