My Adoption Story: Finding my family in Russia

oh this is going to be a story for you guys today i got my water and my coffee because today instead of information in costa rica i'm going to tell you guys a story my adoption story so if you're new to this channel if you're just getting to know me or maybe if you've been watching for a while i actually wanted to share this story it's really not this has nothing to do with costa rica but i just wanted to share a big part of my life and something that's really made me who i am today and it's a pretty neat story so this story is about how i was adopted from russia and i actually found my family there when i was 16 years old and i've been back to visit them so i will start at the beginning after i was born in russia i was placed into an orphanage and luckily a year and three months later a amazing couple from the united states who are my parents now they actually adopted me so my dad had flown to st petersburg russia went to the orphanage apparently i when i first saw him i cried a lot because i'd never seen a male before you know and when i was in the orphanage it was only females that were taking care of the babies so so yeah luckily my parents you know adopted and i came back to the united states with them and that's how i got to united states i was really lucky to be raised in a great family we you know i was raised in virginia um went to a great school how to have an older brother and really just had a good life experience and i'm really thankful for that but it's also this adoption's really shaped me into who i am today and so i've always been a very curious and someone who just needs to know everything so you can imagine that i needed to know where i came from and you know i had this feeling ever since you know i was little that i was going to find my family in russia so even my adoptive mom she had told me this story about about i guess when i was in girl scouts the true leader had to come to her and let her know that i was telling the other girls that i was going to rent a jet ski and jet ski over to russia and find my family and i don't even remember saying this i don't know how old i was but you know i was in girl scouts i was pretty little but i had this feeling inside of me that i was going to find them and this had nothing to do that i do with me being unhappy as to where i was um you know i really got i'm so fortunate i was raised in a really wonderful family i have amazing parents um and but i always had this curiosity i just wanted to know where i came from uh i've always felt very connected to my russian roots and it was something that i just was going to set out on so when i was 13 you know this is kind of when you start your identity development um as a person you know you start having those questions of okay who am i you know i remember being in school and and you do the family tree lessons and science class or something like that and those were always big question marks for me i was always like okay well where did i come from who does my family look like so being the curious person that i was i found my adoption papers copied them all like photocopied them all and um but i was also 13 so i did not know what to do with them at that time and also just the internet wasn't what it was so you know being a 13 year old i didn't know what to do with the information i just knew that i found it and i had information so i kind of put it away for a while and you know of course page is interrupting my story so i put it away for a while and i did of course i asked my doctor parents you know um what the situation was you know why was i put up for adoption and they had told me that um my birth mom was young you know she was 19 she was unmarried and you know in russia just the times were different things were just different than in back in the early 90s and you know that's okay so i understood that but also as a kid you know i learned a lot about psychology and development and how those things work and i just know that when you're a kid sure you can be told something and maybe logically understand it but there was some really deep feelings in me you know there was abandon feelings of abandonment um very deep ones i mean really deep right so i think i thought that if i found them this would help me feel better so i understood the situation but kids don't work with logic you know they only have those feelings so although i got older and i understood logically why i was adopted and like why it happened um i did not understand you know the the feelings you know the the child feelings of abandonment were still inside me so i i've decided i'm gonna find them so i had my papers when i was about 15 years old um i was in a spanish class and i we had this substitute teacher and she spoke russian so i remember talking to her and i thought you know what i'm gonna bring her my papers and ask her if she can help me read them because again this was just the internet wasn't what it was and these are just copies of papers and a lot of it was handwritten and i just didn't understand what they said so i brought the papers in and she did help me to understand that i in fact did have my birth mom's name on those papers i had a name i had some addresses again i still didn't really understand a lot of the papers i had the orphanage name i had a maternity home so i had this information and i didn't really know what to do with it um being 15 i was a bit smarter then um so i started my google searches you know and relentlessly searching and searching and hitting blocks and finding websites and just exploring options and i just remember hitting so many brick walls but being so determined that i said no i'm going to find them i i don't care you know the internet if we didn't have facebook then you know this was a long time ago there was no facebook there was i'm like still like how did i do this you're gonna find out how i did it so so i hit so many blocks and it was frustrating eventually i found this website called you know in that time it was called russian family search maybe russianfamilysearch.com or something like that i don't think it exists anymore so i found this website and um you know they claim to find families in russia so i was like great so i contacted