I found out that I was adopted during a row with my childhood best friend. We were nine years old and, when we were not fighting, inseparable. During this row, which rocked my fairly normal life, she shouted at me: "Well, nobody even knows where you come from!"

This happened in Germany in 1961. I remember vividly running home in tears to my mother demanding to know why ‘nobody knows where I come from.’ My adoptive mother tried to explain that the woman who had given birth to me was very young and couldn’t look after me and that they, my Mum and Dad, had adopted me because they wanted me very badly. This didn’t do much to ease my confusion and I began to ask all kind of questions, which my Mom couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. At the end of our conversation it was she who was in tears while I was the one left consoling her with words like, ‘I love you,’ ‘you are my only Mom’ and so on.

Children, especially traumatised, rejected children, are very perceptive when it comes to emotional upsets of the persons they depend upon. My adoptive mother’s tears put a stop to the subject and I never raised it again, keeping all my feelings and upsets well hidden. I wasn’t in a position to risk losing another mother.

I was 18 years old when my parents handed me my original birth certificate and the adoption document. I started my first search for my birth mother shortly afterwards and have continued searching, on and off, for almost 40 years. Like most adoptees I began yet another search at certain points in my life; for example, when I finished University, when I got married, when I expected my first child and when I moved from Germany to England. The result was always the same: I could trace my birth mother’s movements from 1952 to 1966 in Germany and then lost all trace of her. The only explanation was that she must have left Germany in 1966, which meant that she could now be living anywhere in the world.

Last year I decided to give it one last shot. An agency in Germany, thanks to all the new technologies, finally came up with the country my birth mother immigrated to: the USA. They began a search, but without success. My birth mother seemed to have a cunning ability to disappear. After a while I involved an American friend who referred me to ALMA.

From the moment my application form arrived at ALMA, I felt like I was on a roller coaster. Marie, the co-ordinator, emailed me with the first result within a few days of receiving all the necessary paperwork, and within a month we had exchanged at least 50 emails. I now had a current phone number for my birth mother, her residential addresses for the last ten years in Texas, I knew that she had married twice and that her latest husband was deceased. Most excitingly, Marie was certain that I had a half-sister, who might be living in San Diego.

But not only did I now, after such a long search, have a real possibility of finally finding my birth mother, I had access to somebody on the other end of an email address, namely Marie from ALMA, who was supportive beyond my wildest dreams. My first impulse was to jump on a plane, fly to Texas and show up on my mother’s doorstep, an impulse which Marie wisely discouraged. Instead I followed her advice, wrote a letter and waited. After a second letter didn’t produce a reply, I was beginning to worry that – for whatever reason – I had hit yet another dead-end. I didn’t want to phone the number ALMA had traced as I didn’t want to give whoever was on the other end the chance to put the phone down on me.

After more email contact with Marie, she took pity on me and phoned the number to verify that the lady we had found was actually my birth mother. I will never forget the strength of feeling in Marie’s email when she conveyed what I already expected; that my birth mother didn’t want any contact with me. Marie’s emails, which had always been very factual and focussed, conveyed real anger about my birth mother’s reaction. The depth of people’s anger on my behalf gave me the courage to do what I did next: I reverted to my original plan, my husband booked tickets, and a few days later we were on a plane to Texas where we hired a car, drove to the town my birth mother lived in and booked into a hotel. The next morning, jet lagged and shaking, we knocked at her door, only to find out that we had the right phone number but the wrong address.

For the next two days we moved heaven and earth. We went to the police, the sheriff’s office the phone company – to name just a few-, only to hear the same words again and again: "You have the right phone number but we are not allowed to give you her current address". After ringing dozens of doorbells and speaking to many, many people I was in despair. I still wasn’t willing to contact my half-sister, who I believed to live in San Diego. I felt that it should be my mother’s decision whether to inform her daughter about my existence or not. I also was worried that if I did involve my half-sister, my chances of persuading my mother to talk to me would diminish even further.

So we hired a local private investigator who had been recommended to us. Armed with the information I had received from ALMA about my mother and my half-sister, he located them both on the same day. He also found out that my birth mother now lived in sheltered accommodation and was mentally and physically frail. But not only did he find them, he was also friendly with a work colleague of my half-sister, who had moved back to Texas and worked just a few blocks away from the hotel we were staying in. Taking all this into account and realising that his friend worked with my half-sister, he took the liberty of phoning my half-sister and to arrange a meeting between her and myself that evening.

My half-sister, who was in utter shock as she had no idea of my existence, and myself needed only a few minutes to realise that we were indeed sisters. We liked each other spontaneously, had a spooky amount of interests and personality traits in common, were both excited by the prospect of having a sister and couldn’t stop talking and laughing and touching. I met her daily over the following six days, sometimes alone and sometimes with my husband, and she introduced me to her partner and to some of her friends. We went through an emotionally exhausting and at the same time exhilarating time together. While we were getting to know each other my sister also spoke every day to my birth mother about my wish to meet her. What passed between them is too complex to convey here, but the major outcome was that my birth mother agreed to a meeting.

My sister prepared me thoroughly for the frail state of my mother and, when I finally met her at my sister’s place, I realised that my nervousness was minor compared to hers. The story around my birth and adoption that emerged slowly over the next few days was tragic. My mother’s life had been very difficult, with both alcohol dependency and poverty in her original family as well as during her marriages. The more I understood the circumstances – which included being thrown out by her mother when she was pregnant - the more my heart reached out to her. I began to realise that at the time of my birth, in 1952 in Germany, she was indeed unable to raise me with the love and care a small child needs to develop and blossom, and that I might have been better off with my adoptive parents, who were stable, loving and caring.

Despite being mentally fragile and appearing physically older than her age, the warm hearted, intelligent and quite pretty woman she must have been when younger shone through more and more during our times together. The more she understood that I meant her no harm and that I had led a good life, the more her anxiety and protective layer melted away, and she turned into a chatty, smiling old lady, who was genuinely pleased that I had found her and who could share some moments of deep emotions with me and my sister.

Being back in the UK now, where I live and work, I am glad that I never gave up on my quest to meet my birth mother. Despite the many walls I hit, despite the countless set-backs that accompanied this journey and the devastation I felt when, after such a long time of searching, my mother refused contact; despite the worries about the circumstances of my conception and despite the costs of travelling to Texas assuming that I might not be welcomed, I always knew that meeting my mother would be worth my while.

To know where I came from, to hear about the circumstances of my birth and adoption, to find out who fathered me, to look into the eyes of the person who gave birth to me and to understand on a deep level that she is not a monster, but a woman who did the best she could under the circumstances, has put my mind at rest. That I was supported beyond my expectations by so many; by my husband, my daughter and my wider family, by my friends and by Marie from ALMA, as well as countless people we met in Texas, and that I am now blessed with having a gorgeous younger sister, has filled my heart with warmth and gratefulness, and I am looking forward to the next stint of the journey, wherever it leads me to.