Pamela Slaton - Reunited: An Investigative Genealogist Unlocks Some of Lifes Greatest Family Mysteries

I write this to honor the memory of the Monaci familymy family.

Authors Note

As I think about how I ended up in this crazy place I find myself in today, its only natural to think of the people who have inspired and shaped my life from the very beginning. I can remember always feeling loved and special, even before I could crawl. I was consistently aware of the existence of my birth mother and the fact that she gave birth to me, but at the same time I adored my adoptive parents. There was no question that the mother and father who raised me were my real parents.

Still, I searched for what I believed to be the perfect fantasy mother. I found her, and to say that she fell short of this ideal is an understatement.

My mother (my true mother), Ann, was a strong-willed, no-nonsense kind of woman who had endured many great losses during her lifetime. Her father and mother were both deceased by the time she was twenty-nine years old. But that was just the beginning of her heartbreak. My brother, Ronnie, a very young man, displayed a courage that was inexplicable. He knew that he was losing his battle with his cancer and desperately tried to hide his increasingly frightening symptoms from my parents. Sadly, my brother lost his fight to this horrible disease in May 1984, at the age of twenty-two. Looking back, I dont know how my parents survived the unbearable grief of losing a child.

Then my dad, Ronald, passed away at the tragically young age of fifty-four. I knew that he would not live to be an old man. When I prayed at night, I would beg God to let him live long enough to meet his grandchild, to help him heal the hole in his heart from the loss of my brother. At the very least, I wanted to be able to tell him I was expecting before he died. I learned I was pregnant with my first son on October 20, 1988. Dad was overjoyed with the news and bragged to anyone who would listen that he was going to be a grandfather. Then my father, my first love, died on October 24, 1988, a mere four days after learning the news of my pregnancy. God did answer my prayer. We buried him with the picture of my sons first sonogram. Eight months later, my baby was born. Ronald Slaton entered the world at a whopping ten pounds, two ounces. My boy Ronnie was the light that we needed in our lives. I cant help but wonder if Dad had a hand in helping to whip up this supersized baby from Heaven above.

I gave birth to my second son, Mikey (Mo Mo), in 1994. Although not as large a baby as his brother, he made sure we all knew he was present. As a little guy, he was a character, and remains so today.

Mom came to live with us in South Jersey in 2002. She loved to cook and do laundry. I was not going to argue. My business keeps me busy ten hours or more a day and her help was a Godsend. Her presence was just the kind of inspiration our little family needed. At my moms insistence, we all gathered around our kitchen table at 5:00 P.M. every night to have dinner and enjoy her incredible home cooking, just as we had during my childhood.

I experienced a great loss in September 2010. My mom, after having minor surgery, which should have been free of complications, suffered a blood clot and was gone in an instant. She died in my house, with my arms around her. I cannot express how great a loss this is to me. My mother, my best friend, my rock, and the last surviving member of my immediate family, was gone. She left me to join Dad and Ronnie in Heaven. Shed long told me she was ready to go, but I just hadnt expected it to be quite so soon.

The pain is still raw. For the first time in my life, I really do feel like an orphan. I have experienced a deep sense of anger, sadness, and abandonmenta depth of despair that I never knew existed. I also realize that everything I thought I was searching for was right under my nose the whole time.

My mothers courage and strength never dimmed, and I am inspired by her daily in everything that I do.

I am who I am because of the family who raised me and the love of my husband, Mike, who is a gift from God, as well as the blessings of my two boys.

As an adoptee who does family searches for a living, I have always believed that DNA is a vital part of what we are. But ultimately, it is how we love, respect, and nurture one another that make us who we are. This is what my real family, my adoptive family, has taught me.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Introduction

People always ask me why so many adoptees feel the urge to search. Even when our childhoods are perfect, with wonderful adoptive parents and tight-knit, nurturing families, the desire to know is always there, lurking under the surface. We cant escape it.

Ill tell you why we search, and it isnt necessarily for the reasons you might think. In the decade and a half since I first started in the search business, Ive solved more than three thousand cases, and for almost every single one of my clients, its not a matter of replacing an existing family. They dont expect to find some love they never had. Its not some selfish quest for more affection. Its about acknowledgment. Its about being able to say to your birth mother, Im okay. I had a good life. You did the right thing. I hope you moved on with your life. I hope youre okay, too.

Searching for ones origins means nothing less than validating ones own existence. Everyone wants to know where they came from. Its a subject that eternally fascinates. Most people take their origins for granted. For the nonadopted, the basic parameters are obvious. They know where they got those dimples, the color of their eyes, their curly hair or straight hair, their medical history. But for adoptees, their lineage is represented by a big black void. At some point in their lives, the desire to know is going to hit hard. As I tell my clients, You werent dropped off from the mother ship. You are someone, and you came from somewhere.

These are the stories of adoptees and their search for themselves. The impulse to search is about the basic human need to connect with those who gave you life. At a minimum, it offers closure. It fills in the missing pages in the story of our lives. We need to know that first chapter to better understand ourselves and what happens next. Beyond that, the search teaches us something profound about humanity and the blood ties that bind despite decades of separation.

Believe me, this is not another advocacy book pushing the open adoption agenda. Sure, I bump up against plenty of the laws and bureaucratic obstacles that make my job more difficult, but I keep pounding until I get past them. More than 90 percent of the time, I solve the case Im working on. Along the way, Ill stumble into dead ends and get sidetracked by countless false leads. But thats just part of the journey. Each blind alley and miscue teaches me something fascinating about the process of the search and the hope and disappointment it brings. With every case, I feel like a character in an emotionally charged suspense novel. I get a little lost in their stories as I seek to reunite adoptees with their birth parents across all walks of life. For me, its personal. Each successful case helps bring back some of the missing pieces in my own failed attempt to reunite with my birth mother. I get to be a part of some of the most moving and gratifying moments in my clients lives, and each time I get to bear witness, it heals me just a little bit.