How To Find Birth Mother

Growing up in suburban Michigan, Cynthia Kortman Westphal's childhood was a happy one. She always knew she was adopted, but didn't give that fact much thought — until one day, around age 10, when she was handed a file with information about her birth parents.

Inside the file were a few pages of sparse details: Her birth mother was 16 years old and 5'10". Her birth father was 6'2" and, like her birth mother, of Swedish descent. Cynthia recalls that it painted a "rosy" version of events — "that everyone was fully supportive of the decision." Being adopted wasn't news to Cynthia. But, she says, that bit of information marked the moment when she first internalized that there was "an actual woman" out there who had given her life.

That revelation sparked a decades-long journey.

The Search Begins

Cynthia's parents had agreed to a closed adoption, which meant that the non-identifying information she'd received were the only specifics anyone would get. Her parents didn't even know her birth mother's name. But unwilling to let go of her questions, Cynthia spent the next decade writing letters to congressmen, the adoption agency, and adoption support groups. In the days before Internet searches, she spent countless hours in libraries, poring over yearbooks "not even really knowing what I was looking for," she explains.

Then in college, Cynthia encountered an adoptee whose birth mother had found him — with negative results. "It was a pretty difficult situation," she recalls. "Something about that interaction really scared me."

It also became a turning point for her: "I realized, You're hurting your own mom and dad by continuing this search. You haven't found anything in 10 years. It's time to let it go. So, I did."

Cynthia and her adoptive mother throughout the years.

A decade passed. Cynthia married and started a family. Her mom passed away. Then, when she was 30, an unexpected letter changed everything. The adoption agency wrote to inform her that, "'pursuant to Michigan law you are now entitled to know your first name given at birth. That name was Kristen,'" she says. After years of trying to put her questions aside, the news sent Cynthia reeling. "It felt really cruel, actually, because it was the smallest piece of information. But thinking that this woman had named me just ripped my heart out."

Spurred by the letter — and by her husband — Cynthia resumed her search. "He very much wanted me to find my birth mother because for him it was really frightening to have a child and have no family medical history whatsoever," explains Cynthia, now a mom of two. But, she told herself, "'I'm only doing this for the medical information. I don't care about her.'"

Still, deep down, Cynthia knew her pursuit was about more than medical records. Though the loss of her adoptive mother was devastating, it also gave Cynthia the freedom to look for her biological family without guilt. "Had my mother been alive, I probably would have only sought out my medical information and left it at that," Cynthia admits. "I wouldn't have wanted to hurt my mom's feelings by building a relationship with my birth mother."

As she probed, Cynthia found that Michigan laws had changed yet again. She now had the right to petition the court that handled her adoption to assign her a mediator who could potentially put the two parties in touch — if they both agreed. Soon, her mediator discovered that she had a half-brother. He had contacted the agency a few years prior and suggested that he could put them in touch with Cynthia's birth mother. Her lifelong mystery was starting to unravel.

The Birth Mother's Story

When Cynthia was born, her birth mother, Jan, named her Kristen Marie. It was the only thing she was really allowed to do after giving birth — before the baby was whisked away. Contrary to the details in the file Cynthia received, Jan didn't have any family support during her pregnancy. So at eight months along, the teen went to a home for unwed mothers run by the Salvation Army.

"I don't know if it was meant to be a punishment to me for putting myself in this position or not," Jan recalls. "But the home did not allow me to see my baby or give me any information about her."

Once, late at night, Jan snuck down to the nursery window and got a quick peek at her daughter before a nurse came over and snapped the curtains shut. That would be the last time she would lay eyes on her biological daughter for more than 30 years.

That would be the last time she'd lay eyes on her daughter for over 30 years.

While part of her always wanted to track down her daughter, anxiety over how her daughter's life might have turned out kept Jan from taking action. "The fear was so overwhelming for me," she says. "I kept thinking, What if I find her and she's got 14 kids and is a heroin addict on welfare? Worst of all, I thought, What if I found her and she didn't want to find me? That would have been devastating."

So Jan kept silent about the daughter she placed for adoption — never even telling the son who eventually reached out to the agency. When Cynthia contacted Jan's son (her half-brother) through the mediator, and he eventually connected them, Jan was overwhelmed. "To say that she was pissed would be an understatement," Cynthia remembers. "It was devastating to have spent what felt like 30 years trying to find her and then have the very first interaction be angry."

From Jan's perspective though, she'd been blindsided twice in one moment — first, because she hadn't known that her own son had even known about Cynthia and, second, because two of her children had communicated without consulting her. Additionally, Jan's significant other had just died a few months before.

