I have been searching for Ashley's mailing address. I even had a private investigator acquaintance help out. Of course no luck. My original plan was a ship a small package to her with a couple of pictures, a letter and a small gift, I was going to send this FedEx or UPS so I could get a confirmation.
I jumped the roadblock and sent her a message instead on facebook. Part of my decision to do this was so it wouldn't completely freak her out, another part was so only she received the message and it did not get intercepted. Of course I still haven't received any type of acknowledgement back from the facebook message.
As I was getting my younger daughter ready for her first school dance tonight (another milestone to remind me of what was taken from me) I thought I would google Ashley's name.
OMG!
You have got to be kidding me!
WTH?
Right there, in front of me, plain as day...her resume! Complete with contact info!!
I couldn't believe it! Why didn't I find this a month ago? Before she packed up and left for California?
My friend (my daughter's best friend's mom) came to pick up my daughter and of course take pictures. I told her what I just found. Her eyes got really big and she asked if I printed it off. I told her I did. She asked how her resume looked, I told her I was impressed and she listed that she had a 3.5 GPA in college. She reminded me it was too late, I told her I knew. Then she reminded me...Christmas is coming up.
Christmas IS coming up. Maybe in a couple of months I can do another search and maybe find an updated resume. Maybe, just maybe, I can send her a Christmas gift. She knows I'm not Jewish and she knows that I know she went to a Jewish family...so I could send a Christmas present...right?
8 comments:
I wouldn't rely too heavily on FB mail. My FB regularly deletes my mail without my having even seen it or responded to it. I sometimes see it on my phone, then POOF....gone. The other way I find out it's missing is if people finally get fed up with waiting for me to respond and finally tell me off:)
Hi. I'm a little confused about the "too late" part. Too late because she moved? Wouldn't she have left a forwarding address with the P.O.? You might not want to send a package, but a letter would probably be forwarded, wouldn't it? Or am I misunderstanding something?
The too late part is sending the package to the address I just found. I want a delivery confirmation to make sure it was received and sending it regular mail won't give me that. I have sent so many letters and cards in the past to the Agency and they have been "lost" so I want some reassurance that it has been received.
I didn't think about my fb message disappearing!!
I'm an adoptee and my S.O. is jewish. She said she thought a Hanukuh present would be possibly be a little more thoughtFULL than maybe a Xmas present, which are commonly given to Jews by their Christian friends. Just a teeny tiny little suggestion:)
xoxooxoxoxoxoxo
i forgot to mention...you can go to the post office, pay $1 and get her forwarding address.
Okay, I'll send it as a hanukah gift, who knows maybe I can get some kind of reply by Christmas.
I'll give it a week or two then I will check with the post office. Thanks!!
Thanks for the clarification. :-)
I may be in the minority here, but I have been following your blog and others (I was adopted and it took 13 years after initial contact with my biological family before we started forging a relationship), curious at how other reunions play out.
If she hasn't yet responded to the facebook (and I think at her age she's probably very on top of her fb messages), there's a good chance she needs time to process her reaction. I think a gift to her home address might come off way too strong. It would have for me (a phone call to my unlisted home number freaked me out and stalled my reunion process by years). I think what your daughter might need is time, you've left the ball in her court and now the next move is on her.
It may not be this year or even the next five years but she knows you're interested and odds are at some point she'll come around - especially if she has a child herself - that seems to be a big trigger. I know that's not what many people want to hear but following these blogs and seeing why all these reunions go wrong it seems like moving faster than one person's comfort or process level is not in general a good thing.
I don't know you or your daughter from anybody so of course I could be totally wrong but I wanted to give you a different perspective.
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