Why do I watch?

"Long lost family" is a show I should not watch.  It's about adoptees and biological mothers finding each other, something I was not able to do.  It usually involves unwed mothers reuniting with their children, after the latter have been adopted and raised by others.

That was my life, except without the reunion part.

I had a fabulous upbringing by wonderful parents and a large, extended family, but always in the back of my mind was my birth mother.  When I looked at my mother and her sisters and brother, I did not resemble them at all and I wondered where I had come from?  When pregnant with my first child, I started a search.  Long before google and the internet, my search involved hours at libraries going through city directories.

When I was adopted, there was no such thing as an "open" adoption.  Your original birth certificate was destroyed and a new one substituted.  In fact, the original "you" ceased to exist and the only reason I was able to find a name for my birth mother was because the adoption had been handled by a lawyer, not the province.  Forging a letter from my father giving permission, the lawyer released the adoption papers.  But all that was on them was her name -- no address, nothing. 

Thus began a years'-long search of all the "Latimer's" in the Ottawa Valley.  Calling each one, I told a lie and each time the response was "no relation".  Finally, one last call to Kemptville, Ontario, yielded results.  "Oh yes, Shirley was my niece, but she died a year ago," said my great aunt.  I was crushed.  All that searching and nothing.

The long and the short of it is that I did connect with her family, but not my mother.  We are no longer in touch, because these people aren't really my relatives, but it was good to finally know from whence I came and what my people were like.  Nevertheless, when mother and child finally meet on "long lost family", I always break down.

That is why I should not watch.