I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but by the end of that evening, after I tucked Tiff Marie in for the night, I grabbed my birth certificate and laptop from the kitchen counter and ran up the stairs to my room and excitedly flopped down on my bed. I pulled the birth certificate out from under my lap top and just stared at it. I can now actually search the web with what so happens to be the only name I had available – my biological mothers name. Wait, what? Let me say that again out loud.

MY BIOLOGICAL MOTHERS NAME.

OH. MY. GOODNESS!

I was SO giddy and pumped up with more adrenaline than I knew what to do with! I mean, c’mon! I had gone from a girl who thought never ever in a million years I’d find out the “why” behind my story, who I am, and how I came to be to a girl who had THE name of one of her biological parents! EEEK!

At this point my heart is racing! I’m even a bit nervous and my hands are sweaty. Let me stop right here and say, I haven’t even began my internet search yet, and I was already asking myself questions and daydreaming about the “what if’s”.

What if I find her?
What if she lives nearby?
What if she wants to meet me?
What if she doesn’t?
Do I want to meet her?

I quickly came back to reality and thought, “But how?”. I mean how does one go about looking up a person that your “related” to but don’t know? I get the logistics of it and that I just type in her name and hit enter on my keyboard, but then what? How do I get in contact with her if l find her? Would I be brave enough to put myself out there and allow myself to be vulnerable? If so, then how? And I wonder how she would feel being the one “found” for lack of a better term. Maybe she liked living a life of anonymity? Maybe my interest in learning about my story and how I came about is something she’s not wanting to talk about or remember for that matter. Perhaps my birth was kept a secret and no one knew about me? I had a decision to make – continue looking and possibly find my biological mom or stop looking and continue living life as I always had – except now, I’d do it knowing her name.

I rapidly decided to just go for it. My curiosity over took my fear and vulnerability. Of course the first place I began my search was good ‘ole Facebook. I typed her name in the search bar and it was an immediate hit with more options than your local Starbucks. So, I started from the top. Based on the description that was hand typed on a scratch piece of paper and tucked away in my baby book all these years, I could tell these women were not a match. I am as pale as they come and it was all too obvious the beautiful brown-eyed, brown-skinned women that I was coming across weren’t her.

I was becoming discouraged and wondered if this whole thing was even a good idea. I can’t tell you how difficult it is trying to find someone solely based on a name. However, I continued searching. I decided to google her name and that opened up more opportunities. One by one I kept searching. About half way down the page I came across a link with both my birth mothers name and another name next to it. I clicked on it and began to follow the path. It took me back to Facebook where, right there, before my very eyes, I was staring at a photo of a young woman who had obvious facial features that were noticeably like mine.

Things just got real.

I thought my heart was racing before, nahhh that was nothing compared to what it was doing in that moment. The first thing I noticed were her eyes. Same color. Same shape. They were my eyes! Her cheek bones – high and fine like the European heritage listed on that typed piece of paper. I haven’t looked like anyone-ever!

Holy crap!