Adoptee and birth family synchronicity: Quirks run in families

Jane, Julie, Lucy

A couple of weeks ago I took a cruise with my two sisters, Lucy and Kate along the California coast. We live in different parts of the country--Lucy in Orange County, CA, Kate in Central Illinois, and me in Oregon. During a stop in San Francisco, we met up with my youngest daughter Julie for a dinner in Chinatown. While showing off our deftness at manipulating chopsticks, Julie noticed that she, Lucy, and I had identical nail polish, a sort of shell pink. We hadn't planned this, didn't discuss getting a mani before our trip; still out of the scores of colors at Vietnamese nail salons in different cities, all of us picked the same color.  (Kate's nails were natural.)

Why should a child grow up with her natural, first, birth parent? Because.

Lorraine

The other day a first mother who hopes to get back her child before the adoption is finalized asked me to write a letter for her to be sent to several government officials. In doing so, I could not but help think of the case that so many of us can't get off our minds--that of Dusten Brown and his daughter Veronica. We wait now for some kind of word from the Cherokee court where the case is now. 

I am not sure how the Cherokee court now is able to get involved after the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the South Carolina courts, but nonetheless, that is where the fate of Veronica Brown now sits. Everything in the letter below is true not only in the case of the Canadian mother and child I am writing this for, but also for Veronica.

Family ties broken by adoption, linked by sychronicity

Jane

I'm off to Peru with Rachael, the daughter of my surrendered daughter Rebecca. Rachael was in Peru a couple of years ago on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She's taking this trip to visit the friends she made in Peru and asked me to come along. I am thrilled to be going.

I have never been to Peru, but it has a connection to the adoption of Rachael's mother. When I was six months pregnant with Rebecca in the fall of 1966, I left my home in Fairbanks, Alaska, traveled down the west coast stopping in Juneau, the Canadian city of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Seattle before settling in  San Francisco where I knew no one.