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. 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.
Even amid these routines, a quiet undercurrent of disconnection lingered—one I was used to. Expected. And had long stopped fighting.
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 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 was symbolic—her new life in America, a space between us, a connection always just out of reach.
Years later, I’d live near that same bridge, in a different neighborhood—almost as if the distance between us had mirrored my return.
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, coat draped over it. I was shutting down my computer to head to the airport when, for some odd reason, I checked 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 without thinking—and then everything in me shifted.
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.
My heart started to race.
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.
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”
A lifetime of silence was cracked.
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 by 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.
The silence that had defined so much of my life now felt even more suffocating—leaving me with the heavy weight of unanswered questions.
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 clarity—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 with compassion.
I thought of what it must have been like for them, too—born into silence, then placed into the arms of strangers.
Did they bond with her before they were taken? How long before they were taken?
What imprints do they carry?
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?
In hindsight, I see how much of her emotional damage—her silence—was buried beneath those layers of judgment.
I had lived in the shadow of her secrets without even knowing it. 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 fifty years ago.
Other than birth dates, she had no memories or details to share. It was too late.
My mother left America by boat as a young woman to join her sister, who had made Brooklyn her home. Not long after arriving, she discovered she was pregnant—a reality that must have been overwhelming, isolating, and terrifying.
In that time, in that world, the only option was secrecy—to quietly vanish, carry the burden alone, and give her child away.
Arrangements were made to fly her back to Norway. Her sister in Brooklyn must have helped coordinate a plan with their two sisters in Norway.
She stayed with one of my aunts until she was sent to a maternity home, where she gave birth and surrendered her firstborn daughter for adoption in February 1958.
In 1961, she found herself in a relationship with a man I believe was divorced — someone her sister disapproved of. The relationship seemed uncertain, but before any clear path forward, she became pregnant again.
With few options, she returned to Norway — following the same painful route she had taken once before.
By then, her sister had a child of her own and couldn’t take her in.
So she made her way to the west coast of Norway, staying with a relative in hiding until she gave birth to a boy in July 1962.
She never forgot those dates.
This was during what’s now known as the Baby Scoop Era—spanning the late 1940s through the early 1970s—when unwed mothers were often shamed, hidden away, and coerced into surrendering their babies for adoption.
Birth control, if available at all, was limited—often inaccessible, especially for unmarried women. Many were sent to maternity homes, often run by religious institutions, where secrecy was expected, and separation was framed as the only ‘respectable’ choice.
The men involved moved on—no shame, no consequence, no pause to their futures.
Growing up, I was keenly aware of the undercurrent of patriarchy—how it shaped women’s choices, and their silences.
I later found out that one of my cousins had known for over 20 years.
It wasn’t her place to tell me.
She 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 devastating.
We understood each other in that way. He spoke my language—emotions and feelings.
Though we only corresponded by email, I sensed that shared emotional fluency in his words.
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.
In February 2020, my mother called, sounding a bit upset.
My cousins had 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 landed differently on each of us.
It felt like the situation had taken on a life of its own—shaped largely by my cousins.
He was eager to meet everyone, and they responded with open arms.
My brother met all of them—extended family, even my mother’s best friend.
My siblings were close in age to the cousins. They shared the fluency of language, culture, and most of all—proximity.
They both looked so much like her.
I looked more like my father.
Language is intimacy. It’s belonging. It’s legacy.
And she didn’t pass that to me.
She spoke Norwegian at me, in pieces. But never invited me in.
Later, she seemed to resent me for not knowing it.
As if I’d failed at something I was never offered.
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.
Since her adoption case had been opened, it made it possible for my brother to find her.
She reached out to me, and we’ve stayed in contact by email. She was told she was adopted when she was five or six years old, so this wasn’t a shock for her.
My siblings were adopted into stable, loving homes—given a fresh start. I was relieved to know they were safe, loved, and cared for.
I was kept.
And in that, I became the one who stayed behind to carry what couldn’t be spoken.
While the focus was on welcoming them back into the family in Norway, the emotional aftermath for me remained largely unspoken.
I quietly absorbed what no one named—the grief, the shame, the silence that filled every corner of my world.
The ripple effects of being raised by an emotionally unavailable mother—who couldn’t offer the love I needed—became a quiet weight I carried through every stage of my life.
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 with his longtime partner on the western side of the Nesodden peninsula, overlooking the Oslofjord, 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 the loss of a mother, whose emotional scars remained hidden beneath layers of silence and secrets.
I can’t rewrite the past.
There are so many things I wish had unfolded differently.
But some links are forged in absence.
Even the most painful truths are better than the silence of secrets.
“What is hidden in the parent, surfaces in the child.”
—Nietzsche
Related Life’ing Story:
Childfree: A Quiet Rebellion →
Want to explore how generational trauma is carried—and healed?
Breaking the Cycle: How to Recognize and Heal Generational Trauma →
