Anne Peshka had always known she was adopted. As the eldest of eight children, with two other siblings adopted after her, she says that her parents were always open and transparent about her adoption, which took place in June 1966, but she didn't have much information to share.
"I knew that my birth mother was a twin, that she had red hair, and that her family was in the Air Force," Anne tells Mom.com.
She also knew that her birth mother was much younger than her father, and that her mom was placed with a Catholic adoption agency shortly after becoming pregnant in the late 1960s.
But beyond that, much of Anne's past was a mystery — until an at-home DNA kit changed everything.
Anne first started looking for her birth parents in the mid-1980s
"My mom was helpful when I turned 18," Anne, now 56, recalls. "She was trying to help me find them, but we mostly hit a brick wall."
In those days, the process of tracking down long-lost relatives was a slow and agonizing one. Still, she remained hopeful.
"I’ve got a letter, a binder of all the investigators that I hired, [and] letters they wrote [on my behalf]," Anne shares. "My mom even wrote a letter trying to open up doors for me … Whether it was painful or not, I’ll never know."
For years, those doors remained closed
But in 2013, things finally started to change.
By then, genetic testing had come a long way, and at-home DNA test kits were making it possible for people to find out more about their origins than ever before. Anne, who was then a happily married mother of two grown sons, chose 23andMe, a leading genomics and biotechnology company.
She submitted a swab of her saliva through the mail, and when her results came back, they confirmed something she'd always been told but never knew for sure: Her birth parents had been a mix of Swedish, Irish, German, and Chinese — and apparently, so was she.
Still, the rest of the pieces wouldn't fall into place until several years later
In 2018, Anne finally got an ancestry hit on the 23andMe website that seemed promising. A message popped up from someone who was determined to be a relative — and not just any relative, but a first cousin.
After chatting for a bit online, Anne broached the subject of adoption, and the cousin recalled hearing about an aunt who gave a child up for adoption in the late 1960s.
From there, the story just flowed and the details quickly hit home
According to Anne, she learned that when her mother became pregnant with her, she was young and unmarried. Though she appeared to be in a serious relationship with the birth father, he was eight years older than her, and considering the culture at the time, their situation wasn't ideal.
So they decided to place the baby up for adoption.
But to Anne's surprise, that wasn't the end of their story. The pair stayed together afterward and married just two years later. They remained married for another 25 years and welcomed two more daughters.
For Anne, the news was stunning. But it also left the Florida native wanting to know more.
In November 2019, she was given the chance she'd been waiting for
A meetup was arranged in Jacksonville, Florida, where much of her birth family still lived. And incredibly, Anne was told that both her birth mother and birth father were still alive and wanted to see her.
Meeting both of them after decades of wondering who they were was more than a bit surreal. But staring into the eyes of her two sisters — full biological siblings that she never knew existed — also threw her for a loop.
"When I walked around the corner and finally saw someone that looked like me, it was like … wow," Anne recalls.
The reunion was everything she hoped for
Just one month later, in December 2019, she even found herself celebrating Christmas with her birth family for the very first time.
That said, Anne admits that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Her two sisters, Jenny and Katherine, both found themselves wrestling with some complicated emotions about meeting a sister they never knew existed.
"It was not easy for them," she admits. "They were understanding, but it was hard."
Over time, their initial connection grew a bit more complicated.
"We were not the same type of people," Anne explains, adding that her sisters both have "a lot of insecurities" about her. "They’re more reserved, [and] I think I come across as just a little bit strong for them."
"Although we’re friendly, we just don’t talk like we used to."
When it came to both of her birth parents, the bond was more natural
Anne says she got along great with both of her parents, whom she learned were named Janet and Lawrence. Though they have since divorced, the former couple maintains a friendly relationship, and were happy to meet her at the same time.
Anne felt a particular kinship with her dad (who goes by the nickname "Bunky"), and describes him as a positive person as well as a "glass half full" kind of guy. In many ways, she seems to take right after him — both she and Bunky love root beer, enjoy many of the same foods (including jalapeños), and have a similar outlook on life.
Many of the details in the health portion of Anne's 23andMe analysis also started to make sense when she compared them to her mother's.
"My mom and I have this unique thing where Novacane doesn’t work on either of us," she shares.
And in an interesting twist, Anne also learned that her mother's twin sister had given a baby up for adoption too, right around the same time she was born.
Ultimately, the reunion gave Anne the sense of peace she'd longed for for decades
And now, some four years later, she's happy to say that she still maintains a close relationship with both of her birth parents.
