Finding Family

Sarah Kittle, center, with granddaughters, Samantha (left) and Sarah.

By Sarah Kittle

As a 15-year-old Catholic girl who found herself “in the family way” in 1982, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. My parents enrolled me in counseling at Catholic Social Services in preparation to place my baby for adoption. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I was still in school and lacking resources to be independent, so I went along.

Just recounting this story makes me extremely emotional; for decades, I didn’t allow myself to hope that someday I might meet her, my only daughter. You see, I went on to marry my childhood sweetheart and have more children with him before we divorced nearly a decade later. I had four sons before I was done and thought to myself that God wouldn’t give me another daughter because I gave mine away. I had resigned myself to not knowing her and was telling myself that she didn’t need to know me because she was happy with her life.

Then one day earlier this year, I got a phone call from my older brother who lives in Illinois. “Sarah,” he said, “I found your daughter!” He had connected with her on 23 and Me, to whom both had sent DNA samples. He messaged her, she messaged back, and with my permission, he gave her my phone number. She was to message me after work. After 4 long decades of being apart, those last few hours of waiting for her text stretched out forever. Finally, she messaged me. It was a long text that included the sentence, “Thank you for doing what was best for both of us all those years ago.” She understood and wasn’t upset with me! Immediately we got on the phone and talked for more than 5 hours.

She did have a good life, I found out, with loving parents to whom she was their pride and joy. Her adoptive mother passed away a while ago, but her dad is still alive and living next door to her. She has two children, both daughters, the oldest named “Sarah,” even though she didn’t know that was my name. Since then, we have spent many hours together. She and her kids have met her biological father, her brothers and sister (from dad), the girls’ cousins, some of my siblings, and so many more people that are now a part of their lives. She was the gift 41 years ago, and my huge and loving family is the gift that she and her girls are now receiving.

I see God’s hand in all of this and am grateful for the opportunity to know her and my granddaughters, who all live nearby. As this chapter of my life unfolds, I begin to see all the choices and events that had to happen for us to meet. It is one hundred percent a “God job.”