“Nobody ever talked about this again, so it was as if it had never really happened.”
Susan Doan was 16 years old, pregnant and feeling alone.
It was 1972. There were few options for young, unwed mothers. Susan’s parents didn’t want her to raise the child, and she knew she couldn’t do it on her own.
Susan went to stay at Villa Rosa, a home for unwed mothers.
“It wasn’t a happy place by any stretch,” Doan remembered. “The nuns that ran it were wonderfully kind and supportive, but we really didn’t have a means to sit down and talk about things, about really deep feelings. So a lot of that was just really bottled up.”
Within days after her daughter Heather Jill was born, papers were signed and the baby girl was taken away to her new family.
Susan went home with an empty feeling that she couldn’t share with anyone, especially her own family. But she thought of the daughter she gave away every day.
“I had a ring engraved with the name I gave her and her birth date, and I wore that from the day I left the hospital until I got a job where I couldn’t wear a ring, so I took the ring off. It was basically embedded in my finger.”
Two years ago, Adoptions Canada opened up the birth records. It meant it would be easier for adopted children to find their birth parents. Susan immediately gave them her contact information in the hope that Heather Jill wanted to find her.
One day, Susan’s sister told her a man named Roy Kading left a message to call him. She’d never heard of him. She called him back, and he told her he was a volunteer for Parent Finders.
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“And as soon as he told me that, my heart just fluttered,” Doan recounted.
Roy told Susan he was contacted by a woman who had been looking for her for quite some time.
It was Heather Jill, the daughter she had given up for adoption. Her name now was Shauna Sedleski.
Roy told Susan he would pass her contact information on to Shauna, but it would be up to Shauna when-and if-she wanted to get in touch with Susan.
About an hour later, the phone rang, and the caller ID said S. Sedleski.
“You look at this other person, and think ‘there you are.’ Someone you’ve imagined in your head your whole life,” Shauna Sedleski said.
Sedleski’s parents told her from the very beginning that she was adopted.
“I remember them, even when I was very young, saying ‘if you ever want to look for your biological mother, you just let me know, and we will do what we can do to help you.’ Because they were always very supportive, and they understood that everybody, at some point in their life, is going to want to know where they come from.”
But Shauna wasn’t overly focused on finding her birth mother until she was 19 and had started a family of her own. That was more than two decades ago.
“That kind of made me feel like, now I want to know where I come from. Just for my own self, even to pass on to them.”
So Shauna contacted Child and Family Services, but wasn’t given very much information. She kept trying, only to have her file fall through the cracks a few times.
When the adoption records were opened up two years ago, Shauna could finally begin a proper search. After looking on her own through websites through Facebook, Shauna contacted Roy Kading. Within three weeks, he found Susan Doan, Shauna’s birth mother.
When Shauna had Susan’s contact information, she immediately reached out.
“It was a great conversation. It wasn’t a very long conversation, because it was like, ‘Oh my gosh. When should we meet? How about right now?’” Shauna said.
An hour and a half later, Susan was at Shauna’s doorstep.
“Her and her husband opened the door, and it was like ‘Oh my god.’ It was so surreal,” Doan recalled.
Susan brought along her other daughter, Celine, for the meeting. Shauna’s sister stopped by.
Like Shauna, she was also adopted, and was able to connect with her birth family thanks to Roy Kading. Shauna’s adopted parents were there, too.
“They came in the backyard, gave me this huge hug and said, ‘Thank you so so much.’ It was so beautiful,” Susan said.
Since that day, the reunited pair has spent a lot of time getting to know each others’ families, sometimes getting together as often as once a week.
“My kids…It’s kind of a little joke now. They call her ‘NG’ for new grandma,” Shauna exclaimed.
“I call Shauna my new daughter and my other daughter my old daughter,” Susan laughed.
With Susan’s help, Shauna tried to locate her birth father. Unfortunately, all attempts at contact were rejected, and he passed away shortly thereafter.
But there is hope they may someday be able to connect with some of his relatives so that Shauna, and her children, can learn more about that family history.
Regardless, Shauna is incredibly grateful to have her birth mother and new sister as part of her family.
“To be in this place now where I have met her, and we’re such good friends, and that I do know where I come from, and I’ve met her family, it’s amazing.”
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