{"id":4800,"date":"2013-12-04T13:39:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T18:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4800"},"modified":"2013-12-04T13:39:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T18:39:57","slug":"chance-phone-call-leads-aurora-woman-to-emotional-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/chance-phone-call-leads-aurora-woman-to-emotional-lottery\/","title":{"rendered":"Chance phone call leads Aurora woman to \u201cemotional lottery\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a young girl, Gail Sellers would always pester her parents to give her an older brother. <\/p>\n

Once she was old enough, however, to figure out the intricacies of that particular situation, she changed tactic and decided she\u2019d be fine with a younger brother as well. <\/p>\n

It might have been a childish desire, but it is a memory which stuck with her throughout her adulthood, but now she knows her original desire was not far off the mark. <\/p>\n

She vividly remembers getting a call from a cousin in Ottawa seven years ago who had made contact with a young woman. Through the course of their conversations, they came to a startling conclusion \u2013 Ms. Sellers indeed had an elder brother, and her cousin had a phone number.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left a message, got a big glass of wine and sat down shaking,\u201d says Ms. Sellers, who recounts her story in the latest installment of Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul. <\/p>\n

An Aurora author, and active member in the Writers Community of York Region, she shares her story of \u201cwinning the emotional lottery\u201d when she least suspected it. Having settled in Aurora with her husband and two stepchildren, Ms. Sellers sadly had a void in her life after her 13-year-old son died in an accident. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince my son died, my life hasn\u2019t been easy and I have lived a life of depression,\u201d she says. \u201cI have been very blessed to have a wonderful husband, and two stepsons, but I haven\u2019t had that sense of family.\u201d<\/p>\n

After leaving her initial message, she thought about the voice she had heard. The timbre was reminiscent of a radio announcer, she says, and once they actually made live contact the words came fast and easy, and pieces of a dusty puzzle began to fall into place. <\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep that night,\u201d she says of their first real conversation.<\/p>\n

Her brother had some pieces of the puzzle and combined with hers, they created a whole. They pieced together a story dating back to 1938 which was a very different society. Their father was in an unhappy marriage and couldn\u2019t leave, but fell in love with a young woman who ultimately became their mother. After Fred was born out of wedlock, their mother faced a difficult challenge of raising her baby despite an overbearing and domineering father of her own, and she ultimately \u201ccaved into the pressure\u201d of putting him up for adoption at six months old despite the emotional and financial support of the baby\u2019s father. <\/p>\n

With the baby out of the picture, they went their separate ways, but fate brought them back together over a decade later with both deciding to rekindle their relationship. Gail was born about three years later, joining a half-sister over a decade her elder. As such, she had the feeling of being raised almost as an only child, leaving that longing in her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have often thought about what I would ask my parents,\u201d says Ms. Sellers, whose father died when she was 13. \u201cI would probably have asked my mother, \u2018Why didn\u2019t you say something to me? We could have found him together.\u2019 That would have been my burning question. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been such a wonderful thing to reintroduce her to her son. What Fred said to me is he always hoped he would have had a picture of his mother or his dad, something to cling onto, but when we met, I bombarded him with information and pictures, stories that were more than he could ever imagine. It helped him to become more complete. He understood why mum gave him up and he never blamed her for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now working in administration at the Ontario Command of the Royal Canadian Legion on Industrial Parkway North, Ms. Sellers says it still seems just a little bit surreal to have gained this \u201cinstant family\u201d of Fred\u2019s wife Janet, his two grown daughters, and his grandchildren. They now spend Christmases and Holidays together and when the latest installment of Chicken Soup for the Soul was launched in Toronto last month, her youngest new niece was there to take in their shared story. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe miracle continues,\u201d she says. \u201cI hope people take away a sense of family, how important it is and if they are searching for somebody, I hope it gives them the inspiration to go. I hope it gives them some kind of desire to go out and search for their family because, to me, it was like winning the emotional lottery!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a young girl, Gail Sellers would always pester her parents to give her an older brother. <\/p>\n

Once she was old enough, however, to figure out the intricacies of that particular situation, she changed tactic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/2013-12-04-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1fq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 17:05:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}