How I Met My Sisters

A Thanksgiving Miracle

Sisters. I always knew I had Sisters. It was just a Knowing. But I didn’t actually know until exactly seven years ago tomorrow, the Monday after Thanksgiving. 

I was in the midst of an ugly divorce. It is an interesting thing, our system. When a woman needs to leave. Needs to. She can’t, necessarily. But that is a topic for another time. Suffice it to say, those were challenging days.

Sitting at a worn table in a bright orange and teal Mexican restaurant, the Sunday after a final tense Thanksgiving weekend spent with the kids in the North Georgia mountains, my soon-to-be ex-husband was scrolling through his phone. He audibly drew a breath. I saw his face go white.

“My mom found your birth mother,” he said, reading a text. I wasn’t looking. I was. Not. Looking. I had made my Peace.

As a child adopted as an infant, I’d always had two stories about my birth mother.¹

First, the logical story: she must have been young and unwed, with no choice but to give me up. Sit with those words for a moment. Give me up. A child. Given up. A gift? A sacrifice? Willing? Unwilling? Either way, one finds herself. Given up. And no matter how she is loved, she will question her worthiness. 

Second, the romanticized version, which I preferred: she had just launched a fabulous Hollywood screen career and couldn’t take me on. But one day soon she would stop by, sweeping in ever so elegantly in a cream designer silk gown to give me a hug and call me Darling! 

Spoiler alert, it was the first version. Funny thing, I ended up a lawyer. Logic wins the day. Perhaps. 

To be clear, my adoptive parents—my Mom and Dad—were generous and loving and gave me every opportunity. I was blessed beyond measure. I loved and was loved by them.

But when one is given up. You just. Wonder. 

There are the obvious questions. Why? Who was she? Who was he? Why didn’t they want me? Why couldn’t she keep me? (Hollywood, obviously.) 

Then there are the not-so-obvious questions, things that randomly come up as a kid. The big one for me was: What is my heritage? That one, I was finally able to address thanks to 23 And Me, a genetic testing company.

Turns out, I’m mostly … British? Well, I’ve always loved British humor. And in a beautiful twist of fate, my Dad’s last name and mine is Fillingim, which is British in origin. 

On the other hand, the British are also known for staunchly held beliefs, their reserve in emotional moments. A child out of wedlock? Certainly that staunchness, that reserve came into play.

I loved my Mom and Dad. Very much. So I buried the questions. 

Asking those questions might have been hurtful, disrespectful, ungrateful. For my Mom, I felt it would have been a complete betrayal.²

Add this layer to it. I distinctly remember a story in my hometown of a young woman who searched for and found her birth parents and, upon finding them, it completely upended an otherwise (reportedly) happy family and sent them into turmoil. I would never have wanted to hurt someone with my own curiosity. 

So I never searched. For fear of hurting my parents. For fear of hurting those who must have already been so hurt by my birth.

But. After I gave birth to my daughter, after I felt what it was to bring a child into the world, I couldn’t fathom the pain of giving her up. I wrestled with that. Often.

About a year later, I watched a video of Lun Lun, a panda at Zoo Atlanta, give birth to her cub Po.³ Immediately after Lun Lun gave birth, she scooped Po into her arms and cradled him so tenderly, lovingly gazing down at him. It split me apart. I sobbed. Gasping, heaving, gut-wrenching sobs. I watched the video again. And again. And again. Sobbing.

How beautiful is nature, that a panda instinctively knows to love, to nurture, to protect? If it was true for the panda, wouldn’t my own birth mother have had the same instinct? 

In that moment, I grieved. For my birth mother. For myself as a child given up. Between the birth of my daughter and the birth of a panda, the seed was planted. I would search. And so I did.

But, ever in logic, I reasoned that I would plug in my birth date and location and only if someone was looking for me would I pursue it further. I would not, for example, hire an investigator or go to any extreme. 

I searched. Timidly. Then resolutely. No one was looking for me. Well, so be it. That was that. I said a prayer and put it to rest.

Ah but then, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving over chips and salsa, my soon-to-be ex-husband announced, “My mom found your birth mother.” 

What could I even say in response? I sat there in silence. Fear and possibility swirling inside me, I said nothing. He launched into this explanation: Since I would be losing his family in the divorce, my mother-in-law thought it might be nice to find a replacement family. (I am paraphrasing, clearly. But it’s a close approximation.) 

So, on a whim, she did what I had done several years before. She plugged in my birth date and location. And there it was. A Facebook post searching for. Me. 

Then, it seems, she had an Oh Shit moment. Tensions between us were at an all-time high. Actually, high tension is an understatement. There are no words for what was transpiring at that point. None that I will share here anyway. 

My former mother-in-law is childlike, innocent in her naïveté. So I must add a caveat: this is merely what was shared with me; truth or strategy, I will never know. But. Now that she had stumbled across the information, she felt it was necessary to share. Good call.

And yet. How was I supposed to receive this information? With gratitude? With anger for the crossing of boundaries (again, an understatement)? Would I lean on him again? No. Absolutely not. I would adopt none of those strategies. (Word choice, intentional.)  

It was a long car ride home. I sat in silence. Contemplating. All logic was out the window. My Heart was at once so full and so afraid. I resolved to reach out to the number listed in the Faceboook post. I knew that my life could be forever changed. But, a lawyer and a realist, I knew that it could go badly. There was Hope. And there was fear.

That night, once the kids were tucked in, suitcases unpacked, and laundry in process, I lay down in my closet. (Yes, I had converted the kids’ toy closet into a small monastic room. For months, I was living in a closet. Praying.) I searched for photos of my birth mother, with little success. 

I spent that night trying to assuage a lifetime of curiosity with one small Facebook profile picture. 

