The sister I never knew
At 14, I was sitting cross-legged on my parents’ bedroom floor when I found them: a stack of adoption papers tucked inside a plain white envelope at the back of their dresser drawer. In that moment, I learned I had an older sister I’d never met. By the time I stood up, nothing about my life felt the same.
Her name was Kristin, and she had been born in California - a place I had never visited at the time, but that felt exotic and wonderful. A place where I now live.
I immediately pictured a slightly older version of myself walking around in California with bleached blond hair, a tan, and a carefree life. A life I was inexplicably jealous of.
What struck me most - beyond the shock of her existence - was the date. She was almost exactly two years older than me. What had happened in those two years that led to my own arrival? I was flooded with questions.
Discovering I had an older sister was like waking up with a third arm - part of me, yet impossible to comprehend.
When it was time to pack up the papers, sliding them back into their nondescript white envelope so I could leave for driver’s education, I made a decision. I would go about my life as if I had never found them. As if I hadn’t just discovered the biggest secret of my life.
And that, as they say, was that. Except of course, it wasn’t.
Over the years, I periodically returned to that drawer to re-confirm what I’d learned. I checked and re-checked the paperwork. There they were - my parents’ names, written plainly in black ink. Each time, the truth revealed itself to me, and each time I softly closed the drawer, deliberately forgetting what I had seen. I never breathed a word to anyone. My knowledge of my secret sister became a hidden friend. At night, I’d lie in bed and take her out in my imagination - wondering what it would have been like to grow up as a middle child, wondering who she was, what her life looked like in California. And sometimes jealousy crept in: what if I had been the one adopted and not her? Who would I be then? Everything about who I was felt precarious in those early years. That discovery sent me into questions of nature versus nurture, identity, and my place in the family.
After finding the adoption papers, I spent the next 16 years playing the role of oldest child, pretending my world wasn’t shattered because I didn’t know who I was without that version of myself. I was and always had been Emily: oldest of two, driven, ambitious, natural leader, studious, responsible, type A, the one you turned to when you had a problem. If I was no longer the oldest child, would the rest of me still hold true? I didn’t want to find out.
Looking back, I realize I’d been primed for this revelation. The signals had been there all along. There may as well have been a neon arrow flashing down on that dresser: open here.
As I sifted through the papers that day, flashes of memory resurfaced, urging me to reinterpret earlier moments.
I was no more than eight when, during a car ride, I declared from the backseat, “It feels like someone’s missing,” much to my parents’ shock. I felt like I had an older sibling. I wanted one - specifically a brother, though not all wishes come true (sorry, Kristin!). Their knowing glances in the front seat gave me pause. I knew I’d struck a nerve, but at the time, I let it go. Intuition is a funny thing. It can guide us if we learn to listen.
And then there’s an even earlier memory. I’m about six, shopping with my mom and my aunt Kristin at a small home goods boutique in Minnesota - think Hobby Lobby. It’s one of my earliest and strongest memories: the scent of fake cinnamon in the air, browsing through greeting cards and decorative wooden items no one needs but everyone seems to own, when I heard my mom say, “I always loved the name Kristin for a girl.” Strange words from the mother of two girls, neither of whom were named Kristin. I looked at her and said, with the bluntness only a six-year-old can muster, “You have two daughters and neither of us is named Kristin.” She stared back, silent. I let it go, but it felt like ‘A Moment’. Actions speak louder than words, but so too does silence.
Looking back, I see myself at 14 - pre-pubescent, emotionally raw, and unsure of who I was or how others saw me. It felt like I’d been tossed into the deep end with no idea how to swim. The truth was too heavy for me to hold. That’s the danger of snooping: sometimes you find secrets you’re not yet ready to carry.
I handled the news of my secret sister the only way I knew how: by ignoring it so I could keep becoming a whole person. The person I am today.
That day, I clung to my identity with a death grip. What I know now is that identity isn’t broken by secrets or shaken by discoveries, it’s shaped by them. That discovery may have rattled me at 14, but it also planted the seed of who I would become.