[adwalker50]

To the people out there that would like to find their birth parents, I can give you an idea of how I located my birth mother.

My younger sister and I were adopted from Italy in 1959 (yep, a long time ago). I was 9 and she was 3, so I was old enough to remember quite a few things, such as my family name, mother's name, and the fact that I had 2 other siblings that were adopted to the US. Since my birth parents were never married I also had 2 siblings from my father's side that as far as I knew were in Italy. When I turned 21 I called the adoption agency here stating that I have 2 siblings in the US and that I wanted to contact them. As it turned out, they were living 60 miles from me. They didn't know about me till I called them and told them about me and their younger sister.

Now, we all speak English and lost the ability to speak Italian. In 1989 I decided to write (in English) to the town where we were born - I wrote to the church where our baptismal records were (this information I obtained from the adoption agency), and I also sent a copy of this letter to the police department of that town.

As it turned out, our cousin works for the police department and from the names in the letter he knew that it was not junk mail, but since he spoke only Italian he had to find someone that could translate this letter. When the letter was translated he called his aunt, my mother - who had moved to Milan, Italy and told her about the letter and that I was trying to contact her. 34 years to the day that I first arrived in the US I received a letter from my birth mother which I had to have translated. In 1990, my younger sister and one of my other siblings decided to visit Milan, Italy to visit our birth mother. We found out that we also had a younger brother born one year after I came to the US. (We also had an older sister that never left Italy - which brings the total children (including myself) to 6 from our birth mother.

In 2002, my younger sister and I decided to visit the town where we were born, and since we had been corresponding with the police office (our cousin) he welcomed us to visit our birth town.

When we visited Italy, it turned out that my brother and sister (from my birth father) were in Italy after living in Argentina for 30 years and who never knew about me. What to me makes this even more unusual is that never knowing about me, my brother and sister found out and met me for the very first time that week, and also I met my birth father for the very first time that week. (I had never met any of the 3 before) I also found out that I have a younger brother (from birth father) that never knew about me either. So now the total siblings are 5 (not including me) from my mother and 3 (not including me) from my father. The youngest brother (from father) is the only one that can speak and write in English and I have had a running e-mail relationship with him since the beginning of 2003.

I am now planning on returning to Italy andi meeting this new brother and re-visiting my other siblings.

So all I can tell everybody is: find out all the info you can from passports, from the adoption agency, and try to write (even have it translated first) to the police department of your town and give all the information and names you can and maybe, like me, you can find lost relatives.

My birth father passed away this March, but I was able to see what he looked like and if I looked like him, and to show my children a picture of both their birth grandmother and grandfather.

[tschuitema73]

Wow what an incredible story! To find ALL these people so many years later, that is amazing. We are actually adopting internationally from Eastern Europe. But I just wanted to say congratulations!
What was the meeting like with your birthmother?
Tamara

[adwalker50]

Thanks Tamara.

In answer to your question, my brother Frank, his wife, my younger sister Jo and I went to Milan, Italy in 1990 -- not knowing what to expect Italy to be. I just remembered what bits and pieces of what our small town in the Calabria region looked like. Not knowing what to expect in Milan, or what these relatives would be like. Our birth mother and our youngest brother and niece and her husband (we needed two cars for the 4 of us and our luggage) met us at the airport. Our mother, Teresa, (who was 72 at the time) cried and hugged all of us and spoke Italian, which we didn't understand, so we just smiled and said "ciao mamma". The other 3 relatives spoke little English. We had tried to learn italian but not comprehending the verbs they use, one word answers in Italian just didn't really help, and we never let out dictionaries get too far away from us. We also spoke with our hands a lot.

All of my Italian family's friends all came to visit to see what we all looked like. My younger brother never knew about his 4 american siblings until just before this trip. My older sister and her husband had told their daughter about us, but was told never to tell her Uncle about us. Why? I don't know.

Since then our birth mother has come to the US twice and has met her grandchildren and all of our families. She is now 85 and still going strong.

[tschuitema73]

Thank you for sharing. It must be so incredible for your birthmom to see her children's children. And they her.
Tamara

[adwalker50]

for her it is incredible, and I myself hold no resentment towards her. It was after WW II, a single mother with 5 children. She did what she felt was right, giving us away to have better lives, which we did. We wanted to let her know because of what she did, what we now have, great american parents, Jo and I have the same parents, Frank and our other sister have the same parents (2 sets of different parents). But there are a lot of questions she doesn't answer, even with a translator. She has told us that she did not remember Frank's dad's name, then last year I asked our Italian cousin Frank's dad's name - and they told me without hesitation, but that he is dead. In my current e-mails with my new brother, he told me that Frank's dad is alive, gave me his name and address and told me that he is living in Rome. There are other things she has told us that we find out are not correct. Which makes us wonder -- why the secrets and cover-ups? We are adults, if we can survive being taken from our homes and everything we knew and taken to a different place and different environments, we can survive anything.

One other thing I want to say, I literally ran into my birth father in the street. Our cousin was walking with us on the streets of our birth town, and we saw this little man walking on the road that crossed the one we were on. Our cousin poked me and said to me "that is your dad". The old man noticed me and since I look like him, his eyes grew big and he stood and looked and said nothing. Then our cousin introduced me to my birth father. He said nothing. I introduced him to my sister and all he said was (in Italian), she is not my daughter, and I said, no, she is not, but she is my sister (all 6 of us from mother's side had different fathers). Everyone that I tell this to cannot believe that 42 years after I left, I end up meeting a sister and brother who never knew about me, found another brother, and even met my father.

