Reporter’s Notebook: Uniting the Family Tree on the Web

Three years ago, I got a Facebook friend request from a woman I did not know: Diamond Jackson. We did not have any mutual friends, but I accepted the request anyway. A month later, she sent me a message: she and I, Diamond wrote, have the same father.

How could someone be so closely related to me without my knowledge? Feeling baffled, I asked a series of questions, things that only family could know. “What hospital was I born in? What’s my middle name?”

She answered each question with ease. Then she told me more about my father, Kevin Jackson.  Kevin broke up with my mother while she was still pregnant with me. He has told his children — including Diamond — countless stories about me. After hearing them, Diamond searched my name on Facebook. She found my profile and told me the overwhelming news: we were sisters.

Facebook is today’s global answer to the old Yellow Pages. Users can search for anyone they’re searching for, including childhood friends, family members and acquaintances. The Internet has sparked reunions around the world.

In Palu, Indonesia, Nurlianti Dehi spent 35 years looking for her brother, Anton. The two lost touch after Anton took a job in Manado, a city 600 miles away. But in 2009, once she made a Facebook account and searched for people with her surname, the wait ended. Nurlianti and Anton exchanged childhood stories, and the two were reunited.

Thanks to Facebook, Utah resident Jenessa Simons found her birth mother in three days–without filing paperwork. In January, she posted a photo of herself and her birth information, asking users to find her birth parents. Her image was shared 135,000 times, until Simons’ birth mother saw it and contacted the 21-year-old.

“I would love to turn it into a resource for others to help find birth parents,” Simons wrote on her Facebook page.

Mark Sichel, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist and author of Healing from Family Rifts, believes that social media can facilitate similar reunions.  “For some parents of adult children, seeing pictures of children they’ve never met increased motivation to contact their adult children,” Sichel said in a recent interview.

But while Facebook has eased the reunion process, the site does not fix family turmoil.  “It just adds gossip, hearsay and visuals,” Sichel added.

I realized that once I connected with my father, Kevin Jackson, who sent me a friend request soon after I started exchanging messages with my half-siblings.

Both Devin and Diamond told me to avoid our father, who ignored them throughout their childhoods. Simply put, they said he was a deadbeat dad, and they wanted to spare me the same pain.

Before joining Facebook, I only knew of my father through my grandmother’s complaints about him. She told me he wasn’t worth a reunion. I valued my family’s negative opinions of him, but curiosity provoked me. I accepted his request and our correspondence began.

I hoped this would be a new start. But within a few days of our introduction, my father became pushy and overwhelming. He asked for my phone number. He suggested I visit him in Detroit. He was even willing to pay for my flight. I wanted to build my relationship with him, but not this quickly. When I told him how I felt, he would apologize and promise to take things slow, only to pressure me even more the next time. It was becoming a pattern. There was still plenty to learn about each other before I could comfortably strengthen my bond with him.

Over time, his pushiness led me to distance myself from him and my half-siblings. Today, my relationship is still strained with my family. Diamond and Devin periodically call me, only for me to decline their calls. I am not ready to reopen myself to my family. I have recently considered reconnecting with them, but fears of getting hurt again have stopped me.

Despite the outcome, reconnecting with my family on Facebook was and continues to be a fulfilling experience for me. I learned about my family’s history. Without social media, I would have never found my family. For people like myself, Nurlianti, and Jenessa, social media made reconnecting happen that would have otherwise been impossible.

 With reporting by Yi Yang