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And Then a Miracle Happens: A Story of Search and Reunion

by Mari T. Steed
© 2002, All rights reserved

Mari with her children, Jessica and Alex, and granddaughters Caylie and Ciara

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mari Steed is a 42-year old adopted adult, born in Ireland, and reunited birthmother to Kerry Anne. She currently resides in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her two younger children, two cats, three sheep in a 218-year old farmhouse. She is now also proud grandmother to Kerry's two daughters. Her search for her natural mother, Josephine, began when she was 18 and looked into her firstborn, soon-to-be-relinquished daughter's eyes and asked, "Who am I?" Facing a sealed records system in Pennsylvania, where her foreign adoption was finalized, as well as in her homeland of Ireland, Mari suffered many skinned knees scaling one brick wall after another. She learned her mother had herself been born out of wedlock and shuttled through Ireland's notorious system of convent homes, industrial schools and ad hoc fostering arrangements. Along the way, she started an online support group for Irish-born adopted adults and linked arms with Ireland's own Adopted Peoples Association. She nows serves on APA's committee as U.S. Coordinator and continues working to change both U.S. and Irish sealed records laws in that role as well as through her work as Pennsylvania state director for Bastard Nation. Having found her daughter, Mari turned her energies again toward finding the elusive Josephine...

About three years ago, a woman named Judy Campbell contacted me. Judy is originally from Co. Tipperary, is of my birthmother's generation, and her true Christian forename is, ironically, Josephine. She was seeking help at that time for a cousin who had also been adopted in the States from Ireland. As we corresponded, we developed a bond. I think Judy is one of the most compassionate people I've had the good fortune to meet and she has deep empathy for the plight of the women of her generation. There but for the grace of God seems to be Judy's motto. As she was able to quickly make progress with her cousin's search, having already developed a keen understanding of genealogical searches both in Ireland and the UK, Judy turned her focus on my search and me.

Inspired and challenged by the difficulty of finding my mother, Judy took me on with tremendous zeal and caring. She ran numerous searches for possible siblings to my mother and managed to find four children (including Josephine), born to a woman named Johanna in Co. Wexford. One young sister died early from meningitis, but there were two males, James and Michael, who might be easier to locate. Armed with new names and dates of birth, I added to my growing list of Internet genealogical board postings. A few months later, to my surprise, I had a hit on one. Two sisters in Manchester, UK posted me saying, 'We believe the James you're looking for is our mother's cousin.' A few hurried posts later, I was in touch with this James' granddaughter, Kelly, by email in May 2000.

As we continued to compare details, we became more and more sure we had a match, and Kelly promised she'd have her grandfather write through her. Soon I had an email stating that although James was sure I was talking about his sister, which would make me his niece, up until then he was unaware he even had a sister! Over the course of some months, my Uncle Jimmy was able to explain the basic fragmentation of his family. The eldest of the four children born in Wexford, Jimmy was brought up more or less by maternal great uncles. He saw his mother infrequently and in 1934, not long after my mother's birth, she left for England, where she married and had an additional seven children. Jimmy stated he had only met these half siblings twice at funerals and he had always cautiously been explained to them as an "uncle." Johanna never allowed the two sets of children to know any more than that.

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