Friday essay: at 42, my mother discovered her half-sister. Would her childhood have been bearable if they grew up together?

Heather Taylor Johnson with her mother, Debbie (photos on left); Debbie with the half-sister she met aged 42. Heather Taylor Johnson

When I was 22, still living in America, I received a phone call from my mother with that classic opener: “You’ll never believe this.” She told me a woman from an adoption agency had rung, asking if she’d like to be put in touch with her half-sister, born and adopted by another family in 1959. This was the first she’d heard of a half-sister.

The so-called half-sister, Laurie, had begun the search for her biological family because her teenage daughter was having some ongoing health problems and a proper genealogic medical history could be helpful to her prognosis.