them and they you know i got a reply back from the woman she said well the thing is you're under 18 years old we can't help you you know maybe have your mom contact us so i was like okay so then i made a new email account a new gmail account with my mom's name sorry mom if you're watching this i think you probably already know this already um so i made a new gmail account uh i emailed the woman back saying hello i'm sarah's mom and you know started the conversation again but pretending i was my adoptive mom again sorry mom if you're watching this a long time ago hopefully you can't ground me anymore so i started corresponding with this woman and we're going back and forth and i gave her all the information that i had and the deal was okay for 50 um if they found information like an address a viable address then they would send a letter so a letter like introducing me you know why i'm writing uh that i'm looking for my family things like that time went by and i got an email and she said that they had found something they had found an address they actually found my grandmother so it turns out in my adoption papers i had the address my grandmother's address was right there but the street name had changed so when the soviet union had collapsed i guess a lot of the street names had changed so i already had the address and the woman told me instead of sending a letter her guy in russia had got there was some kind of miscommunication so the guy had actually gone to the address visited my grandmother taken photos took videos showed my grandmother photos of me you know all of this information um it was crazy so of course i'm just like oh my gosh oh my gosh and then this woman tells me yeah but that costs 500 and of course don't don't forget i'm talking to her as my mom and i'm just like oh like 500 you know i'm 15 years old i've been working since i was like 13 but um 500 is a lot that's a lot for a 15 year old you know you know we agreed on 50. so i was able to negotiate with her as in the most adult way that i could at 15 years old i told her okay our deal was 50 you know it's kind of not my fault that this mistake was made but i understand the efforts that were put in so i agreed to send 50 and then she could send me half of the information and if it was real uh like information then i would send her another fifty dollars and then they could send me the rest and we would be done with it because also remember i don't remember i didn't know is this a scam you know what if what if this is a scam what if they didn't find anything and now they're just going to try to take 500 from me 915 and i don't have 500 nowhere near close so um so i sent her the first uh 50 and they ended up sending me all of the information everything every last bit which was incredible so i guess my grandmother in russia had been hounding this guy who had found her and calling him every day and asking when are you going to give her my information when are you going to give her my information so this guy was so frustrated by that point he just sent me everything and it was it was real it was real i mean i saw the photos and there's no way i mean it i looked like a mirror image of um very close to what my mom looked like what she looks like so it was an incredible feeling and then after i found them of course i had to tell my adoptive parents i'd tell my parents so i remember sitting them down and you know i asked them to turn off the tv which meant you know we're gonna have a serious talk right and of course they replied like okay what happened what did sarah do oh no and i told them so i said you know i found my family in russia and you know they were shocked and i think we all went through a lot of different emotions and you know they of course were like are you sure are you sure it's them and i showed them the pictures and they were like oh yep that's them that's definitely them so that put me in contact with my grandmother so that's my mom's my my biological mom's mother and she was in st petersburg still so where i was born so she had told me so now the story gets even crazier so she told me that my biological mom had moved to um minsk failures so it's a different country really close to russia so she told me that she had moved there she'd gotten married she had a daughter so i had a little sister like that was so exciting uh you know i've had an older brother he's four years older than me he's biological child of my parents and i was excited so however um my biological mom did not tell her husband that she had a child and you know so my grandmother was a little bit worried that um you know that this could create some tension or you know for obvious reasons guys like do i have to explain this um so i was in contact with my grandmother for about three months and i would ask her well you know i couldn't really physically speak to her very much so i always had to have i had a few russian friends in high school so i would have a friend either translate for me and i was learning on my own you know i bought little russian language learning books and i was trying to learn and learn how to speak and i would call and try to say something and mess up and not understand anything because my grandmother always talked so fast i did not understand her but at least you know i called so um so i would ask her if she's gonna tell my biological mom you know she's gonna tell her that i'm in contact with her um and she kept saying yes i could tell her to tell her but you know i also understood the situation was a little bit delicate but then also i was only so i was 16 years old when i finally made i just turned 16 when i made contact with my grandmother and still at 16 like these are like weird times like you know like your adolescents are just like you're figuring out who you are you're making mistakes you're like kind of messed up in the head a little bit so this did not help um uh so i decided fine okay she's not gonna tell her i'm gonna find her i know she's in mince now i'll just find her so i went on yahoo answers this is how i found my mom this is crazy i ready for this okay so i went on yahoo answers again remember the internet was not what it was back in the day and i typed in yahoo answers can somebody help me find this woman in minsk and