Eleven sisters who were separated as kids when their biological family fell apart spent 43 years searching for each other. It wasn’t until they reunited that they learned the extent of the horrors they'd each suffered, but, in sharing their pain, they formed a sibling bond stronger than ever.
Reverend Barbara Lane, the ninth of 11 sisters, is a child abuse survivor and ministerial counselor living in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, James.
“One way or another, our mother abandoned us,” Barbara told The Epoch Times. “As the story goes, she had kicked our father out for various reasons, and then she ran away with a boyfriend. It was December in St. Louis, and it was a particularly cold December. ... She turned off the heat and sold all the furniture, and just left us.
‘We Weren’t Safe’
The year was 1954. Two of Barbara’s older sisters were already married and had left home. The youngest sister was yet to be born. One of the sisters, Laverne, was around 15 when their mother, Lucy, kicked out their father, Robert, and left. Laverne ran away.
“She ran away before the social workers came so they didn’t scoop her up,” Barbara said. “There’s a story that she did find where our father lived. ... She asked if she could stay with him. ... she said, ‘I’m really hungry.’ He said, ‘Take a vitamin, it’s every bit as nutritious as a meal.’ She spent the night there, left in the morning, and just made her way in the world as best she could.”
Barbara, who was 3 years old at the time, was removed from the apartment alongside seven sisters and placed in a Catholic orphanage. For Barbara, whose older sisters were her source of comfort, this was a “beautiful experience.” However, her sisters, on the other hand, missed their mother.
But unfortunately, no matter where the siblings went, they were faced with some form of abuse and were never truly “safe.” But Barbara was constantly protected by her older sisters through it all.
“My older sisters protected me from all of that,” Barbara said.
But Barbara was later separated from her sisters and placed in foster care with her sister Kay, who was 18 months older than her. There she faced trauma.
The Hellhole
Barbara now refers to her and Kay’s foster placement as “the hellhole.” Since they didn’t do a lot of screening back then, Barbara said, the Catholic Charity did not really realize where they were putting them but were just frantically looking for a home for them.At the foster home, both Barbara and Kay faced abuse by their foster father. He was physically violent, threatened them with a gun, and even sexually abused both sisters.
While Kay blocked out her memories of the abuse, Barbara escaped into a fantasy world.
“I was having pretend tea parties in my mind with my sisters,” she said. “I held on to my memory of their love, care, and compassion for me when I was little. ... I think that got me through.”
Raised as a Catholic, Barbara also found comfort in her faith, seeking Jesus’s protection against her unsafe home.
But at school, Barbara couldn’t concentrate. She failed test after test and was labeled incompetent. “I hate to use the ‘R-word’, but they called me that many times,” she said.
Nor was Barbara allowed to leave the house, except to go to school or the grocery store. She said: “We were held ... somewhat hostage to that home so that we wouldn’t develop really close relationships with anyone, because if you did, you might tell what’s going on, right?”
This made Barbara really shy as she didn’t know how to interact with other kids.
As a teen who was good at sports and had not been given an opportunity to cheer, she grew frustrated with the limits on her freedom and one day the pot boiled over.
No Judgment, No Shame
Barbara was 14. That year, her foster parents started letting her leave the house. She went to play tennis and went on bike rides. In a bike accident, Barbara ended up meeting her future husband. Barbara and James dated through high school and married at 19, liberating Barbara from her foster home for good. Yet, still, she did not fully open up about the horrors of her childhood.“I felt obligated, from all the threats and the abuse and everything, to maintain that false scenario: ‘Oh, you were so lucky to be adopted by such a loving family,’” she said. “I didn’t have the emotional strength and maturity to go against that.”
After getting out of the hole and getting married, Barbara began to seek therapy and accept the reality of what had occurred in her childhood. This was a huge step for her.
“You have to look at the truth of what occurred in your life, and in my opinion, that is the first step to freeing yourself from any kind of abuse ... the next step is, ‘Oh, God, now I alone can fix it,’” she said.
Throughout, James was Barbara’s rock as she confronted her past.
“There was no judgment, there was no shame,” she said. “he just was my soulmate. He was put into my life for a purpose, I’m sure, because to this day he is supportive of me and let me go through my own healing process.”
‘They Found Me’
Forty-three years had passed, and it was the August of 1997 when Barbara’s late sister, the second-oldest, Ellen, traced Barbara and Kay from a powerful clue: a newspaper clipping promoting foster care that had named their foster parents. Before Ellen reached out, Barbara had a spiritual premonition while packing for a summer vacation with her husband and three kids.She told The Epoch Times: “I was in the kitchen ... it was like somebody just shook me, and I could hear—I call it a premonition for a lack of better terminology–‘If you want to find your sisters, why didn’t you just ask?’ Then in that second, that very second ... I knew they were going to find me, and I knew it would happen in three days.
“On the third day, I was sitting out on the beach early in the morning. My husband called me into the condo which was right on the boardwalk and said, ‘Come in ... Sit down.’ I said, ‘They found me, didn’t they?’ and he said, ‘How did you know?’”
Soon, Barbara had the numbers of two of her sisters.
Shortly after, eight sisters flew to St. Louis, Missouri. Barbara, Kay, Ruth, Ellen, Laverne, Annie, Bobby, twins Vicky and Mickey, Pamela, and Cindy were finally reunited.
“It was like we had never been apart,” Barbara said. “It was like we were six, eight years old again, playing and singing and crying and hugging, and we just couldn’t let go of each other for a second. ... I struggle with the words for that experience.”
‘Your Soul is Still Intact’
The sisters spent the next eight years immersing themselves in each other’s lives, “recapturing youth” through quality time and sharing fun, sleepovers, and holidays. Only once they'd reclaimed their sisterly bond did they start sharing the harrowing stories from their years spent apart.“I would say, ‘We need to share this with our sisterhood,’” Barbara said. “They asked me if I would start writing their stories, and in that process we all broke our silence, including myself. The more I heard their stories, the more I knew that the 11 of us together was a force to be reckoned with.”
“I followed my intuition as to which sister to visit first,” said Barbara, who is grateful to have chosen Mickey since she later passed away. “I’d spend time with one and they’d call and say, ‘I didn’t tell you the truth, come back,’ or, ‘I have more to tell you, come back.’ So, it was a process.”
“My sisters did not read these stories until this book was published,” Barbara told The Epoch Times. “They all ordered a copy before I had a chance to get them a good hardback copy. They read the other sisters’ stories and learned things they never knew. ... I guess it was easier to tell me and let me write it than to open up in many other ways, so for that, I’m super honored.”
Today, a grateful grandmother of six, Barbara still struggles with learned responses from her abusive foster home but wouldn’t change a thing about her past since her story has reaped life-changing lessons. It’s also helping others.
“It takes a lot of bravery to enter therapy and deal with your childhood traumas, but that’s how you break the chain,” she said. “I think the important message is that we can go through all these worlds and we can talk about them.
“But there’s a deeper message, that you don’t have to accept that label of being a broken, victimized individual because you’ve had a horrific childhood. ... You can look at it for what it was, and know that your heart, your soul, is still intact.”
To anyone who has suffered trauma, Barbara advises them to reach out for help and try different therapists until you find one that fits, and surround yourself with people who will listen to your story without judgment.
“Your soul is eternal ... it just can’t be harmed,” she said. “If you can hang onto that, everything that goes on in this crazy physical world, as horrible as it is, isn’t as real as the spiritual essence that you are.”
