Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited

by Anais Bordier

  Other fascinating things that came out during their testing were that both men were absentminded, liked spicy foods, dunked buttered toast in their coffee, drank sweet liquors, read magazines from back to front, wore rubber bands on their wrists, struggled with math but showed talent in sports, and fell asleep watching TV. The two most bizarre coincidences were that both men flushed the toilet before and after they used it, and they let out loud, fake sneezes when they were in an uncomfortable silence, such as in a crowded elevator.

  I found twin similarities to be incredibly intriguing. I learned that the participants in the twin study were asked more than fifteen thousand questions and stayed on location in Minnesota for a week, undergoing hours upon hours of testing. Dr. Segal was going to do a battery of tests on Anaïs and me, just as soon as it was established by DNA that we were twins. The DNA would show if we were identical or fraternal. I was surprised to find that even parents were really poor judges of whether their same-sex twins were fraternal or identical, but that’s exactly what Dr. Segal discovered, that you can’t necessarily tell by appearance. Twins who look almost exactly alike may be fraternal and twins who don’t resemble each other so closely may be identical.

  Dr. Segal had a pair of twins in the Minnesota study that showed just how hard it was. The two girls, Kerrie and Amy, were adopted as infants by different families in different parts of Vermont. When Kerrie moved to a city in Vermont at the age of eighteen, she noticed that people started to call her Amy. Seven years later, she was at a party and one of the male guests said he’d bet a million dollars she had a twin named Amy. He even offered to introduce them. Several phone calls later the women met and were amazed by their resemblance to each other. However, the interesting piece was that they were not identical twins, as confirmed by their DNA test; they were look-alike dizygotic twins, aka fraternal twins. This was the only occasion in the Minnesota study where fraternal twins found each other by being mistaken for the other one. To show how difficult it is in some instances to tell identical from fraternal, in the case of Kerrie and Amy, Dr. Segal’s team did an informal assessment of the women and guessed that they were identical. They were wrong, but just this once.

  • • •

  Essentially, dizygotic twins come about when two eggs are fertilized by two different sperm. Identical twins, also known as “monozygotic twins,” come from one egg fertilized by one sperm that divides up to fourteen days after conception. Identical twins, which are about one-third of the natural twin population, occur in approximately three of every thousand births. Whatever kind of twins we were, we were looking beyond that to the personality testing. We were both really looking forward to finding out what Dr. Segal thought our similarities and differences were.

  IQ tests scared me. I didn’t really understand how they worked or how they were scored, but I always thought of myself on the lower end of intelligence. I’d be dismally dumb, Anaïs’s would be off-the-charts smart, and sure enough . . . I was, in fact, an idiot. Anaïs knew better how these things worked and assured me that most twins came back almost exactly the same. At that very moment, we were so dumbfounded at our similarities that it took all the attention away from the fear of being scored . . . a complete idiot. Thankfully, Anaïs was smart enough to use social media to find me, and I was smart enough to (finally) message her back! Otherwise, we would never have connected. Either that, or we were so “twin-connected” that we found ourselves crossing paths on social media only because our inner souls were always searching for one another. Perhaps we had always been searching for each other, and our stars finally aligned.

  Dr. Segal gave the Internet a lot of credit for bringing reared-apart twins together. The twenty-year Minnesota study ended when the reared-apart twin pool seemed to be drying up, which led to the assumption that the majority of that population had been discovered. However, she said because of the Internet, twins were discovering each other like crazy. In fact, she had a pair of seventy-eight-year-old twins in London about to meet each other for the first time. They were the longest-separated reared-apart twins to find each other in research history. I was relieved that Anaïs and I didn’t have to wait that long. We’d look awfully silly if we had met fifty years later—we’d be two seventy-seven-eight-old Asian hobbity identical twins dancing to Justin Timberlake: not quite as cute and appealing as we were now. Maybe fifty years from now, we would not have had to fly to meet each other. We could use drones to transport us to each other’s doorsteps, and the DNA test would be a complete scan of our bodies, which by then would be advanced enough to tell how many cells we had in common and how many seconds we had been alive, so we could finally put to rest which of us was older!

  Already, Dr. Segal was 99 percent convinced of our biological connection. She even called it a foregone conclusion. She said not only were we so similar, but we fit together perfectly and were amazingly comfortable with each other. It was a comfort level she had seen in other twins who were separated at birth. The only thing that was still giving her pause was that we had been handled by different adoption agencies in South Korea. It was a strange concept for everyone.

  Dr. Segal said that she would be more surprised if it turned out we weren’t twins. Anaïs and I felt the same way, although I did have moments when I simply couldn’t believe it myself. But, Dr. Segal’s “99 percent convinced” actually left me teetering on the ledge—what about the 1 percent chance still there that we weren’t twins? The 1 percent overwhelmed me, because in 1 percent, I could lose my footing, lose myself, and lose my Anaïs. I liked being in control. When I knew with certainty, I could take a course of action. With 1 percent still out there, I didn’t want anyone to know that I was 99 percent insecure. I wanted to be strong inside, to show that it didn’t matter whether or not we were twins. I truly believed the idea that she would still mean something very special to me, but somewhere inside I was terrified.

