Sarah Reinhardt

Sarah was born in 1965 in St. Louis after her first mother’s water broke on the ascent out of JFK, spending the two-hour flight in labor. Sarah would later find out that her first mother, Tilda, was also adopted. Tilda’s adoptive mother was on the plane and when Tilda gave birth, refused to let her hold Sarah, and demanded that Sarah be relinquished. Sarah was in foster care for 6 weeks before being placed with her adoptive parents in Jefferson City, Missouri. When Sarah was 7 her parents divorced and it was decided that she and her three siblings (two natural and one adopted) would remain with their father. When she was 12, he remarried and she gained three more step siblings. At 15, and feeling invisible, Sarah ran away from home and was able to move in with her adoptive mother in Miami, Florida. Sarah made her way to New York City, where she lived until she was 25 and then moved to Los Angeles. In 1997, after the birth of her son, Sarah sought out her biological roots. She found Tilda, two sisters, and two brothers – they’d all been waiting for her to find them. Sarah stayed in reunion until Tilda’s untimely death in 2009 and remains in reunion with her sisters. She was not able to locate her first father until 2010 when she found a sister on Ancestry – from there, she found two more siblings, aunts and uncles, all located in New England. She discovered that her father had committed suicide due to PTSD from serving in Vietnam. A few years after that, thanks to a DNA test, she found Tilda’s biological family, mostly scattered around upstate New York.

Sarah always knew something was *wrong* – but because her trauma and abandonment were tri-fold, (birth, divorce, her mom leaving/dad emotionally checked out) and therapists weren’t well-trained in relinquishment trauma, her wounds went unhealed for many years, jumping from therapist to therapist and modality to modality. It wasn’t until 2021 when she and her friend Louise Browne started their podcast, Adoption: The Making of Me, that her life finally made sense and the deeper journey to healing began, thanks to the stories and support of other adoptees. @reinhardtsarah @themakingofmepodcast #adoptee