Continuing from Part One of Birth Families Finding Us, one daughter immediately went for comfort food; pinto beans and nachos in our case, the younger children kept running into the room to make sure their older siblings have survived this trauma.

Sad to say, it is traumatic and grossly unfair on every level.

This charming young lady was denied the right to live with her four birth siblings, not meeting them until her late twenties. She lives several states away so she still won’t be able to see them as much as I know she’d like to.

She told me she felt guilty upon learning some horrific tales of abuse and neglect that the other four kids suffered in foster care and with their troubled birth mother. Survivor’s guilt that she’s taken upon herself. That’s not fair to her, there’s nothing she, as a child, could have done to prevent it from happening.

She grew up in a good family, eventually the four kids made it into our family and grew up normally, getting good educations and opportunities but always feeling the void, knowing they had a sister somewhere in Texas.

It’s simply unfair and no hay mas remedio, there’s no remedy for this situation. It is what it is.

Now all five siblings have to learn to deal with their emotions, to process their profound losses and now as adults, to learn a new connection to each other. Each of the five are accepting, or dealing with this, in their own unique ways, there is no right or wrong way, and they each have to do as they feel they should, taking their own families and lives into consideration.

I found it to be emotionally difficult, knowing my own children so well, knowing how they feel now yet seeing this other young lady looking so much like my children, disconcerting and comforting at the same time.

Decisions made 20 to 30 years ago exploding upon us now with loss and gain in the same day.