  That was until I got a call from Ben Sommers, my social worker at Spence-Chapin in New York City. Ben had been assigned to my case in February, when I had first called the agency about the possibility of being a twin. I learned that he was a Korean-American adoptee as well, and had even reunited with his birth family.

  Ben was my main correspondent between the adoption agency in New York and the Social Welfare Society (SWS) in Seoul. He was also in contact with Holt International, Anaïs’s adoption agency. Ben translated every bit of information we got from SWS about our birth families. He was incredibly supportive. Knowing that he was an adoptee himself was comforting on a very deep level, since he understood what it was like to find blood relatives and be reunited with them for the very first time. He wasn’t there to tell me how my experience would go, but to offer his own experience while guiding me through mine.

  On April 30, I got a message from Ben, asking me to call him. He had important information, but he didn’t say what. I immediately panicked. I had the feeling that happens after you have a doctor’s appointment, and the doctor calls saying he has the results, and asking if you can come in. I mean, that only happens when they’re telling you something very dire. Ben’s call probably had something to do with my birth mother or some problem with our birth records. My heart rate was bumping from my butt to my throat.

  When I called Ben back, he told me there was good news. My heart rose from out of my butt, back into its residing position in my chest. Apparently every Korean citizen has a Resident Registration Number, similar to our Social Security Number, and my birth mother’s number matched that of Anaïs’s. The chances of this being some sort of typo or mistake were almost impossible, especially in light of our shared birthdays and physical similarities. But there was more. A social worker at the postadoption agency in Korea had been able to confirm that Anaïs and I had been born in the same birthing clinic in Busan. However, the person could not get any further information. The clinic had long since closed, and the doctor who had delivered babies there had passed away.

 
Ben said my birth mother had also been recontacted. The year before, when I had been in Korea, I knew there had been an attempt to contact her, and the result had been “no response.” I thought that meant she hadn’t answered their inquiry. But Ben seemed to think someone had talked to her, and she had denied having given birth to any children, ever. He said her response was the same this year as it had been last year. Again, she told them she couldn’t be my mother, because she’d never had children. When they pressed her further, asking about twins, she still denied it. I asked Ben if it could be possible that they really did have the wrong woman, but he didn’t seem to think so. So really, the only way we could find out what happened and why we were separated was with information from our birth mother, who was currently denying our existence.

  I fell silent. I was frozen. What do I say? How do I respond? I was just completely overwhelmed. It wasn’t bad news, yet it didn’t feel good, either. I was making obligatory “uh-huhs” and “yeahs” on the phone to let Ben know that I was still there, that I hadn’t hung up on him, but I’m not sure if I was even really listening. I could hear everything he was saying, I could hear his voice, and I was taking it in, but my body felt inflated. I could feel it breathing and pressing against the air.

  When his words became clear again, Ben was suggesting that it would be a good idea for both Anaïs and me to write a letter to our birth mother and send it to SWS, along with a current photo, so they could keep them on file. He told me it could take a long time for a birth mother to reconcile the past. He said unfortunately sometimes mothers who have given up their children for adoption didn’t feel the level of empowerment often needed for them to face something that they had long tried to bury. Korean society had a lot to do with it. He thought it was slowly beginning to loosen and the stigma around adoption was lifting. Once that fully happened, more and more birth mothers might feel comfortable enough to establish relationships with their birth children. He explained that every birth mother was different, and some could find that courage more quickly than others. So much depended on their support system, their level of disclosure about having put a child up for adoption, and their current situation.

  The phone call with Ben ended with him telling me not to be too discouraged. “I do hope that you don’t feel like this is the end. I know it’s tough and frustrating to not get farther in your inquiry, but there will be future opportunities to revisit this,” he said empathetically. Once again, Ben was there for me, guiding me or giving me fair warnings about what could possibly go wrong. He told me that sometimes meeting a birth family was more awkward than joyful, that although there was a connection, the timing might not be right. With a letter to her on file, if she ever decided to come forward, she would find it waiting for her.

  When I hung up, I dropped my head into my hands and started crying. I felt so much pain for my birth mother. It pained me inside to think that she was living in denial and could never be honest with herself or her family about her family and her past. I felt pain for myself, too. I felt pain for Anaïs. My own parents were filled with crazy emotions about all this. They were really upset that Anaïs and I hadn’t been available to adopt together. If they had known I had a twin, they would have happily adopted both of us. However, my mother acknowledged that if she had taken both of us, the Bordiers would not have had their delightful Anaïs, as they were meant to be her parents.