i got a response i got a response from this guy he had emailed me and he said he'd be willing to help me so i explained in the situation and he said okay i have a friend and he's gonna ask this friend to look her up and see what he could find days later i got her like cell phone number in my email inbox this guy had sent me her cell phone number how did that happen so he said that he had a friend that was like ex spets nuts forces so i guess it's like ex special forces from the soviet union times and um that's how we got the number his friend literally just looked up her name sent him the number and he sent me the number so within a matter of days with the internet that we had back then i have the actual mobile phone number of my biological mom so the guy had um tried to call her so you know i'm checking my emails of course so i meant checking my emails for updates and he said yeah he's like okay i called her but there was no answer so i'm thinking okay is he even a working number and then he sends me another email oh she called me back i told her you know who you were that you were looking for her like of course she remembers you um she just told me that she was really shocked so she was very shocked and i asked him to if he could call her back and let her know that i'm going to call her in a week because even though i was 16 years old i had been on so many adoption forums uh just everywhere i'd just been everywhere all over the internet in every topic of adoption that i could find so i knew there could be a hard reality that she may not want contact with me you know i understood she had a new family um i understood that so i said okay i'm please tell her that i will call her in a week because i wanted to give her some time to process and you know some time for me to process too so a week later i remember this i was working at this country club in the gym and it was pretty quiet um you know the pool was closed i remember taking like my lunch break i went outside by the tables i had the wi-fi uh i had skype so you know that's how that's what i was using to call like more numbers at the time and yeah so i dialed her number and i called her and she picked up and she said hi and she said she was sorry so that's what i remember from that conversation i don't honestly it was a long time ago so i was 12 12 13 years ago so you know she said that she was um but she was sorry and of course she wanted to know how i was doing and she sounded very flustered and i was very flustered and there was obviously a language barrier even though i'd been studying on my own and you know reading books and trying to learn how to write and pronounce things she did she does speak a bit of english so that helped so yeah we had our first conversation and so that was when i was 16 years old and then when i was 18 or actually about to turn 18 about to graduate high school i i was still in contact with her over those two years and she told me that she was going to go from minsk to st petersburg with my little sister to visit my grandmother so i was like this is my chance i need to go there because she still hadn't told her husband that's fine we're not here to judge anybody so yeah i was like this is my chance i have to do this like i have to go and uh you know i was about to graduate high school and she was going to be there it was sometime in may so i just knew that i had to go so i approached my parents about it at first they were like no absolutely not you're not going you're not going you're not going you know me being my teenage self there was some rebellion and anger and lots of feelings going on um and eventually me and my parents came the decision that um i could go but um my mom my adoptive mom was gonna come with me so and then my aunt came too so that was really cool so we went me my mom my adopted mom and my aunt got on a plane despite my poor mom's uh um she hates being on planes so i'm very proud of her for doing that so we got on a plane and we went all the way to russia and that was an absolute crazy surreal experience as well um oh and the cool part is so i had worked at this country club so there was a pool there and i don't know if you guys ever noticed in the united states they hire a lot of people from other countries to work as lifeguards whether that's restaurants or pools or things like that so i had actually started getting like i started making all these friends from russia because i worked with them every day and some of them happen to live in st petersburg so when we got to st petersburg we already had friends and we were so well taken care of and oh my gosh like russian people are just the most amazing hospitable warm people when you really get to know them they're just incredible so we felt super supported when we got there we stayed at a hotel where two of my my girlfriends worked and it was really adorable and so we were there for i guess like a night and a full day before i actually met my family and so my adopted no my biological mom my grandmother and my little sister were my sisters 11 years younger than me so at the time she was five years old and so they were gonna come meet us at the hotel and so i thought they were gonna come later so we kind of went out for the day and we saw a bunch of different things and there was this festival going on and it was super cool and uh and then i get this phone call from my friend at the hotel she calls my other friends who's with us we're so blessed to have amazing people there and we're still in contact with them and they're amazing people um so so yeah so they called and said yeah sarah your family's here at the hotel and i was like oh my gosh like you know so we got in a taxi and we went back to the hotel and i remember they were like up these stairs in a conference room and i went along so i went up the stairs alone and it was just i haven't thought about this in a while actually this whole experience um i went up the stairs and i could just see like these shadows through you know through the window into the conference room and i opened up the door and there they were you know my biological mom my grandmother my sister and it was wild you know there was just so many emotions you know there was crying there was hugging um i felt weird i don't know