… Embark on a journey through the significant events of my life, woven with coincidences and surprising revelations. It all began on July 11, 1964, at 2:18 a.m., in the silent atmosphere of the Hôpital de la Miséricorde in Montreal, on St-Hubert Street. From my earliest days, my story took unexpected turns: transferred to the Crèche de la Miséricorde, I was welcomed into a new home on August 8 of the same year. Gisèle Lacourse and Jean-Louis Filiatrault offered me unwavering love and baptized me Brigitte, fulfilling their ardent desire to start a family after a decade of unsuccessful attempts to conceive a child. My sister Chantal had already joined the family 16 months prior, also adopted.

But the adventure doesn’t end there. Fifty-five years later, on October 5, 2019, my research led me to meet sixty-three members of my biological family for the first time. This poignant encounter opened the doors to my past, revealing unsuspected connections and stories. Among them, my new biological cousin, Louise, holds precious anecdotes about my biological mother, Gabrielle. The irony of fate is never far away: while I was studying nursing for eighteen months without obtaining a degree, my biological mother herself was a nurse. An unexpected connection that perhaps reveals a shared passion for the healthcare field. However, despite this closeness, my path took an unexpected turn towards public relations. Sometimes, life takes us on surprising detours, but these diverse experiences have enriched my journey and have contributed to shaping the person I am today.

In this whirlwind of emotions and discoveries, the story still holds surprises. Settled in the Plateau Mont-Royal, near Hôpital Notre-Dame where my biological mother worked, I stumbled upon coincidences that defy imagination. And what about my half-sister, born ten years before me and also placed for adoption, whose existence I learned of at the same time as my biological family?

But my narrative is not limited to these family twists and turns. It is also punctuated by the challenge of a rare autoimmune disease, Localized Pansclerotic Morphea Scleroderma, and by a multitude of anecdotes that peppered my childhood, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and by travels that enriched my life, worthy of the most daring adventures., from Paris to Bali, passing through Lwanbo, a remote village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or even a safari in South Africa.

If these opening lines have captured your interest, you will surely be delighted to discover the continuation of this narrative, where each page reveals a new episode of my emotion-filled and eventful life.

Life sometimes holds astonishing coincidences that seem straight out of a movie script. But in this case, reality surpasses fiction.