"I was in such an emotional state of mind," she reveals. It sent her life into further upheaval. "I was like, 'Are you kidding me? Now I'm going to have to tell the world that this happened? What do I say to my grandkids? What if they think I'm a horrible person?' There was just such anxiety I just couldn't deal with it." Her son agreed to cease communication with Cynthia, but not without passing a letter to Jan that Cynthia had given him.

"I waited a couple of months before I even opened it," Jan reveals, adding that the basic message from Cynthia was that she wasn't asking Jan for anything, but was curious to learn more about her. Finally, communication began between the two women — though Jan was still pretty upset.

"It took a lot of sorting out, a lot of apologizing on my part," Cynthia admits. "The way I kept wording it was, 'I did the best I could with what I had.'" She explained to Jan that, having never done this before, she followed the mediator's advice on how to handle the situation. "I was so sorry it hurt her that I went through my brother. I just kept saying, 'It was always you. You are the one I care about. It was you, you, you. You are who I wanted to see.'"

For a year, Jan and Cynthia emailed back and forth with lists of "likes" and personality traits, constantly comparing notes. While they swapped plenty of electronic communication, they never spoke on the phone — so there were still a lot of questions. But eventually, Jan decided it was time to meet.

Cynthia and Jan at the wedding of Jan's son (far left); on the day they met (top right); and taking a selfie (bottom right)

Blind Date of a Lifetime

Before they met, Cynthia often tried to imagine her birth mother. "When I was growing up, I basically oscillated between two extremes. I'm 6 feet tall, so at times I thought, I'm related to Brooke Shields! I'm related to Sigourney Weaver! I'm related to Geena Davis! Then on the flip side, I'd think, She's probably a drug addict down by the river. Either I built her up to be on some crazy pedestal or assumed that she has no teeth and a needle in her arm."

When they finally met face-to-face, Jan turned out to be neither of those options. "In a weird way, my whole identity shattered in meeting someone who was so completely normal because that is the one thing I hadn't pictured," Cynthia confesses. "It had never occurred to me that she could just be an everyday, normal person."

Cynthia, a musician and conductor, was in Tampa for work; Jan had a winter home in the Florida Keys. Florida felt like neutral territory. They met at the bar across from her hotel. "When it came time to go meet her, I was like, 'I'm on my way. Line up the shots!'" Cynthia recalls with a laugh. "When I arrived, there were four tequila shots lined up at the bar."

Jan spotted her daughter the moment she walked in. "It was like looking in a mirror from 15 years before," she explains. "I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe what I'm seeing.'"

It was like looking in a mirror from 15 years before. I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe what I'm seeing.'

Cynthia, too, identified Jan immediately. The women downed their shots — and stayed for six hours. "We went until about 4 a.m., and by that point we were drunk. We laughed and cried so much. We had a good time, but it was weird," she recalls, adding that they went long intervals without looking at each other. "All we wanted to do was study each other's faces, but we were so scared. It took a long time before we could even really look at each other, and we're still navigating that, honestly."

For Jan, the much-feared meeting turned out to be a huge relief. "If I had ever anticipated that it would be that good, I would have done it 20 years earlier," she confesses.

Navigating What Comes Next

Still, it wasn't an smooth or immediate road to some sort of mother-daughter relationship. Every interaction felt fraught with meaning. "If somebody wrote an email and the other person took two days to write back instead of one day or if one email was longer than the other or if a text wasn't answered or if there wasn't a smiley face after a sentence feelings were hurt," Cynthia admits. "It was similar to the most difficult dating relationship ever, where both of us were over-analyzing every little thing the other person did." After a few years of this painful tap dance, Cynthia and Jan decided something had to change.

They had another lengthy cry together, Cynthia recalls. "I told her, 'I'm walking on eggshells because you were so angry at me for so long. I don't know how to be around you.'" They agreed that as meaningful as their relationship was, they were two people who had just met. Instead of trying to force an instant bond as mother-daughter, they decided to just be friends. They would get in touch as they felt like it and "let it play out the way it plays out."

That decision was one of the best the two women have made. The expectations have been alleviated. They even sign their emails with "No pressure!"

Plus, Jan has met Cynthia's children and is "super awesome" with them, Cynthia says. "Because she's meeting them so young, it's a much more organic relationship — it's weird, but her relationship with them is far easier in some ways than her relationship with me."

As they continue to build a relationship moving forward, Jan does have one regret over the past: "I got to meet Cynthia's dad and thank him for raising such a wonderful daughter, but unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to thank her mother. I wish I could go back and tell her, 'Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.'"

Jan with Cynthia's sons.

This article is part of a series of stories Good Housekeeping is publishing about adoption and foster care in America.

Elizabeth Durand Streisand Elizabeth Durand Streisand was a former freelance journalist with bylines in Us Weekly, Yahoo, Life & Style, NY Post, NY Daily News, and MTV, among others.

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