- Barbara Lane spent decades looking for nine of her 10 sisters, who their mom abandoned.
- She called random numbers in the phone book and hired a private investigator as part of the search.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Barbara Lane. It has been edited for length and clarity.
These days, people tend to use at-home DNA kits from companies including Ancestry.com to trace their missing relatives.
But there were no websites such as 23andMe in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s when I was searching for nine of my 10 sisters, whom I'd last seen as a preschooler. Our mother had left one day and never returned.
Instead, I went through the telephone directory and called people with my last name.
While I'd always known where Kay was because we were fostered together, I'd ask whether they knew of a Ruth, an Ellen, or a Laverne, who had run away from the orphanage, in the family. They were the eldest of my sisters. I'd ask for the others in turn — Annie, Bobby, the twins Vicky and Micky, and Pamela.
Unbeknownst to me, we also had another sister named Cindy — our mother's youngest daughter. She was born after eight of us went to an orphanage.
I really had no memories of my mother
I was too young to recall what happened to break up the family. But at the orphanage in our home city of St. Louis, I remember a deep love. I had a strong attachment to my sisters. They'd sing to me, pamper me at bedtime, rub my back, and brush my hair.
I hadn't experienced trauma when my mother left us; I really had no memories of her. My trauma was being separated from my sisters.
That separation began after a married couple fostered Kay and me in 1955. Our foster father sexually abused me from the beginning. I didn't know he was abusing Kay, too. We lived in a little two-bedroom bungalow so it's incomprehensible to think that our foster mother could not know what was occurring.
My foster father had a gun. "If you speak out, I'll kill all of us," he'd say about the abuse. I believed him. I didn't tell anyone.
I became sullen, depressed, and withdrawn. When I was 14, my depression was so deep I told him to go ahead and shoot me dead. I didn't care anymore. He lost his control over me and the abuse stopped.
Kay and I left as soon as we turned 18. I got married a year later and had three children. But I struggled with unwanted memories.
I thought of my other siblings every day, but it wasn't until after our foster mother died that I felt free enough to search for our sisters in earnest. Previously, I had leafed through phone books and dialed strangers on our old rotary phone. "When can I see my sisters?" I would ask our foster parents. "Don't talk about that," they replied.
With my foster mom gone, I began by looking through microfiche at a library. I hoped that if something newsworthy had happened to my family, the newspapers may have reported it.
I'd always been intuitive and sensed my sisters would find me
Instead, I found a picture in a newspaper of me and 10 of my sisters together. My mom and dad were standing next to us. We were photographed because there was such a large number of girls in one family — and no boys.My desire to be reunited with my siblings consumed me. I searched adoption registries at Catholic Charities, which ran the orphanage. At one point, I hired a private detective. But even he couldn't find them.
Then a miracle transpired.
One day in 1997, after my family had moved to the East Coast, I sensed that my sisters would find me and not the other way around. I've always been an intuitive and spiritual person; so the thought wasn't out of the ordinary.
My sister, Ellen, who had always known the whereabouts of my other sisters, had kept a newspaper clipping that she had framed. Kay and I were pictured in an article promoting foster care. Ironically, it was talking about the "wonders" of the system.
The article intrigued Ellen's friend, an amateur sleuth, and he went to a register office in St. Louis. He managed to look through marriage records in case he found a bride whose maiden name matched the one in our article.
He eventually found Kay's marriage license from 1967. And with that information, he found her number. My sisters reached out to Kay, but before she had a chance to contact me, they called me.
I flew to St. Louis the next day. Meeting Ellen and some of my other sisters was one of the most emotional moments of my life. When we met, I just fell into their arms. I knew they would love me the way they always did. It felt like we were glued together. I could hardly believe that we'd spent 43 years apart.
Each of my sisters recalls the past in a different way
When we were kids, we didn't understand what was happening around us, but we took care of each other. It was a true sisterhood.
As adults, each of my sisters recalls our past in a different way. One sister said that our mother never intended to abandon us. Another said that she disconnected the electricity and water and simply walked out the door.
Despite that happened, I'm thankful that my sisters and I will always have a connection.
Barbara Lane is the author of a memoir, "Broken Water," which details each of her sisters' journeys.
Editor's note: Insider was unable to contact a living relative of Lane's foster father for comment.
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