A Greek adoptee in the US recently reunited with her birth mother after 62 years, thanks to the Eftychia Project, which helps Greek adoptees find their relatives.
Effie Myrick, 64, finally got to see her now 93-year-old mother again after being put up for adoption when she was two years old.
“She was crying and telling me that she has been thinking about me and my sister for the past 64 years,” Effie Myrick told ABC News.
Effie and her twin sister Dina were adopted by an American couple from an orphanage back in Greece. At the time, Greece was experiencing immense poverty, and her unmarried mother wanted to give her girls better opportunities.
Effie and her family were adopted by a family in Illinois, but Dina passed away about a decade ago. Effie always strived to find her mother back in Greece.
The Eftychia Project, a nonprofit that works with the online genealogy platform MyHeritage to help adoptees of Cold War-era Greece locate their families, came to her assistance.
Greek adoptee meets half-sister she never knew about
After a friend encouraged her to take a DNA test, Effie learned about Yolanda, her half-sister about whom she never knew. After initially meeting on a Zoom call in July, Effie found out her mom was still alive and immediately started planning her big return to Greece.
A few weeks ago, they finally met for the first time. “We just grabbed each other and just held on,” she told ABC News.
Effie says she and Yolanda email each other every day and are planning more trips together in the future. She, of course, wants to come back and see her mom again, and guess what? She also has a bunch of nieces and nephews to spoil now.
Eftychia Project celebrates 5 years at Greek adoptee reunion
Dozens of Greek adoptees and their families from across the USA and Greece gathered in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2024 for the Third Annual Greek Adoptee Reunion, hosted by The Eftychia Project.
After the first two reunions in Nashville, Tennessee and Athens, Greece, the event switched back to the US for the fifth anniversary of The Eftychia Project, the only official adoptee-led organization in the US supporting Greek adoptees.
The organization was founded by Linda Carol Trotter, a Greek adoptee who reunited with her biological mother and extended Greek family in 2017.
While the organization aids Greek-born adoptees (those born in and adopted from/in Greece) from any era, it especially wants to assist the thousands of Greek children adopted by American parents in the scandal-ridden years between 1948 and 1962, as time is running out if there is any hope of finding birth parents still alive.
Related: Greek Adoptee in the US Discovers Biological Father After 63 Years
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