She has since learned that for years, Janet harbored guilt about what she'd done.
"My mom felt ashamed and thought her [birth] daughter would never want to meet her," Anne recalls. "She was also scared that her church would look down on her [if the truth ever came out]."
"One day I told her, 'Sometime you really need to share your story. So many people have either gone through the same experience, or know somebody that has," Anne recalls.
Eventually, her mother worked up the courage to do just that.
"A handful of women got up after she spoke and thanked her," Anne says of the moment her mother shared her story. "One woman cried and said she did the same thing."
"She had been upset she’d be damned for life," Anne continues, but "coming around to this made her finally feel healed."
The bond Anne shares with her dad, Bunky, continues to be a special one too.
"[My dad and I] talk every day, he tells me what he eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner … and how he rides his little bicycle around the neighborhood," she says with a laugh.
"Had I been rejected, I think I would have been OK," Anne admits. "I wasn’t looking for acceptance such as answers."
But the acceptance she did get has meant the world to her.
As moving as this reunion was, it wasn't the only one Anne made through 23andMe
It turns out that Anne herself had given a child up for adoption in the late 1980s, though her story was much different from what happened with her own parents.
"I was 22 when I got pregnant with him," she says of the son she now knows as Nathan.
At the time, she already had a 3-year-old son named Bill, but says she was "in no position to be parenting him, let alone a second child."
According to Anne, the child's father wasn’t a bad man, but also "wasn’t father material." He was not only caught up in drugs, but he was also unable to support the family or be much of a present parent.
So, just as her parents had done more than two decades earlier, she decided that adoption was the only way to give her baby a better shot at life.
On April 30, 1988, Anne gave birth to a healthy baby boy
And while she remained confident in her decision, she says everything about the birth and the adoption had to be kept quiet.
"I did have to go secretly and change my name so his father wouldn’t find me," she recalls.
But unlike her own adoption, Anne insisted on being a part of where her son ended up.
"I chose the [adoptive] family, but provided non-identifying information," she explains, adding that she didn't want to have to look over her shoulder if the baby's father ever caught wind of things.
Anne liked that the family she chose had experience with adoption, after adopting two children from Haiti, and were already a mixed-race family, since her birth son was half-white and half-Spanish.
"I set it up where I would deliver him [and be with him] until the final moment when I could relinquish him," Anne recalls. "I wanted him to bond with somebody instead of just being in the hospital."
Naturally, Anne says that giving up her son was incredibly emotional.
"It's sad," she says now, looking back. "Like missing a part of you [forever]."
That said, she never once regretted her decision and knew it was for the best.
Though she thought of him often, Anne wouldn't see her son for another 30 years
In 2018 — the same year she started to hear from members of her own birth family on 23andMe — she got a message that stopped her in her tracks.
According to the website, she had matched with someone named Nathan who had a 99% probability of being her child.
"I wasn’t looking for him, he was looking for me," Anne explains. "That took me a minute to get over."
After coming up for some air, she eagerly wrote him back.
"I said, 'I’m here, I’m transparent, you can ask me anything,'" she recalls. "I can jump on a plane in an hour."
By this point, Anne was in her early 50s and had gone on to have another son. Her two boys were both well into adulthood, and Nathan himself had just turned 30.
But as eager as Nathan was to connect with his birth mom, he still needed time
"It took him about nine months or so before he invited me out to Utah [where he lives]," Anne shared.
But when they finally met up at a restaurant in February of 2019, she says she "knew who he was right away" when she saw his face.
"We had a really good connection," she says of that first meeting. "I took a step back and let him guide the relationship."
Eventually, Nathan even felt ready to meet Anne's other two sons, Bill and Andrew, as well as her birth parents.
And when he turned 33, Nathan even asked his mom for a special favor: Would she jump out of a plane with him to celebrate his birthday?
Anne was more than game.
Today, Anne can't help but feel grateful for what these past few years have given her
Even during the pandemic, when lockdowns kept her from seeing family members in person and she was forced to "visit" her dad from outside his assisted living facility, she's managed to keep a positive outlook on all of it.
She's also grateful that reconnecting with her birth parents has given her own sons more of a connection to their past.
"It's definitely made a difference in my life," she says, of reconnecting with her birth parents, as well as her son Nathan. "Because when you wonder where you come from and you never have an answer … it weighs on you. I think it’s innately in us as human beings to wonder who we are and where we came from."
Now that she no longer has to wonder, life seems even better.
"Every day is a blessing," Every day matters."
