January 16, 2009, 4:50 pm

In 2008, I was starting to realize that a lot of the problems I was having in my life probably all stemmed from the loss of my son to adoption.  To the fact that I never dealt with the loss.  To the fact that I had no idea if my son was even alive, much less happy and healthy.  Sometime during the holidays I came to the conclusion that I was going to talk to someone to start to get all my shit together & deal with the ghosts of my past before beginning the search for my son.

I had to postpone till after mid January when my brother & his family were able to come to town to celebrate a late Christmas.  I was SO ready to get the holidays over with and begin working on healing and trying to find my son to get some answers.  The Friday before, on Jan 16th, I was so impatient to begin.  I was at work, getting ready to leave.  I thought I would just quickly check the email I had set up for replys from the reunion websites I had registered on.

When I first set up my hotmail account, I checked it every day for months.  I slowly started checking it less and less often.  The last couple of years I only checked it probably every few months.  Before that January day it had been maybe closer to 5 months since I had checked it.  I completely expected the inbox to be filled with only junk.

The first email I saw that wasn't junk was from a search angel telling me that my son was looking for me on a different website and gave me the info to go find him.  It was dated December 30th.  There were 2 more from her, and one from Christopher himself on January 9th.  The email from Christopher was short, just one line saying "we can start many ? with answers", and giving me his direct email address.  It takes my breath away just remembering that moment.  Time literally stood still.  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't cry.  I couldn't believe it.  It seemed like an hour till those 10 minutes passed and I could leave at 5:00.  I couldn't drive home to call the number the search angel left me, as my youngest son was at home & didn't yet know about the son I gave up for adoption.  I drove to a school parking lot & called the number.  I thought the number I was calling was Christopher's mother.  She answered, I asked if this was Kim, she said yes.  I told her who I was and she said "Oh ~ you are Christopher's mother!".  That is the moment I lost it and started crying.  I asked if she was his mom, she told me she was not, she was a search angel.  She then told me that my son was VERY anxious to talk to me, that he had contacted her several times since she sent him the email telling him she found me for him.  I asked if he was healthy.  I will NEVER forget, and can still hear her sweet southern accent telling me "he is healthy, he is happy, and he got great parents".  She knew the three questions that had haunted me for decades.  That is when the tears flowed.  I have never felt such relief in my entire life.

I went home and sent Christopher an email.  I wasn't completely sure it was really him, was scared to get my hopes up, that maybe it was the wrong person, that I wasn't really the right mom.  I sent him an email, with all the info I had on his birth, and told him that I couldn't wait to hear from him.  I then had to go to the store for last minute things for my big family bash the next day.  It was SO hard to go on with my normal life ~ all I could think about was my son, that he was alive, healthy, and happy.  And looking for me!!  My husband was out of town and I wanted him to be the first person I told, so I couldn't even talk to anyone about it.  I think I checked my email every 5 minutes the rest of the night, the following day (even with my house full of company ~ I can't believe that they didn't know something was up!),and first thing Sunday morning when I woke up to get ready for church.  The waiting was pure torture.  I was so scared that he had changed his mind & really didn't want to know me after all.  Just before church, I checked the email one last time, and there it was!  An email from Christopher!

The email confirmed everything I had, even a couple of things I didn't mention in my email to him.  He attached a copy of the info his parents got from Flo Crit about me & my family.  There was NO doubt that he was indeed my Christopher! 

Now, I am a faithful person, but I am certainly no religious freak.  I do however, believe that in my reunion story there are too many things to call it pure coincidence.  The fact that I had decided that after the holidays I would begin my healing & search.  I was not able to begin "officially" getting help dealing with my past, but I had done some deep soul searching to begin to know the "real" me.  The "me" before adoption entered my life.  The "me" that included a son that I did not raise.  I finally made the connection between the loss of my son and so many things/reactions to things in my life.  Then, to find the first email from the search angel dated Dec. 30th.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Call it divine intervention, call it intuition, call it mother-child bond.  Whatever it was, I somehow knew the time was coming and I needed to get ready...