Mothers know a car is the best place to have a serious conversation. “Can we go into the vault”? Ashton asked as she drove out of the parking lot after Mother’s Day breakfast. “I have something to tell you. I have not even told my sisters because I want you to hear it from me first. I have found my birth mother”. And there it was. The words I had expected for decades shot into the air, seizing my breath. They took hold of my heart and held on tight. “How does that make you feel, Mom”? she asked, anxiously awaiting my response. “If I were you, I would want to know too.” I often wondered how I would react, and was surprised it would be a sense of calm.
She had given this conversation a lot of thought. I wondered why she wanted to have our breakfast alone, without her sisters, and now I understood. She showed me love and respect by giving me space to digest the news. “I want us to tell my sister’s together.”
Two days later, Ashton led a call with her sisters. She shared that she had been in touch with their birth mother. She shared the story of the process, the pictures, and the news that they had three older sisters. They are in touch via an app that translates English and Korean so they can communicate. I hope that we can visit Korea to meet their birth family when the world settles down. Everyone deserves to know where their story begins.
I think about that morning, and my heart swells—not for what was said, but for what was understood. In Ashton’s eyes, I saw a quiet knowing. She had come to see the love threaded through every sacrifice, the silent promise I kept to honor her birth mother’s hope for giving her daughters a better life.
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