Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited Read Free

that it wasn’t possible for Samantha Futerman to be my twin.
    The day was so strange. I was feeling completely turned around. I think I was in shock, but I just didn’t know it. When I finally settled into the studio and started working on my collection, spreading my fabric out on my worktable, I still kept staring at Samantha’s photo on my laptop as I obsessively reread her IMDB profile. I was impressed to see that she had been in several films, some of them big, including
Memoirs of a Geisha
, an adaptation from a huge international bestselling book, which I had seen with my mother when it came to France when I was seventeen. Samantha played a young Japanese girl named Satsu, the older sister of the lead role. At the time, she did not jump out at me as my doppelgänger. She was heavily made up to look Japanese.
    My studio mates were hard at work, but at the risk of being annoying, I simply had to communicate my excitement. “That girl is born the same day as me, and she’s adopted, too!” I’d blurt out whenever the urge hit me. I had no proof she was related to me, but it was making complete sense in my head, and I was compelled to share. People could draw their own conclusions, but I was already convinced.
    Things started getting even freakier really fast. Lucas directed me to several more YouTube videos he had discovered that featured Samantha, pointing out that she and I hadthe same inflection and delivery in our voices. No video of Samantha’s blew me away more than the one titled “How It Feels to Be Adopted . . . I Am Sam.” It was a humorous three-minute skit of Samantha being questioned about her feelings about adoption. Friends were asking her purposefully naïve questions, such as . . . was she from South or North Korea, how come she didn’t look like the rest of her family, and if she felt sad and alone because her birth parents had given her up. She reveals that she has two American brothers, one of whom we meet in the video. Did this mean I had two American brothers, too? At one point, she dresses up as Little Orphan Annie and belts out the song “Tomorrow.” I found it incredibly amusing, but more important, it was my confirmation that we were twins. Her mannerisms, her voice, even her sense of humor . . . were mine.
    I raced home to the safety of my computer, where I started sending the “How It Feels to Be Adopted . . . I Am Sam” video to everyone I could think of. Enlisting friends, I also launched my massive campaign to figure out a way to get in touch with Samantha Futerman, putting all my faith in social media. We were unsuccessful in locating a Facebook page for her, but Kelsang did find her Instagram on his cell phone. We went through all of her pictures, with me feeling a little guilty at the depths of my snooping, but it was so much fun! We found very recent pictures of her on a trip to Korea. One of them had her posing with a woman she identified as her foster mother. She looked very happy to be with her.
    Next, we found “Samantha Futerman” on Twitter. She had been tweeting a lot lately, so I got to spy on her back-and-forth conversations. As paradoxical as it sounds, I was discovering her both slowly and quickly, all without her knowledge.Someone suggested we try working backward to find her Facebook page by finding a relative of hers on her Twitter, then seeing if we could locate that person’s Facebook page. If we were successful, we could hope to find a “Samantha” in that list of “friends.”
    We chose a Twitterer named “JoFuterman,” searched the name on Facebook, opened Jo Futerman’s “friends” inventory, and had a match! Someone named “Samantha” was on Jo’s list! I clicked on her name, and up came the same photo we’d seen on her Instagram. I had found her! Most of her information was private, but I would find a way to contact her, no matter what I had to do. Flying to America crossed my mind, but I would save that as a last resort.
    I