Many adopted children dream about meeting their birth parents and wonder what it would be like to finally see them.
Steve Griffith finally got to experience that last summer after 48-years of waiting.
“My [birth] mom was very young at the time,” explained Griffith, professor/coordinator of the mobile application design and development program. “She was only 21 and things just didn’t work out with my birth father. He didn’t want a kid and he didn’t want anything to do with it so there relationship ended at that point.”
Griffith explained that he always knew he was adopted and his adoptive parents made sure it wasn’t a secret.
“My girlfriend and I are both adopted,” said Griffith. “So we got DNA tests to figure out our heritage.”
They had done their tests in March through Ancestry and quickly got the results back in April.
“I got a match with somebody who — according to the amount of DNA [matched] — they [Ancestry] said this person was either an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent or a half-sibling,” he said.
Griffith had looked at the profile picture of his match and knew they weren’t a grandparent and were most likely not an aunt.
“It turned out [they] were my half-sister,” he said. “I sent her a message a saying that ‘I think that I’m your half-brother’ and gave her details about where I was born, my first name — which I had from the adoption papers — and in about half an hour she had replied saying ‘Yes absolutely, mom had always said she had a baby boy she gave up for adoption before we came along.'”
Griffith had continued to speak with his half-sister back and forth when one day she gave him the contact information for someone else even biologicially closer to him — his birth mother.
“I took a bit of time to write a message to her and sent that off,” he said. “And [as] I was signing my name on that email a message from my birth mother came in.”
Griffith explained that he was quite relieved that the messages had sent the exact same time.
So finally, after 48-years Griffith was finally able to speak to his birth mother and tell her about his life — and hear about her’s.
“[The messages] were very warm and welcoming, the whole family, exchanged pictures, information, talked about our lives,” he said.
Griffith had found out his birth mother’s 70th birthday was in July and made plans with his half-siblings to surprise her in Manitoba.
“They organized things on their end as a surprise party for her birthday and we went out and visited with my adoptive cousins and aunts and uncles then spent a few days with my new family,” Griffith explained. “There was a great connection right from the start and I couldn’t have asked for a better time.”
Griffith explained that he hasn’t really had any contact with his adoptive family since his mother and sister passed away and his father re-married. But he stills speaks to his cousins, aunts and uncles.
“I sort of went from being alone by myself to all of a sudden having this big extended family,” he said cheerfully. “I spent my life — the first 48 years of my life — not knowing about my biological family and all of a sudden through Ancestry, finding out my heritage and getting all the stories and everything.
“Now we are talking about what to do in the future, we are probably going to go on a trip with a bunch of my adoptive family and my siblings as well.”