Adoption

The Gill Family

Turns out I'm also a Gill. I was reunited by phone with my biological mother, Mary, in November of 2001, and met her (and my sister Anna) face to face in San Francisco in February of 2002.

This picture was taken on October 13, 2002. The second time Mary and I have spent one of my birthdays together! She photoshoped it for me. :-)

Mary sent my parents and I a couple photocopied pages from my biological father's yearbook. My Mom says we look remarkably alike. She can't get over it.

Also included, were shots of my circus performing relations on the trapeze. I knew it was in my blood!

My Adoption Story (short version)

I've always known I was adopted. Since before I knew really what it ment, how it worked, or that other children didn't always come that way to their families. When I was about three years old, I told my mom I came down from heaven on a cloud. She scheduled a family trip to the adoption agency. Now I knew I *really* came from a white crib on the second floor of a buiding in Akron. How I got the the crib was unclear to me, although I was pretty certain someone had carried me up the stairs.

I always wondered about my biological family. I had a family with a dad (Bud) a mom (Nancy) and an older brother (Michael). But what else was out there? I really wanted a twin. Somewhere around second grade I asked my mother if it were possible that I had a twin sister out there someplace. She said that it wasn't. I was a single birth, it said so on my birth certificate. Not happy with this answer, I created a story for myself involving the mafia and payoffs to all the doctors and nurses in the hospital.

I searched on and off throughout the years. Filled out registries on the internet mostly. I wasn't sure how to go about honestly searching. A couple years back, my dad got the name and address (at the time of my birth) for my biological mother. Armed with that information , I thought I was only a hair's breadth from knowing who she was... except now it was "who she IS." She'd gone from a guardian angel/mafia princess/rock star to an actual real person who I could eat lunch with and talk to! The transition was sudden, and although I'd thought I'd prepared for it, it did take some getting used to.

Closer now than ever before, I was in California by then. With the vast majority of the people close to me not in California, I decided to wait a bit. The last leg of the search, I was sure, would require a good bit of concentration and effort. The day after I made the decision to put my search on hold, I recieved an email from a woman who works at an adoption registry. She thought they had a match, could I give her some more information...

That night I spoke to Mary Gill for the first time ever. The woman who named me Holly Jorah.

Mostly, we laughed.