I’m Judy, and I’m 80 years old. That feels strange to say out loud, even stranger to write. Eight decades of living, loving, losing—and yet the one thing that has haunted me my entire life only just now found its resolution.
I grew up in North Dakota, in a small house with creaky floors and the smell of old pine. My earliest memories are a blur, but one thing was always clear: I had a sister. Her name was May. She was two years younger than me, with thick brown curls and the kind of laugh that made strangers smile. We were inseparable—until we weren’t.
I was 13 when our parents died in a car accident. One moment we were all sitting at dinner, the next, May and I were in the back of a social worker’s sedan, holding hands as tight as we could. But tight wasn’t tight enough. The state deemed it best to separate us—”better chances at adoption,” they said. Two girls, close in age, a package deal? Apparently, that was too much to ask.
I ended up with the Harrisons, a decent family in Minnesota. May was sent to another town, and then… she vanished. Letters I wrote were returned. My foster parents were kind but strict—“let the past stay in the past,” they’d tell me. But May was my past. And she was the future I kept waiting for.
Years passed. I married young, had three kids, worked as a nurse for over thirty years. But in quiet moments—folding laundry, listening to the radio, watching snow fall—I’d find myself wondering: Is she alive? Does she remember me? Does she even know she had a sister?
In my thirties, I tried searching for her. This was the ’70s, so it meant phone books, city records, long-distance calls to adoption agencies who either didn’t know or didn’t care. I once drove six hours to meet a “Marjorie Dean” who I was sure had to be her. She wasn’t. The disappointment stuck with me for weeks.
I didn’t give up, though. When the internet came around, I jumped on it. My kids taught me how to use Facebook and ancestry sites. I did DNA tests. I joined groups. I reached out to people who matched 2% of my genome and asked awkward questions: “Do you know a May?” Most people didn’t respond. A few were polite. One woman told me I should move on, that if May was out there, she would’ve found me by now.
Maybe that was true. But I couldn’t.
Then, this past January, something shifted.
It was my grandson Robbie who noticed it first. He’s 24, a computer science major who spends more time online than he does blinking, I swear. One day, he barged into my kitchen with his laptop and said, “Grandma, I think I found something.”
He showed me a Facebook profile with one of those grainy scanned photos—black and white, two girls standing beside a picket fence. My heart stopped. It was us. The photo was from that old album I still kept in my nightstand. The caption underneath read: “Me and my sister Judy, circa 1957. Still hoping to find her one day.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Robbie reached out to the account. Weeks passed. Then one afternoon, as I was watering my roses, my phone buzzed.
“I think we found her.”
That was all it said.
The next day, Robbie drove me to a small town in Wisconsin. I sat in the passenger seat, twisting the hem of my coat like a nervous schoolgirl. I hadn’t felt that vulnerable in decades.
When we pulled up to the house—a tidy little bungalow with wind chimes on the porch—I hesitated. My heart pounded so loud, I swear it echoed off the dashboard. I took one shaky breath and knocked.
The door opened.
A woman stood there, slightly hunched, gray hair pulled into a bun. She stared at me for a long moment. Then she whispered, “Judy?”
It was May.
Her voice was older, softer, but unmistakable. I burst into tears. So did she.
We didn’t say anything for a while. We just hugged—like we were trying to make up for all the years we missed. I could feel her sobbing into my coat, and I clutched her like she was 11 again, like we were back in that car together, still holding on.
Inside, over tea and old photo albums, we began to fill in the blanks. She’d been adopted by a family in Milwaukee, never told she had a sister. Her life had been full—husband, children, travel—but always shadowed by a strange emptiness she couldn’t name. When her husband passed away five years ago, she started digging into her past. Eventually, she uploaded that childhood photo hoping someone, somewhere, might recognize it.
Turns out, a woman from one of my ancestry groups did. She messaged Robbie. And the rest, well… that was our miracle.
We spent hours talking. About the different paths our lives had taken. About the ways we’d felt incomplete. About the invisible thread that had somehow tied us together all along.
As the sun set, she showed me a drawer in her living room. Inside were dozens of sketches she’d made over the years. Portraits. Faces. One, dated 1981, looked uncannily like me at that age.
“I don’t know why I drew this,” she said quietly. “But I kept imagining you out there. I guess part of me always believed.”
We’ve seen each other every week since. My kids adore her. She’s met all six of my grandkids and has become Aunt May to every one of them. We share stories, old recipes, even finish each other’s sentences like we used to.
It took 67 years, but I finally found my sister.
And in finding her, I found a part of myself I thought was lost forever.
So if you’re reading this, if you’re still searching for someone—or something—don’t give up. The road might be long. But sometimes, just sometimes, it leads you exactly where you’re meant to be.
And hey, if this story touched you, maybe give it a share or a like. You never know who might be out there waiting to be found.
