Tips on Raising Children

Finding Your Birth Parents

Reunited and it feels good:

A birth mother and son reconnect

By

Georgia Beaverson

Phil Cigan was sixteen years old when his dad sat him down after school one day and told him the truth: Phil was adopted.

“Before that day, there were rumors and hints, but I was still shocked when I heard,” Phil reveals.

Beginning the search

From that point on, Phil definitely knew one thing: he wanted to meet his adoptive parents if at all possible.

“There are things that you want to set straight in your mind,” he explains. “I think it’s more or less human nature to want to have the gaps filled in . . . It would seem to me to go against that human nature to not want to search.”

He waited until he turned eighteen to set the ball rolling. Unfortunately, Wisconsin law requires waiting until age 21 to release adoption information. So while he counted the days ’til his 21st birthday, Phil searched the Internet and tried to “snoop around adoption agencies and courthouses, but everything was sealed up tight.”

Meanwhile. . .

In 1982, Kathy Hicks found herself seventeen and pregnant. “I was pretty scared,” she admits today. Despite her trepidation, Kathy had a mind of her own about her baby. “I decided right away by myself to give the baby up for adoption. I knew I was way too immature to raise a child.” She connected with a Catholic charity, and moved in with a foster mother in Wausau for the duration of the pregnancy. “She was absolutely wonderful to me.”

For Kathy, one of the best things about the adoption process was spending three weeks with her newborn son in his foster home. Did that make it harder for her to give him up? “The harder thing would have been never to have had that,” she reflects.

She also had a chance to meet the baby’s adoptive parents, which confirmed in her mind she’d made the right decision. The adoptive parents were so kind, they even sent Kathy a six-page letter and photos on his first birthday.

Reunited

Kathy hoped her birth son would want to find her, so she posted her contact information on the I CARE registry (see sidebar). Since most men don’t start looking for their birth parents until their 30s, Kathy was stunned when Social Services contacted her soon after Phil turned 21 to tell her he wanted to meet her.

“I basically just called her on the phone, then set up a meeting at her house the next afternoon,” Phil says. “It turned out she was living about a thirty-minute drive from my college apartment.”

You would think that, after being separated for 21 years, reuniting would be awkward for both birth mother and son. Not so.

“After about five minutes there, I felt like I’d been part of them for my whole life,” Phil recalls. “I was astounded to find out that my personality really is just a mix of a few people in the family. It helped me understand the elements that were involved in making me.”

“He looks just like me,” Kathy says with a chuckle. “He’s such a happy, easy-going man. It just felt so easy being with him.”

Happily ever after

That reunion occurred two years ago. Kathy threw a big party to introduce Phil to her friends, complete with “It’s a boy!” balloons. Since Kathy has no other children, meeting Phil has been a true blessing. “I feel like my life has come full-circle.”

She was especially grateful to find out about Phil’s growing up years. “He got things I could never have given him,” she explains.

Phil also had a chance to meet his birth father. “He’s a great guy, with a great family,” Phil says.

Is he happy to have reconnected with his roots? Definitely.

“It’s put me in close contact with a fantastic new set of people who can do nothing but enrich my life . . . It gives me peace of mind, and many answers to unspoken questions that were lurking around in the back of my head . . . It just gives me some plain ol’ life perspective.”

*Name changed.