He Found Us and It Changed Everything

I always knew I had another brother somewhere in the world. My mum had shared with me her scandalous story long ago. She had even tried unsuccessfully to find her son. I had never thought about finding him. I was too caught up with my own adoption baggage to care about a lost brother, but I was wrong. When he did find us, he helped me to see life from a completely different perspective.

My mum

My mum grew up on a farm just outside Kaikohe. A very small town up north, west of the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. She had one older sister and two brothers. Her dad loved farm life. He was German Norwegian descent, a quiet man whose word was his bond.

Her mum, however, was a fiery woman with a quick temper. She seemed to enjoy a good argument. She would lash her children with anything she could lay her hands on. She hated the farming life and would stray from home whenever she could.

Just one of the boys

Mum grew up as one of the boys. She didn’t receive instruction for how to be a woman or given any motherly advice for the issues of life.

Then one day, as a developing teenage girl, she asked her mother about sex. The response was brutal. She was slapped across the face, so hard that she hit the floor. “Don’t ever mention that word again” was her mother’s reply. So she didn’t.

Her older brother Clyde decided it was his responsibility to teach his younger sister about the ways of the world. He enlisted the help of a willing friend, to educate the naive 17-year-old all about the birds and the bees. Then a few months later, when mum found out she was pregnant, her mother threw her out of the house. She said she had disgraced the family.

Mum cried and pleaded with her father to help her, but it was no use. Her father found a Catholic family who would take her, in exchange for housekeeping. When it was time to deliver the baby, she had no choice, but to adopt out the child.

John

Mum gave birth to a son and the hospital named him John. She was not allowed to hold him, or even see him. The nurse took him away as soon as he was born. He was put up for adoption and she didn’t know what happened to him until the night he messaged me.

We were visiting friends in Auckland and I was laying on my bed when I received a text via Messenger. Someone was looking for Helen Ludwig (my mum), a man born John, who was searching for his mother.

John, now called Gavin, was trying to find his birth family and point of origin. His process had been similar to mine for finding my family. Gavin’s wife Clair, had been the one to lead the investigation. She had sent away for Gavin’s pre-adoption birth certificate and found the name of his birth mother.

Then Clair sought the internet and found my parent’s wedding announcement in the Tokoroa Times. As she kept searching for public records, she found my dad’s death notice. This gave her the names of the surviving children. Then a Facebook search found me and now they were reaching out to make contact.

They wanted to meet

I had just gone through this process myself. It was terrifying. I knew exactly how Gavin would feel, he was scared about what he might find. Would he find love and acceptance or painful rejection? He had been wanting to find his mother for quite some time, but he had been too afraid to pursue it.

He was now 58 years old. After I had verified all of the information and made sure this was the right person, I told Gavin that he was mum’s firstborn son.

He just cried.

Gavin and Clair immediately wanted to meet. A few days later we were sitting at a restaurant talking, laughing and crying. The first time I met Gavin, I was stunned by how much he resembled mum’s side of the family. He definitely had some of her features and when he spoke, his voice sounded like mum’s brother. I took a quick snapshot of mum and Gavin and laughed at them, saying, “Sorry about it bro, but you have her nose!”. It was an incredible moment of reconnection as mother and son embraced.

We felt comfortable together, right from the start. He straight away started calling me his little sis and asked if he could call her mum.

We talked about our families and realised very quickly that Gavin had similar interests and pursuits. What was even more bizarre, he and I share the exact same birthday (2nd Dec), 8 years apart. Mum had adopted me when I was a few days old, 8 years after she had given up her son. Now here he was and he wanted us in his life.

The big questions

When we were alone later that night, mum asked me why I thought at 58 years of age, Gavin would bother to find her. “Don’t you think we are both too old to want to bother meeting now?” she had asked. Obviously she didn’t understand what it felt like to be adopted. Age has no limit when it comes to wanting to find your birth parents.

When you don’t know where you come from, there is always something missing. A key part of your identity is just not there. The unanswered questions can eat away at your insides. When you have been adopted, you can feel unwanted and abandoned. These feelings can mess with your sense of self-worth.

The process of finding your birth parents is terrifying. You have to overcome the fear of what you will find, to get the answers you are looking for.

It’s the big question of who am I? Where do I come from?

These questions help to form the person we become. When I found my father, it changed my life. Even though I would never meet him, I found out who I was. I know where I come from and the situation of my birth. I needed this knowledge and I knew Gavin had needed it too.

A different perspective

Gavin found us not long after I had journeyed through the same process and found my own birth family. It was rather bizarre. A few weeks before, I had been the one asking all the questions about my origin. When I was a teenager, I had judged my birth mother harshly. I felt abandoned and had decided that all the pain I went through was her fault. I didn’t understand how she could have just thrown me away and continued on with her life.

Now here I was explaining to Gavin about his birth mother’s story and it made me view life from a different perspective. When mum adopted out her son, her intent wasn’t malicious. She hadn’t casually thrown him away. It was a different world at that time and it was more a matter of circumstance. I could now see that perhaps I hadn’t been intentionally wronged and it changed everything for me.

I could forgive. I could move past my feelings of being abandoned and I could heal from the rejection issues I had carried all my life. Gavin found us and he not only restored his relationship with his mother, but he also helped me to see life from a whole new perspective.

Froyle Davies
I’ve been a visual artist for over 25 years and now I tell my stories.
Let me inspire you with this beautiful free print, ‘Above the Stormy Waters.’

Cheers Froyle