It happens every January.
Whenever New Year resolutions reach fever pitch, I can always count on at least one overly dramatic post from a friend proclaiming the evils of social media and deleting themselves from Facebook. "I can't take all this negativity and hostility!" one post this year read. "I must remove this from my life and return to normalcy!"
I've never understood this grand gesture. To me, saying "I hate social media" makes as much sense as "I hate mail! I hate telephones! I hate communication!" Social media and the internet is just a new, efficient way of interacting with people. I guess if you don't like, take the next exit off the information superhighway because you WILL get run over.
Is there negativity, hatred, racism, and closed-mindedness on social media? You betcha. If you don't believe me, go send my uncle a friend request and enjoy his daily homophobic, xenophobic offerings unto the world. But just because negativity like that exists on the internet, why let it bother you? My mouse has a scroll button for a reason. If I see something stupid on Facebook, I scroll past it and don't let it ruin my day.
And sometimes? Well, sometimes social media can be truly amazing.
Last week I got a message from my friend Jenny. I think the last time we talked at length, I'd just graduated high school. A few years behind me in school, Jenny lived next door to a girl I had a massive crush on, and somehow I think she ended up with a crush on me (weird, I know.) I went off to college and she ended up marrying a classmate of mine and moving to Kansas City. Apart from the occasional comment on Facebook, we hadn't talked in years.
Jenny was adopted when she was a baby. Despite being raised by a loving mother, she'd always been curious about the identity of her biological mom.
"I grew up with family I loved," she said. "But I never really felt a sense of true belonging."
For some time, Jenny toyed with the idea of searching for her birth mother.
"A few years back, Illinois passed a law that unsealed my adoption records," she explained. "I filled out all the paperwork but never turned it in. I guess I was worried about being rejected. Every year on my birthday, I'd pull that paperwork out and think about submitting it. Last year, I turned 45 and figured it was now or never."
Last week, she opened her mail to find a copy of her birth certificate listing the name of her biological mother. A quick investigation on social media revealed a woman in Illinois with the matching name. Here's where it gets weird. And more than a little confusing.
Jenny tried to message the woman, but her message went unread and unanswered. Undaunted, Jenny looked up the woman's profile and her list of Facebook friends. One of those Facebook friends shared a mutual friend with Jenny. That mutual friend was me.
Randomly, I was suddenly the middle-man in this mystery. Even MORE randomly, the friend we shared was Veronica, a former newsroom artist here at the paper. Veronica moved away years ago, but we still stay in touch and get together occasionally. So Jenny messaged ME to see if I could message Veronica to see if Veronica could message Maybe-Mom on Jenny's behalf. See, I told you it was confusing.
This put me into a sticky situation. On the one hand, I kinda know how Jenny feels. I was adopted by my dad as a wee Shaneling. He's the only dad I will ever want, need, or love -- I just don't happen to share his DNA. I never met my biological father (who died last year), nor did I ever want to. Through social media, however, I've discovered an entire brood of biological half-siblings I'd never met. A couple of them look just like me, which is kinda creepy. We've corresponded online, and it's been fun getting to know them.
On the OTHER hand, though, what if this woman didn't WANT to be found? Adoption papers are often sealed for a reason, and not everybody who gives a child up for adoption yearns for that door knock years later. What if my actions were about to ruin some woman's new year and send her life crashing down? Yikes. I didn't want that kind of responsibility.
Instead, I passed the buck to Veronica. I messaged and explained the situation. As it turned out, Maybe-Mom wasn't just Veronica's Facebook friend. She was, in fact, the best and closest friend of Veronica's mom.
"Whoa," Veronica texted me. "I'm actually in the car with my mom right now. Let me talk to her about it."
Veronica's mom was certain Jenny had the wrong person. Her friend never mentioned putting a child up for adoption. Still, Veronica's mom wanted to speak to Jenny over the phone. After making sure Jenny's intentions were good, she went over to her friend's house and relayed the whole story.
It turns out that Maybe-Mom WAS Jenny's biological mother. She had gotten pregnant as a teen and her family sent her away to have the baby in secret. While she later shared the secret with her husband, her best friend (Veronica's mom) never knew. Her son, who grew up as an only child, never knew. With one message to Veronica, I just pulled one VERY large and perhaps unwanted cat out of the bag. This was better than a soap opera, unless I was the villain in the story.
Thankfully, I wasn't. Later that night, Jenny got the phone call she'd been waiting 18 years for. Since then, they've video-chatted daily. This weekend, Jenny's birth mother and family are heading to Kansas City to meet her. Her newly-found half-brother is flying out next month. It looks like a happy reunion is in the cards.
"It's so surreal but exciting," Jenny told me yesterday. "We just instantly meshed and it feels like we've always been a family. She told me her heart is full and she feels like a weight has been lifted. My half-brother told me I've brought her happiness back."
"I've always been searching for my real identity. Call it soul-searching, if you will. I've always felt like I didn't know who I really was. I know it sounds strange, but in a matter of days, that feeling has gone."
Meeting a stranger who happened to birth you isn't necessarily an instant key to self-identity, and a meet-up isn't going to instantly fill a hole in your life. But it sounds like everyone's heads and hearts are in the right place. If you're the praying type, give Jenny and her birth mom a shout-out this week in hopes their reunion goes well.
So next time you cast your New Year's resolutions and feel like social media is pointless, think about how much smaller it makes the world. Think about how it allowed Jenny to find her birth mom in less than a day. If the reunion goes well, it's all thanks to Facebook.
Wait, I take that back. Forget Facebook. If the reunion goes well, it's all thanks to ME. All hail Shane, Uniter of Families, Righter of Wrongs, and Master of the Cyber-Universe. Unless things go poorly. In which case, it's totally Facebook's fault.
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