Jen Wicki was just 7-years-old when she found out she was adopted and the news devastated the little girl.
She had been give up at birth and spent the first three months of her life with a foster family before being adopted.
A world turned upside down
“I didn’t know how to mentally process that information. I felt LOST,” she shared in a video she made about her adoption reunion journey.
According to Adoption.com, 72% of adopted teens wanted to know why they were adopted, 65% wanted to meet their birth parents, and 94% wanted to know which birth parent they look like. In other words, it’s natural to be curious. (And it’s unclear why Jen learned about her adoption at such a young age.)
“From that point on I spent my life wondering: Who was my mother? Did she think about me? Did I have siblings? What were they like? Who did I look like?” Jen recalled.
The search for family
But it wasn’t until she was in her 20s that she began looking for her birth parents in earnest. And thinking about her birth family began to consume her as she looked at every face passing by her for some resemblance.
Only someone in Jen’s situation can understand how that might feel. And while those who watched her videos or read stories about her search wanted more information, it can only be her story to tell.
What she has chosen to share is that she used adoption registries, ancestry sites, DNA testing, and the other amateur tools at her disposal to look for clues. After spending every day working on her family tree, she was finally able to identify a great-grandmother. After that, an expert helped her figure out the rest.
The discovery – and the aftermath
Jen did identify her birth mother as well as 7 biological siblings and after seeing their pictures she knew it was her family. Again, one can only imagine the mix of emotions that comes with finally finding your birth family and wondering why you were left out.
That’s when she decided to write her birth mother a letter.
It wasn’t an easy letter to write, but it was even harder when she sent it via registered mail only to have her mother choose never to pick it up at the post office. As it was being returned to sender, Jen began to compose a second letter to her mother. The same thing happened.
Jen was convinced her mother knew who was sending the letters and was purposely rejecting them because she wanted to avoid her. It turns out, she was right.
A sister’s message
She was feeling hopeless. All of her work had brought her to a woman who seemed not to want any contact with her.
But finally one night, Jen received a Facebook message from a woman who said she was her sister.
“I thought it was going to say ‘leave us alone,” Jen recalled.
But simply scanning the note with dread, she saw hope instead.
“I was too anxious to comprehend what she had written, but I saw the words ‘my little sister’, ‘hardest decision of her life’, and ‘always loved you’.”
Mother and daughter speak
The family knew it was Jen who was trying to get in touch. And just like Jen was afraid of rejection, it turns out her mother was terrified of opening the letter for the same reason. She had assumed her daughter was writing to say she hated her for putting her up for adoption.
But things were all cleared up the next day when they spoke on the phone for the first time.
The meeting
Two months later, Jen and her family made their way out to Georgia – a 17-hour journey – to meet her birth mother.
Jen and her husband are both gifted photographers, so the photos of the meeting are breathtaking.
They contain exactly the kind of emotion you would expect from a reunion 36 years in the making.
“It was so surreal. I feel like it didn’t happen,” Jen said a year later when she posted her video.
But Jen seemed to get much of what she needed from the reunion – including an idea of who she looked like (something many of us take for granted to the extent that we may have never even consciously thought about it!).
The families had a blast together and Jen dedicated the video to a “youngest brother,” named Chance, who had passed away and who she’ll never get to meet “in this life.”
The aftermath
Jen decided to do a follow-up video to explain – in part – why she had decided to put so much effort into finding her birth mother and what the aftermath of their meeting had been like.
She let people know that while the negative commentary on her first story sometimes got under her skin, she has no regrets about her journey or decision and feels like it was all a net positive.
Part of what she got out of her new connection was health information that was integral for her and her son.
Watch her reunion video below 36 years in the making!
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