“I remember at very young age already having questions for my family, mostly my mother,” Rosenblatt tells PEOPLE for a story in this week’s issue. “She was the person that I always went to.”
“I understood while growing up that there was going to be some extra understanding when it came to my identity,” she continues, adding that she realized early on that she looked different from the rest of her adoptive family.
But Rosenblatt’s questions about her identity were eventually answered this year, when her adoptive brother sent her a story about Chilean babies who were taken from their parents after birth.
Sara Rosenblatt after being adopted.
“You always wonder if there’s more to [your story], like an iceberg,” she continues. “There’s surface information, but you always wonder if there’s more.”
And when Rosenblatt met her biological sister Rosa in Chile in May, the connection was instant.
“Looking at each other, we were like, ‘This is definitely my sister!'” says Rosenblatt.
Graf, 39, had discovered that he, too, had beenstolen at birthafter he was born in Temuco, Chile, in 1983. His biological mother was told that he had died soon after he was born. Decades later they reunited with the help of some of Graf’s Chilean firefighter friends and two Chilean nonprofits.
For more on Rosenblatt and Graf, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
“I wondered if my biological mother had thought that I was dead this whole time,” Rosenblatt recalls.
For Rosenblatt, the reunion has proved to be life-changing.
“I realized when I was an adult and a mother that I covered up a lot of wounds that I probably should have explored more,” she says. “I’ve been through therapy. I go to a therapist as an adult and had a therapist as a child. It’s really been about healing for myself.”
“It’s been really validating to go through this process, though,” she adds. “It’s a process that I have to go through, but I’m not alone in it.”
source: people.com
