A few years ago, my mother told me that I had a sister she had given up for adoption at birth. Mom tortured herself for years, wondering if she had made the right decision and if her daughter was OK. Soon after Mom told me about this sister, she asked me to help find her.

For three years, I hunted on my own. I wrote a letter to the adoption agency in hopes that my sister had previously requested reunion. She had not. I joined all kinds of Canadian and American adoption search groups and committees, some of whom charged membership fees. I chased many false leads and spent countless hours searching. Then the Alberta government (the province where she was given up for adoption in) told me that they could not release identifying information to me, but could give a licenced searcher information that they felt was pretty useful. They provided me with a list of prospective licenced searchers. I hired one fellow, and within a week he had reunited me with my sister, who was living in Calgary.

At first she was curious about us, especially because her son had a congenital heart disease the doctors suspected was inherited. She phoned and emailed me regularly. She revelled in the fact that we had so many commonalities. For example, she was a teacher's support worker and I was a teacher. She loved Mars Bars and so did I. Both of us owned green silk pj's. She talked to my brother, but did not want to meet him in person. She eventually phoned, wrote and even visited Mom. Mom took pictures and showed us. My sister was a dead ringer for Mom when she was younger. Then she decided that she was upset with how quickly things had evolved. (This communication carried on for almost a year.) She began to say very angry things about the fellow who had put us together. Even though he had put her in the driver's seat, so to speak, in terms of contacting us, she felt he had pressured her to contact us.

Now she has disowned us. She says that her adopted family made her choose between us and them and they came first in her life. This was in direct contradiction to what she first told me. Initially she said that her brother hated her and that her parents were a constant source of pressure because they were old and she had to help them out a lot. They were too controlling and her mother had been very hard on her. For years she saw a counsellor because her biggest desire was to find her birth mother. Now she has rejected all of us. The pain she has caused our family was not something we were prepared for.

So be careful when you are seeking the lost. Some don't know if they want to be found; others change their mind when they find out that their birth families are not made up of kings or queens, multi-millionaires or famous movie stars, but real people. Others just want to be left alone altogether. I feel ultimately responsible for the way things turned out and for the pain my family has suffered. All because I thought our sister would want us. I guess only the happy reunions are published in print or seen on TV.

- Norine Wark, nwark@pris.bc.ca