Adoption is always a tough topic to tackle when it comes time to let the child know their story. The news can come as a shock initially and leave a lot of questions marks. Even if adoptive parents shower a child with love and support, it’s only natural for them to feel a powerful urge and curiosity to seek out their biological parents, if only to discover their roots.Â
Patricia Lofton’s story was no different, except, when she went looking for her biological family, what she found was life-altering…
More Questions
As adopted children grow older, plenty of questions begin to swirl—“Why was I given up?†“Were my parents good people?†or even “Do I have siblings I don’t know about?†This was exactly how Patricia Lofton felt…
Begin the Search
Patricia knew she was adopted, and as she grew up, she developed a serious itch to find out as much as she could about her biological mother. She really wasn’t sure where to begin with the search…
From the Beginning…
Patricia started at square one and started with what she did know. But what she didn’t know was that in the midst of this search she would uncover something so extraordinary it made headline news…
Financial Hardship
Patricia Lofton was well aware that her mother gave her up for adoption when she was just a few days old because of financial strains. She accepted it, although it was difficult to stomach. But admittedly, it was always at the forefront of her mind and she wondered how her life might have been different had she been raised by her biological mother…
The Hard Decision
Her mother already had three children when she gave birth to Patricia, and she was on welfare. Another child meant even more financial hardship, and her mother had to make the difficult choice to look for a better situation for Patricia…
Bouncing Around
Unfortunately, Patricia bounced around foster homes for years. Her childhood was unpredictable and there was no stability for a long, long time. Moving from home to home, she always felt a little lost and forgotten. Until the age of seven, when she was officially adopted…
Feeling Disconnected
Throughout her childhood, Patricia never felt like she truly fit in with her family. She knew nothing about her biological mother, and she felt a noticeable disconnect between her world and the one surrounding the people in her life…
Looking for Answers
She constantly felt as though there was something missing in her life, so when high school hit, and things got harder for her, she felt like she needed some answers. But before she could look into things, something unexpected happened…
High School Outcast
High school was very hard for Patricia. Already feeling outcasted in her family, the cliques and dynamic of school only made those feelings worse. She had a few friends, though, but they didn’t always have her best interest in mind. When she started dating a boy from school, she thought things would get better…
Shocking News
Her life was turned upside-down, though, when she became pregnant with a baby girl. Unlike her biological mother, she intended to keep the child. She didn’t want her baby to spend her life wondering “what if” as she had for all these years…
More Interest
Around the time Patricia turned 20, perhaps because she was now a mother herself, she felt an almost overwhelming urge to track down her biological mother. She had questions and she needed some real answers…
One Lucky Day
She spent hours combing through her adoption papers, looking for any sign that could lead her to find the woman who had given her up for adoption so many years ago, but in the end, her efforts kept coming up short, until one lucky day a few years later…
Single Mother
Patricia was expecting baby number two, a boy, when her daughter was 6-years-old. She and the baby’s father were not together anymore, so she had committed herself to being the best mother she could be, regardless of who she had in her life. And she did just that…
Exhausting
Throughout her 20s and 30s, life was exhausting. She worked as many hours as she could, keeping food on the table for her two children. She demanded respect and her children learned responsibility and hard work. She was doing everything she could to raise them right. One afternoon, she a woman on the news changed everything…
The Urge Resurfaced
Patricia never could fight off the urge to locate her birth mother. While watching television one day, that urge took a turn when a woman on the television show she was watching capture her attention…
Matching Up
A woman named Vernita Lee appeared on a talk show and was discussing her life story. Although a difficult one, Patricia was struck by just how similar their stories had been. Patricia wasn’t totally sure, of course, but there was only one way to find out more…
Things Added Up
Patricia tried her best to locate Vernita. She had an odd feeling when she was watching her on the television, that Vernita was her mother, but she kept running into roadblocks whenever she tried to reach her…
Not Giving Up
Despite the roadblocks, Patricia didn’t give up on this idea. If she had any hope of finding her mother, she had to continue to pursue this possibility. Vernita had talked about raising a family not far from where she was born, and the difficult choice she had to make as a young and poor mother…
Digging Around
While Patricia researched Vernita and looked further into her history and background, she came across the name of another one of Vernita’s daughters. Her jaw hit the floor…
No Way!
Patricia and her son looked at the paperwork in shock. Vernita’s daughter’s name was Oprah…Oprah Winfrey. Patricia was in disbelief and realized that if Vernita was indeed her mother, that would make Oprah her half-sister…
Oprah’s Niece
Patricia dug around and was able to locate a restaurant in Wisconsin that was run by Oprah’s niece. She headed to Wisconsin, paperwork in hand, hoping to talk to her and get some of her questions answered…
DNA Testing
After Patricia spoke to her and told her the story, Oprah’s niece agreed to take a DNA test to see if they had any obvious matches. When the results came back, everyone was shocked…
Matched!
The results came back, and it was a match! Word spread in the Winfrey family rather quickly, and a meeting between Oprah, Patricia, and their mother, Vernita, was scheduled. The two long-lost siblings clicked immediately and they had a lifetime to catch up on. Oprah decided to do something big…
Official Introduction
When Oprah learned the news about her long-lost sister, she told the world about it in the most Oprah way possible: she introduced her to the world on her talk show. Everyone wanted to know more about the story…
Long-Awaited Reunion
The sisters rejoiced and embraced each other in front of a shocked audience. Oprah sat down with Patricia and they talked all about Patricia’s life and the hardships she had overcome. Patricia told Oprah just how long she had waited for a moment like this, a moment she could finally find some closure…
Humility Above All
The thing about Patricia’s story, that Oprah truly appreciated, was that she had never sought out the press to sell the story. Having the amount of wealth and influence that Oprah did meant that people frequently tried to take advantage, and yet, Patricia was never interested in that. Soon, though, this would pay off for her tenfold…
Taking Care of Patricia
Oprah wanted to help Patricia out. She purchased her a sprawling mansion in Wisconsin that cost nearly half a million dollars. But that wasn’t all…
Back to School
Oprah also paid for Patricia to go back to college and finish pursuing her degree in social work. She knew Patricia would do a lot of good in the world…
Graduation
Patricia took none of this for granted. She thought, at 53, she had finally found what she had been looking for, and on graduation day she proudly looked out into the audience and saw her sister, Oprah, smiling back at her. This was more than she could have ever hoped for…
Passing Away
Vernita Lee eventually passed away at age 83, but Patricia and Oprah have never forgotten how she had been the key to their newfound sisterhood. Two sisters, separated for decades, had finally found one another, and that was the greatest gift they could have ever received…
Happy Family
What a shock it had been for Patricia to find out, after all this time, that she not only had a family but that her family was quite famous. While this isn’t the case for every adoption story, for these two sisters, their bond trumped all.