There are newer shows now. Like Long Lost Family. I boo-hoo, every time I see it.
My update since the first time I posted this: I published my memoir.
And because I did, I met a still-missing brother and cousins and, more recently, had contact with an uncle I’d always wanted to know.
My family isn’t perfect. Neither am I. But they’re mine. And I am so happy to have them all.
Every day at my job, I work with kids who don’t have contact with one or both parents. Mostly, it’s their fathers. Many of them can’t name who their father is or where he might live.
It’s an ache and a longing they can never seem to reconcile.
One day, I’ll have time to write more about the benefit of knowing one’s roots. But for now, I reiterate what I’ve said before in the post below.
I have mega-exciting news to share in my newsletter, soon. I hope you’re signed up.
Thank you for being here.
–Lizbeth
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Did you get a chance to watch the television show The Locator on We TV before it went off the air? The one where investigator Troy Dunn found missing loved ones and filmed the reunions? His tagline was You can’t find peace until you find all the pieces.
That was true for me. One of the best decisions I ever made in my youth was to find my missing father. I was still young enough that I didn’t fully realize how much growing up without him hurt me. Or how growing up hearing scary stories about him shaped not just the way I felt about him, but how I felt about myself.
Years later, I met a brother on my mom’s side I hadn’t seen since I was a toddler. Again, it was magic. I followed up by contacting family I’d lost contact with for one reason or another. Each reunion was a gift all its own.Twenty-seven years after my first family reunion, the connections I’ve made with family continue to add color and dimension to my life, and I often tell others with missing family members, “Look him (or her, or them) up! What are you worried about?”
Sister Wanda in Anchorage
Aunts and Uncles, Kentucky
Vincent, David, LauraGrace, Gardnar, and Danny Meredith
Sister Maddy, brother Harold, and daughter Meredith
Three Reasons to Find Your Missing Family
- Because you want answers- to your family history, health history, and to know what part of you is due to nature vs. nurture. For me, getting to know my whole family helped me know and accept myself easier.
- Because we all need connection. Without them, we become prickly, weird, and depressed. You might unearth more weirdness by finding your missing family. But you may very well expand your capacity to love.
- Because you’re dying. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we all are, beginning the process as soon as we’re born. With your days being numbered, don’t you want to know who’s out there with your DNA?
When my oldest daughter began dating Vince, an old friend of hers from high school, I learned two things about him. He had cancer. And he grew up in a splintered family like I had. He told me his mom had been a young Filipina immigrant when she married his father, a tall and rough American soldier.
Vince had vivid memories of his father terrorizing his mother after they separated. He remembered her not being allowed to exercise her custody rights, and remembered her moving out of state.
“I want to know my family,” he told me. “I want to know them all, the Filipino side, my siblings, all of them. Can you help me?”
I was thrilled to be asked.
But before I got very far, Vince’s health took a sharp turn for the worse. In February of 2010, he told me he thought he was dying. Within the next eight weeks, his body was ravaged by tumors. He lay in the middle of his family’s living room while they smoked cigarettes and played the television loudly. Unable to eat or speak, his face hallowed and his eyes sunk. He was in much pain, and I privately wondered why he fought the inevitable for so long.
It turned out that his mother had been granted permission by his father to see him one last time. A dozen years had passed since she had seen him. Vince’s mother hadn’t been permitted access to Vince was a small boy, and though she called and sent packages irregularly, it wasn’t the same.
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLCY16GW?pg=entry&fr_id=75351
If Vince had some assurance he’d get to meet his Filipino family, be they good, bad or indifferent, would he have lived longer? Lived happier? We’ll never know. I do know that finding mine changed everything, and like Troy Dunn promised, I found peace.