As an adoptee who is also a fan of AM Homes, I was astonished I hadn’t seen this yet.

AM Homes: The Mistress’s Daughter

I follow up with a call. Her voice is low, nasal, gravelly, vaguely animal. I tell her who I am and she screams, “Oh, my God! This is the most wonderful day of my life.” Her voice, her emotion, comes in bursts, like punctuation—I can’t tell if she is laughing or crying.
The phone call is thrilling, flirty, like a first date, like the beginning of something. There is a rush of curiosity, the desire to know everything at once. What is your life like? How do your days begin and end? What do you do for fun? Why did you come looking for me? What do you want?
Every nuance, every detail, means something. I am like a recovering amnesiac. Things I know about myself, things that exist without language—my hardware, my mental firing patterns, parts of me that are fundamentally, inexorably me—are being echoed on the other end, confirmed as a DNA match. It is not an entirely comfortable sensation.
“Tell me about you—who are you?” she asks.

I have to say, it felt powerfully similar to my own experience of meeting my birthparents — but also entirely different. Mine are actually very considerate and kind people.

Homes’ essay is pretty amazing though. Downright devastating.