  Mom was also extremely upset that we had been separated, because we had been denied a lifetime with our twin, time we would never get back. While Anaïs and I were celebrating that we had found each other, our parents were mourning the loss of our childhood together, regretting the situation on our behalf. It was a very parental reaction, because both sets of our parents had devoted themselves to our happiness and joy, and they felt we had been shortchanged. They were probably more desperate to know why we were separated than we were. That was the remaining mystery, one that we might never know the answer to.

  Ben followed up our phone call with an e-mail that included the letter from the postadoption department of Spence-Chapin in Korea:

  Regarding this case, we spoke with the birth mother couple of times on the phone. Unfortunately, her reaction was same as last year.

  She still denied the fact that she sent her baby for adoption. She also didn’t admit that she delivered twins.

  As I informed earlier, her birth parents name is same as Holt’s. Furthermore, their birth clinic was also same. Judging from these circumstances, Samantha and Anaïs are twins.

  However, we were not able to obtain any clue or explanation from the birth mother. So we tried to find the doctor of their birth clinic, but the clinic was closed long time ago and the doctor already passed away.

  Therefore, we were not able to get any further explanation about this twins case.

  I’m so sorry that I can’t give Samantha any clear answer. However, there’s no other way for us to make it clear at this point.

  The news was definitely remarkable. Even the agency was confirming we were likely twins. Our birth mother not admitting the past didn’t change the solid evidence. All that was left was the DNA results, which we would have in a couple of weeks. I can’t speak for Anaïs, but the fact that our birth mother had again denied birthing us was completely overwhelming. I wasn’t angry; I was at peace with the fact that I had always been loved. Still, it was emotionally devastating to hear.

  I didn’t know how to tell Anaïs. She had always had a feeling of rejection and never wanted to explore our past. And it was for this exact reason. I didn’t want to confirm the pain she had always feared. I wanted to dance and celebrate again, like the day I got Anaïs’s message. But I couldn’t, and I had so much left to do, including having to break the news to Anaïs in about twenty minutes.

  • • •

  The days leading up to our trip to London were intense. I was still having “what ifs” running through my head, but I was so focused on organizing the documentary, it didn’t really hit me that we were leaving soon. Maybe distracting myself with the film was my way of tempering my emotions, my own way of dealing with the stress of it all.

  Anaïs and I also decided that we were going to write a book about our experience to complement the film. We wanted our book to get deeper into the topics of nature vs. nurture, adoption, sisterhood, and the power of social media. Both projects would be so much fun to do, and sharing our experience with the world could possibly even give others courage to seek and find something they had only dreamed about.

  Anaïs and I did not need a DNA test to prove we were twins. As far as we were concerned, the test was simply to let us know if we were fraternal or identical. Learning about Anaïs had undeniably changed my perception of who I was. In one way, she was a stranger to me, as I was to her. Yet, the feeling of love and connectedness we had for each other could only be the love of family.

  Our incredible twist of fate could lift one to rejoice that anything was possible, and that the biggest boundaries in life were the ones we set for ourselves. There are so many possibilities and so many crazy things that happen in a lifetime, and it is a gift to embrace them all. At the moment, our relationship was a “virtual reality,” but how was it possible to feel so strongly about someone I had never properly met? Why was I able to lose all inhibitions and speak to her more frankly than any other person? It has been said that “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” but did that count if the eyes were connected through an electronic device that I was able to hold in the palm of my hand? All I knew was I had an innate, unconditional love toward this relative stranger.

  For now, I was counting the days until I would meet my sister. Every morning, I would wake up and look at my phone to see if she had texted me. I couldn’t wait to just hang out with her—to see what connections formed, what thoughts and feelings arose, even in the inevitable silences. I played over and over again how our meeting would go. Turning our story into something we could
share with the world was what we wanted to do in the book. The documentary was going to capture the immediate reactions and feelings of everybody as they unfolded live.

  The weekend before London, I ran around L.A. to rent camera equipment, get production insurance, and finalize last-minute travel plans. When things start to feel like they are out of control, organizing helps me get my head back into the game and makes me feel productive. My family was coming from different places, my parents and Matt from New Jersey, and Andrew was coming from Oregon. He had finished a tour of duty in Iraq with the U.S. Army, and he was studying fisheries and wildlife biology at Oregon State University. I was flying from L.A. earlier, but that didn’t keep me from fretting about the details of their arrival. I wanted everything to go absolutely perfectly.

  The Sunday before we left was Mother’s Day, so of course I had to work! It’s a mandatory workday in the restaurant business, as it’s the most popular day of the year to eat out. In Beverly Hills, a lot of mothers are a bit self-centered, so if their food doesn’t come out right away or they can’t get exactly what they want, then you’re doomed. In my opinion, they should be thankful for having families that want to spend time with them. I am beyond grateful for my mother and what she has done for me. And I was especially grateful for the support and love she was giving me now, as I was potentially finding a blood relative, a sister! My parents have surrounded me with nothing but love from the moment they received their first photo of me in the mail. I was in their hearts from the beginning, maybe before they even began the adoption process.