I was on a bi-annual work trip in Florida, going through the usual motions—huge client event, meetings, the non-stop dog and pony show, as I called it. It was late November 2019, and as always, I had planned to fly up to New York to see my mother for Thanksgiving before heading back to the West Coast.
Typically, I’d visit my mom either before or after the work trip for a few days, spending a few days with her to make sure she was doing okay. This visit was no different—except, in hindsight, everything about it was different.
For Thanksgiving, I took her out to a lovely restaurant overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. I always tried to make our time together feel special. Looking back, I wonder if the bridge itself was symbolic—the space between us, connection always just out of reach. Years later, I would find myself living in that very neighborhood carrying the weight of everything I would soon learn.
The rest of the visit followed the same familiar rhythm—watching the news, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, dinner, and sharing sliced fruit in the evenings.
And yet, there was always a twinge of heaviness when I left. Would this be the last time?
My bag was zipped up, my coat draped over it by the front door. I was shutting down my computer to head to the airport, when, for some odd reason, I decided to check my personal gmail account.
I barely used it. Everyone contacted me at my work email.
Then I saw it. An email with the subject line in all caps, “ARE YOU MY SISTER?”
A Secret No One Planned to Tell Me
I almost deleted it, assuming it was junk. My father had been much older than my mother. Maybe?
Curiosity got the better of me, and, I opened it. Immediately, my heart started to race.
At first, I assumed it was a scam. This can’t be real.
The email contained very detailed information about my mother—specifics about where she grew up, her parents, and the farm in Skein, Norway.
The message itself was peculiar—words in capital letters, bold text, and different colored fonts—almost as if the sender was trying to convey an array of emotions. He was absolutely certain I was the right person he meant to reach.
Still skeptical, I turned to my mother, expecting her usual dismissive response—something like, oh, that’s nonsense.
But she didn’t say that.
Instead, she paused—just long enough for me to know that this wasn’t absurd to her. She bowed her head, turned away and reluctantly nodded. Â
A single tear welled up in her eye—something I rarely saw. As quickly as it came, she blinked it away, replacing it with a defensive, almost sarcastic “Surprise”
The Weight of Secrets
She sat across from me as if this was old news—like she had simply forgotten to tell me about laundry
Or, as she would later say, “It’s water under the bridge”.
She seemed more bothered by her secret being revealed than my shock at discovering I had a sibling.
A rush of adrenaline shot through me. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it.
I struggled to find words.
Is there anything else you haven’t told me? I expected a quick, firm no.
But it wasn’t. She hesitated.
Then in an almost disconnected, childlike voice, she added, oh, there was also a girl.
The room spun, and my stomach clenched in a familiar way.
A whirlwind of emotions– shock, betrayal, grief, anger, and a strange sense of recognition—hit me all at once.
After all these years, I was just now learning that my mother had given not one, but two children for adoption. I had two siblings and I was the third child.
Piecing Together the Past
I tried to balance my sense of betrayal, while trying to hold space for compassion.
Wasn’t this the same woman who lived by a strict moral code?
A devout churchgoer, always worried about what the neighbors thought?
The same woman who held me to an impossibly high standard?
All the criticism she had ever thrown at me—all her judgments, her puritan ideals—suddenly seemed like projections of her own hidden story.
Why had I never been told? Wouldn’t knowing this have saved me decades of therapy?
At the very least, it would have explained so much.
There was also an odd sense of relief—an explanation for why things always felt off.
Her secrecy had been wrapped in grief and shame, choices she had buried more than 50 years ago.
Other than birth dates, she had no memories or details to share. It was too late.
They were born in Norway, during the Baby Scoop Era—a time when unwed mothers were pressured into giving up their children under the weight of social stigma and religious norms. Growing up, I was keenly aware of the undercurrent of patriarchy, the way it shaped women’s choices and silences.
One of my cousins had known for 20 years.
She had even confronted my mother-five years before this moment-urging her to tell me.
But my mother never did. The secret was woven too deep.
My Siblings
My brother had just discovered he was adopted. He had a very close relationship with his parents, and finding out was upsetting.
We understood each other in that way. He spoke my language—emotions and feelings.
Initially, my brother suggested we meet, just the two of us.
That faded.
The timing was all wrong—the pandemic hit, my workload was insane, and my mother’s health started to decline.
The Reunion Without Me
In Feb 2020, my mother called, sounding a bit upset.
My cousins planned a reunion with my brother, and she had just found out. I was upset too. We were outsiders in our own story, though the impact settled differently on each of us.
My brother met all the extended family, including my mother’s best friend.
It felt like my cousins had hijacked the situation, deciding how it would unfold without including me or my mother.
My siblings and cousins were close in age. They shared the fluency of language, culture, and most of all—proximity.
Finding My Sister
In 2020, my brother successfully found our sister.
She had written my mother a letter in the 1990s, hoping for a response. None ever came.
Her adoption case had been opened, which made it possible for my brother to find her.
She reached out to me, and we’ve stayed in contact through email.
She was told she was adopted when she was five or six years old, so this wasn’t a shock for her.
They were both adopted into very good families.
My sister is an accomplished doctor, a researcher, a mother of three, and now a grandmother. My brother does well in finance, and lives a peaceful life in the Oslo fjords with his longtime partner, near the forest and water.
There’s a deep, layered sadness—mourning not just what is, but what never was and never will be. It’s grief of a different kind—the loss of the sibling bond I never got to build, and loss of a mother, as mine was emotionally scarred.
There are so many things I wish had unfolded differently, but I can’t rewrite the past or undo a lifetime of not knowing this missing link.
Even the most painful truths are better than the silence of secrets.