Reconnected to my past...

I can hardly believe I'm typing this.  It's taken me nearly 24 hours to get this post written from the time that the following events conspired.  This is NOT related to our Ethiopian adoption, but to the "failed" adoption of my sisters.

Let me explain - in BRIEF.  :-)  My parents wanted to expand our family through adoption when I was about 9 years old.  When I was 10, we had two incredible sisters join our family through the county's social services' system.  They had endured a life story up to that point that was beyond conceivable (they were 3 & 5 years old then).  We loved these girls unconditionally, but the US foster-adopt system can be... well, I won't type what I think.  Let's just say that social services in that county did some terrible things, and my beautiful sisters were separated and re-homed individually.  They been in our family for over two years when this happened.  After some initial contact with us, their new families felt their attachment to us prevented them from bonding to them, so we were no longer allowed to visit.  (The re-homing had nothing to do with something that happened in our family - it was external factors).  

A miracle happened a few years back - the older sister sent us her high school graduation announcement and invited us to her graduation party.  It was unreal.  Seriously like living in a foggy dream.  What do you say to your "long lost sister" after so many years?  Well, long story short, things have gone very well and we're all very close now.  Our love never left and we now get to enjoy a friendship I thought would never be possible.  I had one of my sisters back - it was a different sisterhood, but it was something.

This was also a constant reminder of our other sister for me.  It nagged at me and made my heart ache more than ever before.  Our younger sister had also lost contact with her bio sister (getting confused?) as well as our family.  Only small second/third hand details were passed along to S (the older of the two) on what had become of J.  We both talked of how we'd love to find her, but from what we heard, she wanted nothing to do with any of us.  So, we reluctantly didn't begin the large-scale search for her in order to respect what we thought were her wishes.

Last week, S decided it was time to find J.  Don't know why she thought NOW was the time, I guess it was because she thought they had a way to track her down.  Anyway, J has been located!  Not only has she been located (after a few false leads!), but I have SPOKEN to her!  I wept and wept yesterday when sister, S, called to tell me she'd spoken with J and J WANTED to talk to myself and my family!  Apparently we'd been told wrong and she'd always wanted to reunite with us!  

J and I spoke for TWO hours yesterday afternoon.  Half the time I was hardly able to form sentences - had our little J really grown up?!  She sounds sooooo different.  Of course she would, but when you haven't spoken to someone since they were 7 years old.... at ALMOST 22 years old now they sound pretty different!  She's truly blowing me away.  I couldn't be more amazed at what she's endured, overcome, and risen above.  There isn't an ounce of weakness in her, I think.  She sounds so mature and couldn't be more sweet and polite.  Wow.  I've fallen in love all over again with my baby sister.  :-D  She's back - and hopefully for good this time!  We're halfway across the country from each other right now, but we're hoping to meet face-to-face soon.  I haven't seen a picture of her yet... so I have no idea what she looks like.  It's weird when I talk to her because I have this vision of her tiny (she was TINY for her age) little self with white-blond hair and her cherubic face with adorable chubby cheeks.  She tells me her hair darkened and she's NEARLY my height!  (She's 5'6", I'm 5'7").  She was so little we all figured she'd be lucky to hit 5'0"!

Ok, enough rambling.  I spoke with her again today for about 45 minutes... this is unbelievably surreal.  I am in total awe.  Thanks for listening to me ramble - I just had to share my joy!  She's doing so well with this "blast from the past."  She spent most of the day yesterday on the phone - talking to S, talking to my parents, talking to me.  It's crazy.  I hope we don't overwhelm her - at this point she tells us she's realizing how much she missed us... but I'm sure that'll wear off soon when she remembers how goofy we all are!  ;-)