“Caught in the Middle” By Julie Ryan McGue The needle on my inner compass leans towards positive. So, when I consider my adoption, I tease out two things for which I can be grateful. In the Baby Scoop Era during which I was adopted, the firm policy at Catholic Charities was to place multiples in the same adoptive family. I can’t imagine advancing through life without my identical twin sister as a collaborator, confidante, and co-conspirator. And I’m glad I waited until I became a middle-aged woman with scores of lived experiences before tackling adoption search and reunion. Adopted together as infants, we seemed always to have known about our adoption. Ours was a closed adoption, so our adoptive parents were given no information about our first family. Two years later, our parents adopted a little boy, and then as so often happens, my mother’s infertility issues abated. By the time we became teenagers, my twin and I were the oldest of six, a blended family of three adoptees and three
