Community Corner

Reunited: One Woman's Search to Find Her Birth Mother Starts in Tarrytown

After nearly five years of rigorous searching, Terri Vanech finally met the woman who relinquished her for adoption 47 years ago.

 

The search for her birth mother, Patricia Clark, officially began several years ago, but Terri had wondered about her past for as long as she could remember.

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“I can’t remember ever not knowing I was adopted,” Vanech, a Grennwich resident, told Patch. “My parents raised us from the start knowing, and knowing that we were special because we were chosen.”

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Vanech can distinctly remember the pictures from a children’s book that was regularly read to her and her sister, called The Chosen Baby.

 

“It was the gold standard in how to explain to your child that they’re adopted,” Vanech said.

 

Aside from being open about adoption, Vanech’s parents were always open about their children finding their birth parents, if they so wished.

 

“They believed we had the right to know, but for most of my life I just discounted it as unimportant,” Vanech said. “Yet, I always felt a step out of place.”

 

In her adult life, Vanech began toying with the idea of searching for her birthparents. Though Vanech now lives in Connecticut, she was born in New York, prompting her to reach out to the adoption registry in Albany. The registry sent back very brief, non-identifying information, directing her to Westchester Family Services.

 

At the time, Vanech only knew a few tidbits about her past life. She was born February of 1966 to an 18 year old Episcopalian mother in Yonkers. New York State law keeps other identifying information private, so Vanech was forced to cultivate her investigative spirit. Yet, she had some pressing concerns of her own before she could truly begin.

 

“I knew I wanted to know, but was not really sure what would happen when I started the search, and didn’t want to be disappointed or rejected again,” Vanech said.

 

As a way of sharing her story with the world, and expressing her own sentiments and anxiety about the search, Vanech began writing about her hunt for her birth mother on her blog, Pushing on a Rope, in 2009.

 

“The blog really started as an ongoing love letter to my teenage daughter, but it seemed like another good place to raise awareness,” Vanech said.

 

In 2010, using the knowledge that her mother was from Yonkers and Episcopalian, Vanech managed to find that her mother stayed at St. Faith’s Home for Unwed Mothers in Tarrytown for a brief stint. The home closed in 1971, so retrieving their records was out of the question.

 

Vanech did not give up there—she googled the Episcopal church that ran St. Faith’s, and found Tarrytown’s Christ Church.

 

“I didn’t hold out much hope that I might have any help from the church,” Vanech said. “I didn’t think they would give me private information.”

 

The secretary of Christ Church told Vanech that over the years, much of their records had been destroyed—yet out of many queries, Vanech’s records were the first to be found in the church’s books. Miraculously, the church still had Vanech’s baptismal records. It was then that Vanech found out that she was born Jennifer Elaine Clark.

 

“To see that in writing was the first time I felt like, ‘oh I do exist,’” Vanech said.

 

Last year, after hitting a bit of a dead end, Vanech created a Facebook page entitled, “In Search of Birth Mother Patricia Clark,” and posted on the blog section of Patch.

 

“Maybe, just maybe, Patricia is at the other end of the fiber optic connection I’m using to type this,” wrote Vanech in her Patch blog.

 

As it turns out, using social media as a last resort worked in her favor, unlocking the information she needed.

 

At the time, Vanech was working with several search angels—women who have relinquished their own children and for no charge help find adoptees their birth parents and families—without coming up with anything substantial.

 

“For a long time, we thought we were searching for Jennifer Elaine Clark, until I found out that was actually my given name,” Vanech said. “The irony of all ironies, here I was looking to find myself, and there I was finding myself.”

 

In November of 2012, a search angel who was working with another hopeful adoptee happened upon Vanech’s Facebook page. Vanech had using search engines for years, but never found anything. This search angel plugged Patricia Clark into Bing, and found a hit. Clark had recently created an account on a Long Island high school's alumni site, and it came up.

 

“I don’t know whether I would have found her without Facebook; I was beginning to make peace with the idea that I might not ever know,” Vanech said.

 

In February of this year, after years of investigating, Vanech was able to use the alumni profile in order to locate and reunite with her birth mother.

 

Nearly six months later, Vanech said she’s still pinching herself in disbelief. Vanech and Clark have formed a real relationship, speaking over the phone or through email once a week, and having met in person on several occasions. In regard to the way they interact, Vanech and Clark alike feel as if they’ve known each other their entire lives.

 

Vanech has also met her two half-brothers she never knew existed, along with an extended family who welcomed her with open arms.

 

Over the course of her five-year search, Vanech has learned more about herself than genealogy alone.

 

“In the end, some of the most important things I’ve learned about myself have nothing to do with my roots,” Vanech said. “I’ve learned that I am a stronger person than I thought I was, that I’m much more tenacious than I would have given myself credit for.”

 

Currently, Vanech is trying to further enhance her relationship with her new family, and answer some of her countless unanswered questions.

 

“I could fill a book with the questions that remained unanswered, and I don’t know how many will be able to answer,” Vanech said. “The big umbrella question is that I don’t know how much of me is hard-wired and how much of me is learned.”

 

As for what’s next for the mother, and jazzercise instructor, Vanech doesn’t know where her future lies.

 

“At this point I want to be present for every moment of where I am now, drink it all in,” Vanech said. “For now, I want to get to know her more, I want to continue to watch my daughter grow. I want to take the lessons of resilience from this experience and use them in all areas of my life so that I’m living out loud and continuing to do so.”


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