MEDINA, Ohio — A picture of her parents reminds Anna Sardis of her own journey to find her identity.
“I ended up here in Cleveland, Ohio because my adoptive parents lived here,” Sardis said. “They came from Greece, and they brought me over after they got me from the orphanage.”
Sardis was born in Greece, but said she didn’t always know that she was adopted.
“So, when I was in my 20s, I had moved into my parents’ home and in the basement, I was starting to go through some boxes that were my parents and my mother always had these old calendars and wrote down all her appointments. When I got into the 1960s, I noticed that a few things weren’t going right. Things weren’t correct,” Sardis said.
Sardis said an appointment that her mom had around her brother’s birthday tipped her off.
“He was born in 1965. One of the calendars was 1965, and when I looked back in September of 1965, it showed that my adoptive mother, Elene, had a miscarriage,” Sardis said.
That’s when Sardis said she began her search to find out if she was adopted.
“I knew that my brother was not born to her three months later,“ Sardis said.
Out of respect for her family, Sardis said it took more than 30 years before she tried to find her blood relatives in Greece.
“When I first met my three sisters, it was overwhelming,” Sardis said.
Now, she’s meeting her half brother, Mats Johansson, who lives in Sweden, for the first time.
“So, with Mats, I had done DNA testing on 23andMe. My kids gave it to me as a Christmas present. So, nothing came up on that. So, we decided to send it over to MyHeritage, which is more of a European DNA kit, which really concentrates on kids that were born in Europe, and a couple of months after I met my sisters is when Mats popped up as a sibling,” Sardis said.
At the airport, Sardis waited for the arrival of her brother with her friend and her partner.
“My heart’s racing now. It didn’t all day,” Sardis said. “But, now I’m ready. [I’m] ready to meet him,” Sardis said.
Moments after a few false alarms, Sardis got the signal that her brother was finally here.
“Hi! hi,” Johansson said, hugging his sister in the baggage claim.
Sardis said she’ll get to know her brother over a two-week stay, where they’ll meet other adoptees from Greece here in the states. She gave this advice to those who might be considering finding their long lost relatives.
“Don’t give up because right when you least expect it, things change,” Sardis said.
Johansson shared that timing was also on their side.
“The crazy thing is we have done the DNA test at the same time,” Johansson said.
Sardis agreed.
“We did. We did,” Sardis said. “The DNA testing was at the same time and it popped up, and it’s incredible. So, don’t give up.”