i felt a lot i felt a lot at one time and i think it was like almost too much to process at that time so i don't think i processed any of it at that time so it was a lot so we met you know and and we spent days together so that was um [Music] we you know visited various parts of the city and went on a boat tour and did a lot of these really amazing things and um it was a really great experience when i look back on it but it was really hard i was 17 and i don't think i you know i didn't have the emotional maturity um so it was a lot to deal with as a 17 year old you know and i really kind of did think that this was going to make me feel better like i thought that meeting my family was going to help kind of like heal some of those abandonment ones that i have um but maybe it made them a little bit worse i don't know i i learned that that wasn't what was gonna fix it so this experience does go on and i'm gonna continue um so that i did learn that out of it so you know the trip went well at the end i didn't actually really get to say goodbye i thought that i was they were gonna come with us to the airport uh to say goodbye but they didn't and that's okay too i'm okay with that now but at the time that was something that was really difficult and it kind of made me feel like i was abandoned all over again you know but um so i left i left russia and i didn't call i didn't call them for a while um i was still kind of processing the whole trip and a lot of the emotions and i started going to college and i just kind of moved on with my life you know i stayed in touch a bit but overall i just kind of moved on with my life and um and after college so i studied social work you don't already know that as a social worker in the united states and after college i kind of like went on like a self-care health kick i don't know this is when i kind of started becoming more self-aware and just kind of realized that i had a lot of these unhealthy patterns um you know just emotional patterns i've always had my life together i've always been great before great with school had lots of friends um you know a put together person but underneath all of that i had like some serious pain and some serious emotions that i needed to deal with but i just really didn't know how so i kind of started that self-development journey you know through reading books doing self work taking time for reflection and so you know i just it at all all those emotions have kind of built up to a point over the years where i was like i gotta deal with this like it wasn't affecting my outside life like i said in terms of work or or friendships or anything like that but inside i was hurting i could feel that and i could and i didn't want that anymore i said okay what can i do so i learned okay going to meet them didn't heal that how can i do that okay i need to do that so i kind of started on my my self-development journey and as i got further into that you know i did a lot of self work and it's always continuing right so and it took you know months and months of good self work good good habits reading reflecting um being partaking in healthy activities you know sleeping good exercising just really taking care of myself physically and emotionally and i did get to a really amazing point you know a point of i went through some experiences that brought me to some very intense realizations in a very good way so i won't go too far into depth than that but i can say i had some major like life-altering epiphanies like life-altering all of the blame that i felt the blame anger resentment all those childhood feelings that sure logically i understood the situation but feeling lies were not processed like came to the surface and i was able to actually heal those there was no more blame no more anger nothing you know all i felt i i finally understood i was like holy crap [Music] part of me had played kind of a little bit over my life i played kind of the victim role oh for me i was adopted and i was put in an orphanage and my family didn't want me and you know that was a story you know that was a story that i had for a bit and then i realized wow sarah like what a stupid story not a stupid story but this story is not true and i had actually for the first time felt really felt it in my in in me of oh like wait i was actually taking care of this whole time everything was so perfect everything was like yes i was in an orphanage but but but look at how well okay if you want to call it god the universe higher power whatever you want to call it whatever your beliefs are these are mine like look at how the universe and and god took care of you in each of these steps you know it's like just took such special care and look at how all this brought you to where you are today i felt so much love and understanding for my biological mom and my family there was there was no more blame there was no more anger i just under i got i got it i was like wow she's she's the same energy that i am like we're made of the same core stuff and with that understanding and finally feeling that and like grasping it and like feeling it with every in every part of my being i was like okay like i can't blame her for any of this like she's just a person she's just she's just like me so those really intense epiphanies that i had just like took all of that blame it felt like a giant weight had been lifted off of my shoulders i felt like this weight that had been on me for my entire life had finally just like been taken off getting emotional because it's just so relieving it's so much relief that's what i felt and and i guess i still feel that you know i'm just remembering that right now i felt so relieved that that i was able to come to a space of feeling uh so much love in in what had happened and a lot of closure so after a lot of those epiphanies i was like oh my gosh i need to get my butt back to russia and i need to talk to my biological mom because i also during those epiphanies i had felt all of that guilt that she had had and i was like wow like my biological mom is harboring so much guilt over all of this situation and i don't want her to live her life like that so i need to go back and talk to her and tell her that she did the right thing that everything's okay thank you like thank you for