What does it mean to be someone from somewhere? That question has been very much on my mind since last fall. I am adopted. Years ago, I decided I was not going to look for my biological parents. I had had a lucky and happy childhood. And somehow it felt disloyal to ask for more. Even though my parents told me they’d be supportive if I wanted to investigate, I suspected it would still feel like a betrayal to them. I certainly understood and respected the decision of others who wanted to seek out their own biological roots, but I had decided it just wasn’t for me. "I don’t want to borrow trouble," was my stock answer when people asked why I’d never looked. Even after the birth of my first known biological relative, my darling little boy, Spencer, I still didn’t search out the past. Anyway, I thought the issue was settled. Case closed.  

Over the years, I have done a good deal of reporting on various issues related to adoption. I had interviewed Barbara Walter’s wonderful adopted daughter, Jackie, for a special on the subject (among her thoughts: it was harder to be the daughter of someone famous than to have been adopted), and just last summer, I filed an hour-long documentary about two young women who decided to place their babies in open adoptions. Needless to say, my own situation informed much of my reporting on these and other stories, but it wasn’t until last November that I really got my breath taken away, my certainty shaken. 

It started at home. My favorite doorman welcomed me home from work one day with an unexpected greeting: "Ms. McFadden, I didn’t know you were adopted!" "Really, John, well yes I am." By the time I got to the elevator I turned, "And why, might I ask, do you know now?" "Well," came the reply, "I was sorting the mail when Spencer got home from school. I asked him about his father’s last name. He said his dad’s family was from England and Ireland. I asked him if McFadden wasn’t Irish too … and Spencer said, ‘My mother is from nowhere. She’s adopted.’"

It stung. From nowhere? I opened the apartment door. "Hey, Spence," I called, "let’s talk. Do you really think I’m from NOwhere?" "Well," he said slowly, "no offense Mom," long pause, "but you are." I understood how it seemed to a nine-year-old. Of course I was from somewhere, just somewhere unknown. I dropped it.  

And then synchronicity or fate or whatever you want to call it stepped in. Within days my colleagues at "Nightline" asked me to do a story about a 43-year-old woman — named Cynthia — who had decided to search for her birth mother. Her nine-year-old son had been diagnosed with cancer. With some real trepidation, I agreed. It became a remarkable emotional journey, for her and for me. Tonight on ABC News’s "Nightline" [Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 11:35pm (ET/PT)] I will tell her story. Click here for more information on tonight’s ‘Nightline’: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=5389436&page=1.  

I hope you’ll let me know your thoughts.