Outskirts Press, INC.

Finding birth parents: An emotional journey

In 1963, Theresa McMullen was a successful political journalist in Boston, Massachusetts, but she had a challenging dilemma: she had become pregnant out of wedlock. Was it wrong for her to give up her newborn baby girl in a closed adoption? After all, she was an unmarried career woman about to be named chief Washington correspondent at the Boston Herald. The father of her child, Phil Lamacchia, was a well-respected politician in Boston and had no intention of leaving his wife for his lover, and ruining his own career. How would Theresa react twenty-seven years later, in 1990, when she received a phone call from Maura Kelly, a young woman who simply asked, “Are you my mother?” How would Maura move forward upon hearing Theresa’s response? Did Maura make the right decision in searching for her biological mother, or would she regret ever making that phone call? And how would Maura react in 2013 when she received a Facebook friend request and a personal message from a woman with a familiar last name who was searching for her biological parents? Blood Ties chronicles the emotional journeys of two determined women, who both were adopted at birth years apart, in closed adoptions. Each woman decided, at different times in their adult lives, to search for their birth parents. Their stories are at times frustrating, heartbreaking, and ultimately heartwarming as they search for their birth parents and look for answers to long-burning questions about their biological pasts.