your decision thank you for giving birth to me in the first place like thank you so i booked a ticket and i went to russia before i moved to costa rica actually so i moved to costa rica in september 2015 and i went back to russia in i think it was either may or june of 2015. so right before i moved to costa rica i had gone back to russia um i needed to talk to them so at this time i went back by myself you know this was years later so i wasn't a little baby anymore um but i still had all my same friends there and that was amazing you know i had a lot of friends and support when i went my friends picked me up from the airport i had friends i'd stayed with um oh my god it was such a cool trip it was such a cool trip and it was really healing so i did get to i mean i saw the city i got to go i walked myself all around st petersburg i mean i just walked for hours and hours and hours and i just walked and walked and walked and saw so many beautiful things and people and i even met a really neat friend which was just like so cool like you know the universe god whatever you want to call it puts people in your path and i had met this uh just this guy there he was around my age and it was just um a really cool friendship that i had there and i still cherish and it was nice it was like i had some kind of comic relief because i was still kind of dealing with some serious emotions when i'd gone there um but it was nice to have that and i'm very thankful for it so i did go back and i talked to my biological mom and by then she had told her husband so that was really intense i met him as well seems like a very nice person and oh by then so my my biological mom had moved back to st petersburg with her husband and her with my little sister and they were living with my grandmother so i had talked to my biological mom and i remember at one point we were standing outside of my grandmother's apartment and we were just waiting for my grandmother and my sister to come down so i just looked at her and i said um i love you in russian and she's and she looked at me and said like for what like i didn't she said i didn't do anything for you and i just said that you don't you didn't have to do anything for me like you gave birth to me that's all you had to do and i told her that you know thank you like you made the right decision and i don't want you to feel this guilt and i just want to thank you and tell you that i love you and that you did the right thing and um and i feel at peace with that and i want you to feel good about this and it was a really special moment and i think i hope it helped you know you know i can't control her internal process and what she's going through and like whatever feeling she might have but i just wanted her to know that that i was at peace with everything and i didn't blame her for anything and i want her to feel good about about you know her choices and yeah it was such a crazy trip um that was a really cool trip too um yeah so that's my adoption story um and it's for me it's it's it's shaped a lot of who i am today and i think it's given me a lot of ownership of like my choices and how i choose to feel each day because i spent a lot of time doing really good but i didn't feel good you know so so like i know what it feels like to have to make it to look like your life's all together but it's not on the inside and so i feel relieved um that's just a bit of who i am and you know and that's how i live my life here in costa rica and this whole experience has just like really taught me to own my feelings and how i choose to feel each day and know that i have power and control over that and and just being brave and feeling like you can work through whatever it is that you need to work through and that forgiveness is always there you can always you know being able to forgive someone and like i'm a really happy and positive person i know you guys see that a lot through my videos and i really am but it took work to get that way and it doesn't mean that hard days don't come but it's conscious decisions every day to like really say okay who do i want to be how do i want to live my life what am i going to feel fill my mind with what am i going to who am i going to be at my core and i wanted to share this experience with you guys because this has probably been one of the most monumental experiences obviously like going through an adoption finding like finding your birth family and realizing that outside factors can't really change how you feel on the inside and it doesn't matter where you are you need to be willing to do that self work on the inside and not and and not rely on outside circumstances for that to happen so that's it that's the story i mean i'm sure it gets a little bit more in depth than that but that's kind of the story and that's that's how that's like that's what has made me who i am today and well my my goal my dream was for this year in december i don't think my dad watches these videos so i wanted to give him a christmas present of uh like plane tickets to go to russia because he was the one who got me who went to russia when i was a baby and you know did the adoption paperwork and brought me back to the united states so it was my i really wanted this christmas to be able to gift him uh plane tickets and a trip for us to go back to st petersburg together to see the city but obviously with covid and everything going on it's kind of who knows we'll be able to travel like that again and um but you know i hope that's going to happen and when it does you dagger guys are definitely going to hear about it but i wanted to go you know like next year around this time to russia so i'll keep you updated on that and as the story continues and thanks for listening and thanks for yeah thanks for listening and letting me having sticking around for me to share this story with you and i know it's not close to related but i wanted to share a little piece of myself with you guys so thanks again

Channel: Sarah Elena

Views: 67,968

Keywords: Russia, adoption, being adopted, adopted from russia, healing from adoption, adoption story, story about being adopted, what it's like being adopted, I was adopted

Id: MhFB6mz8oh8

Length: 34min 31sec (2071 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020