ABSTRACT
This autoethnographic narrative explores temporal, situated interactions between the author as a reunited female adoptee with her birth mother and half-brother. She first met Jean, her birth mother in 2009 when she was 47 years old. The relationship began optimistically, yet after only three months they experienced their first estrangement. In the eight years that followed, their relationship swung sporadically between times when the author and her birth mother participated fully in each other’s lives to times when they were completely estranged. Over that eight-year period, the author would meet up with her half-brother, Geoff, only three times. This chapter reflects on one family get-together after years of unplanned silence between the author and her half-brother.