I could hardly wait to get to the office the next morning. Excited. Scared. Giddy. Shaking. I skidded into the parking deck of the tallest building in the Southeast. Sprinted for the elevator. High heels tapped hurriedly through the lobby. Scanned my security badge and waited impatiently for the glass barricade to open. Bounced excitedly as I waited for the elevator to reach the 40th floor. Walked with purpose to my office. Shut the door and leaned against it, taking a deep breath. Then.

I called the number on the Facebook post. For the first time, I spoke to my Sister. Named Ashley. God has a sense of humor.

Sister. What a powerful word. Bonded by blood, if not shared experiences. We laughed. We cried. How I longed to know more about this woman with a honeyed Texas drawl. 

Wait! We couldn’t get ahead of ourselves. There are steps to this. Processes. Paperwork. Confirmation is needed. Together we called the adoption agency. In a closed adoption, the consent of the child and the birth mother is required to open the records. But we knew. We already knew.

Consent given. Confirmation made. Forever connected. 

We talked and texted for hours, Ashley and I. We could—and still can—finish one another’s sentences. We call it Sistering. It is beautiful. And wild. 

The age-old debate of nature versus nurture? Nature, as it turns out, is a powerful force. Generational trauma is real. Reactions, feelings, fears, an awareness I could not explain began to make sense as Ashley and I pulled back the layers, together.

Our mother was Debra. I met her once before she left this earth. She was 14 when she gave birth to me. She did not want to give me up. Her plan was to hitchhike to Canada with me, a newborn, in search of a better life. But her parents placed her in a home for unwed mothers. On the day of my birth, I was taken from her before she ever had a chance to hold me.

How do you even begin to recover from that? She didn’t. Her journey through this Life was hard. 

I have two beautiful Sisters, Ashley and Chelsea. We share Debra’s bloodline, though we have different birth fathers. Our Life experiences are vastly different. But the similarities are surprising. A delight, really, as we discover one another. 

The other day on a group text, we learned that the grocery store inexplicably fills each of us with pure dread. This prompted a rapid-fire text exchange of trauma-inducing memories laced with laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying emojis and hilariously apt Giphy stickers. 

There is a Knowing between us. There is so much Love.

Ashley and I have the blessing of time spent together. Chelsea and I connected later. We are still learning one another. What a gift, the chance to unwrap and share layers of ourselves. To walk forward together.

One of my greatest regrets in this Life is pulling back early in our relationship. I couldn’t fathom that I could be Loved. Purely and simply Loved. Without expectation. Without transaction.⁴

Ashley waited patiently, lovingly, as I worked through my fear. How I wish I could undo the pain I must have caused her, disappearing the way I did. This is a theme, a pattern I will spend this Life healing. 

Indeed this is a reminder, yet again, that reacting from a place of fear brings pain. Fear stems from a lack of Faith. Nurture certainly played its role. Reacting from a place of fear stems from my nurture story; it is what I knew. 

And yet. Existing in fear that there is not enough Love to go around is the very thing that chokes out Love. Love multiplies; it does not divide. Each of is called in our very nature to react from a place of Love. Lean into that nature. Choose. Only Love Today.

So there it is, Dear Reader. A Love story. A Thanksgiving miracle.

It is a story borne out of pain. How true for so many beautiful beginnings that take root in rocky soil, for our story is one of strength and survival. (There is much I have not shared with you. Trust.) For a Love deeply rooted, it took some time for that Love to find the sun. To open. To bloom. Today, I bask in the warmth of Sisterhood.

On this and every Sunday-after-Thanksgiving, I am reminded that miracles are indeed possible. Miracles arrive in ways least expected. When we are not looking. At all.

Stay open to the message, no matter the messenger. Receive the miracle, no matter the giver. Allow space for Love, no matter the delivery. 

Here is a photo of Ashley and me in 2017, the first time we met. Can’t you see the Love shining out of her? I long for the day I hug Chelsea in person. My Sisters. Dear Reader, on this very day seven years ago, over chips and salsa, mid-divorce, my world was forever changed in the most beautiful way. 

I share more in Episode 25 of The KickAshLife Podcast. It has been so interesting to me, since starting a blog and podcast, that some consume content in written format; others prefer to listen; rarely does one read and listen. (This makes me want to write more on consumption, to better understand why and how we devour some things and merely peck at others.) For editorial purposes, there is much I had to cut. So if you’d like, there’s more to the story here:

I hope this story brings you Joy. I pray it brings you Hope for miracles that fall into your lap in the most unexpected ways, even when you have given up and given it over. I wish for you Only Love Today. XO, Ash

1. It was a closed adoption, as most were in the 1970s. Then, “about 80% of babies born to unwed mothers were placed for adoption. The baby would be taken at birth and given to an adoptive couple. The adoptive couple would not be given any information on the birth mother, and the birth mother would not know who had adopted her child.” https://catholicadoptiononline.com/catholic-open-adoption/#:~:text=In%201970%2C%20about%2080%25%20of,who%20had%20adopted%20her%20child.  

2. “Even if I decide to search for my birth family, I will always want you to be my parents.” This is #20 in the list of Twenty Things Adoptive Children Wish Their Parents Knew, a book that has helped me immensely, both as an adopted child and a mother of an adopted child. Here is the link, please share it with someone who might be helped, as well. https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Things-Adopted-Adoptive-Parents/dp/044050838X 

3. In the podcast, I said the panda birth video was before I had my daughter but, in searching for the link to share with you, I realized my timeline was off. The panda birth happened in November 2010, just over a year after Mackenzie joined us. It is beautiful.

4. I wrote a post on Transactional Love not too long ago. https://kickashlife.substack.com/p/transactional-love It is a source of pain, something I am still working through. Maybe you can relate? If so, I am sending you pure and simple Love.