Finding out that her parents had given a child up for adoption seven years before she was born came as a big surprise to St. Albert resident Chantelle Brimmage when she found out earlier this year.
The mother of two was given the news on Oct. 5 after a family friend called to say he had discovered a letter written to Brimmage’s mother by the daughter she had given up for adoption when she was 18.
Upon hearing the news, Brimmage, a resident of St. Albert, began researching how she might go about looking for her sister, whose identity was still a mystery.
Eventually, she came across the Alberta Post Adoption Registry where she was asked to fill out as much information as she could in order to trace the whereabouts of her long lost sibling.
It was while on a trip to San Diego after Thanksgiving that Brimmage received the call she had been waiting for.
“We found your sister and she’s been registered with us since 1985 so she’s been looking for someone for a long time,” she recalled the woman at the registry telling her over the phone.
In 1985, Mary Novecosky wrote a letter to an adoption service in Edmonton looking for information about her birth parents Firmin and Lea Theoret, whose identities were unknown to her at the time.
“I’ve always wondered about my birth parents because I’ve always known that I was adopted,” she said over the phone from her home in Calgary on Monday.
Legislation changes six year ago made it easier for Novecosky to find out the name of her birth parents.
“All my life, just not knowing where you come from, I really just wanted to know who these people were and where I came from. When you don’t have any genetic connections to anyone, you always wonder,” she told the Gazette.
“I was never dissatisfied with my adopted family and my parents, I have a beautiful, wonderful relationship with them and a wonderful life and no regrets. It was never any hardship for me or ill-feelings towards them, it was just the not knowing,” she said.
At the time, Novecosky’s adopted mother was ill and her father had already passed away.
“I didn’t have much left. I wasn’t looking to replace my mother, it was more so, it would be neat to have a connection,” she said.
Although she wasn’t sure if a relationship with her family would blossom, Novecosky said getting information about her family’s medical history was also important to her.
“That for me was the key,” she said.
“Any time I go in for anything, they always want to know medical history and I don’t have that information. At the very least, I wanted to walk about with medical information.”
When she eventually found the courage to phone her mother’s house in Edmonton several years ago, Novecosky said she was hung up on.
“I wasn’t anticipating that. I don’t think that I really thought through what was going to happen one way or another. I think that I was finally just so excited to have a name and a location,” she said.
At the time, Brimmage said her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, probably just couldn’t deal with the daughter she gave up for adoption so many years earlier.
Her father later told Brimmage that they had considered telling her when she was 10, but later decided that she wasn’t old enough to hear the news.
Earlier this year, while climbing the mountains at Macchu Picchu in Peru, Novecosky vowed to renew the search for her birth family.
It wasn’t long afterward that she found out she had a sister.
Prior to speaking on the phone for the first time, the sisters had to submit information about themselves to the Alberta Post Adoption Registry. The information, including how each party preferred to communicate for the first time, was then made available to both of them.
“It was really weird hearing about her life — she grew up in Edmonton, I grew up in Edmonton — and how [our lives] intertwined,” said Brimmage, adding that both she and Novecosky attended Catholic schools and were involved in competitive swimming.
On Oct. 20, the sisters finally talked on the phone for the first time.
“It was pretty amazing because she had been waiting for so long and I never knew at all about a sibling. We just talked, we talked for about an hour and a half,” Brimmage said.
One week later, Novecosky, her husband Tom and their children, Ethan, 11 and Sydney, 8, spent an afternoon with Brimmage, her husband Luke and their children Zachary, 8 and Caleb, 6, in St. Albert.
“It was unreal because you open up the door and you’re looking at someone who looks like you, is like you and you’ve talked to them and you know them and you have that sense of familiarity but they’re a stranger,” said Brimmage.
“She’s got darker hair and she’s shorter and petite but a lot of our features are the same and our mannerisms are the same. She looks a lot like my mom so that’s really weird. It’s like looking at my mom and talking to a younger version who is all there.”
Novecosky said meeting her sister for the first time felt “unbelievably comfortable and natural.”
“It was like I knew her. She opened the door and, I had been an emotional wreck the days leading up to it, but for some reason, as soon as she opened the door, I had this calm just rushing through me,” she said.
“It was very joyous.”
Brimmage said finding out she had a sister after so many years has renewed her faith.
“When you’re ready to just give up, there is nothing more out there for us, all of a sudden your life changes in a minute,” she said.
“I have a family now, not just my parents. I have a sibling and her family so it’s pretty cool.”
Novecosky said there has been an instant bond between the two sisters, something that often doesn’t exist between siblings who have grown up together.
“It’s been an overwhelming experience, it’s changed my life definitely for the better. I’ve thrilled to know her, to get to know her, to have her and her family in my life. It’s been a true blessing. It’s been a gift from God,” she said.
Rather then dwelling on the past and the years lost between them, both Brimmage and Novecosky are focusing on the future.
“Sometimes things come up and you say, ‘It would have been nice to have my sister there,’ but really you can’t change anything but you can really enjoy the future,” Brimmage said.
“That’s what we’re focusing on.”