So when you do adopt your child, be honest and straight with the child if you are going to tell him/her that he/she is adopted. My parents never kept it from us because at 9 I remembered too many things. If in the future your child does question this, let him/her know all the information you have to give in order for them to find their own answers.

My father here is deceased, but I told my mother why I was locating the Italian relatives, not to hurt her, but to let the other relatives know what a good home we grew up in, what kind of parents we had, and how our lives have changed. My mother here even met my birth mother the first time she visited.

One thing I would tell the adoption agencies, whether it is an open or closed adoption --- make sure you put in medical information in the files --- because there are some medical information I would like to know for myself and my children, and with the language barrier, I am not able to find out this. I don't know what I inherited from which parents, and it is hard to answer a doctor when he asks "what kind of medical problems are there in your family" and all I can say is "I don't know, I'm adopted". Medical information should be automatic in a file.

I want to wish you good luck with your new adoptee, boy or girl.

[tschuitema73]

Thank you for the kind words and the advice. I have thought of your story quite a bit. I have always wanted to find out as much as I could about our children's (we're adopting two a boy and girl) birth mother and family. Mostly for my own benefit to know their backgrounds and so I would be better able to give them what they needed. But I know now how much it will mean to them when they are of age, and want to learn more about their self or are just curious. Either way it's so important.
Thanks again,
Tamara

[Felixjake]

I LOVED IT!
THAT IS WONDERFUL. YOU COULD WRITE A BOOK,
AND YOUR FAMILY COMING FROM ARGENTINA TO ITALY AFTER LIVING THERE FOR 30 YEARS IT'S AMAZING!
I HAVE BEEN IN ARGENTINA. WERE THEY FROM BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA?
I'M GLAD YOU FIND THEM ALL.
CONGRATULATIONS,

[adwalker50]

thanks.

Don't know where in Argentina they lived. I have been told many times to document all this for my children and grandchildren and to write a book about it. I joke and tell them that the book would probably be censored. My life to everyone seems amazing, but to me, it's my life, and my children have heard it to often. The newspaper where I live was not interested in the story when I located my mother, and they once again were not interested last year, (it was not unusual enough) but the town where my younger sister lives thought it was interesting enough to write almost half a page. She was a celebrity for weeks after that receiving many calls on the story.

Want something else to pop your eyes out? I mentioned my parents were not married to each other - because my father was already married and is the legitimate father of my new sister and brother (she born 12 months after I was - I am the oldest) and when these two legitimate children were ages 2-1/2 and 1, he hung his wife in their house, and these two children were sent to Argentina to live with their grandparents because their father went to jail for 30 years. When he was paroled he stayed in Italy, never going to Argentina, and the reason they returned was because my new youngest brother (who knew about them, but they never (also) knew about him) wrote to them in Argentina and pursuaded them to return to Italy. They have a great relationship among the 3 of them. Oh yeah, did I mention that "good old dad" had my english-speaking-half-brother with (yet another) woman that was not his wife?

Do you think my life is like a soap opera? Think I could win an oscar if they made a movie of it?????

I guess having an inquiring mind, and the help of someone over there to be able to answer questions helps a lot. This new brother, Pino, has been such a help because I have been able to convey to him things I remember and questions I have and even though I was only 9, he has verified that everything I remember is true, and he has been able to answer quite a few questions for me.

I figure God had it planned for all this, to find all of my relatives, that they are all still alive, and to be able to communicate with them. ... and out of the whole US where the 4 children adopted in the US, what is the odds that the 4 of us are one hour away, just 60 miles from each other.

Thanks for reading this. And if you have an inquiring mind - good for you, keep asking questions, because eventually you will get the answers.

[Dinaxdeebs]

I'm an 18 year old girl from Old Bridge, New Jersey. My father was born in Rome, Italy on December 9,1960 and was adopted by my grandparents in Brooklyn, New York when he was only 6 months old. He's now 43 years old and has yet to come in contact with anyone from his biological family. It's apparent that he has 11 brothers and sisters.

We have his passport from when he came over for the adoption (he looks so adorable), it is in all italian. His birth name was Gianni Gensini. The rest of his passport is in "chicken-scratch" so it is extremely hard to read.

I, myself, do not look like anyone from my biological family. I assume that I have some features that come from my fathers side of the family. I've always wondered, since his biological family is so big, what they look like, what they do for fun, or even if they've thought of him and possibly even thought of the family he might have.

I was wondering if anyone at all, can give me some advice on how to approach the situation of International Adoptions in finding my fathers biological family. If anyone has any information whatsoever please, please, contact me by e-mail ( xxdevildina143xx@aol.com) or through this page and let me know.

Thank you so- so - so much...

Sincerely, the daughter of an adopted parent,
Dina

[adwalker50]

Hello Dina.

I have just located my half-sister's siblings from her father's side.

If you are able to somehow obtain your father's birth last name, and maybe the town where he was born, then go to www.infobel.com and put in those two things. In our case putting in the last name and the town here her father was from came up with 6 names.

We had a form letter typed up, had it translated into Italian and mailed it to these 6 people.

We were lucky, because one of those names did turn out to be her brother.

If you are able to find out this information and have someone translate the form letter into Italian, and put in all the information you can find on your father: his birth name, maybe his parents names, his birth date, names of his siblings, etc ---- anything useful you can find.

If they don't respond -- don't be surprised -- that sometimes happens.

Good luck to you.

Angie