Finding Anna: The Daughter I Lost—and Found—After 37 Years

by Ram Ben Ze'ev

In October 2024, my life changed forever.

After uploading my DNA to a genealogy website out of little more than idle curiosity, I received a notification that stunned me to my core: a 100% match for a daughter. Not a cousin. Not a maybe. A daughter.

Her name is Anna B. Hadzic (née Kuehn). She was born in December 1987, and I never knew she existed—not truly. But the moment I saw the match, I knew exactly who she was.

Her mother, Mary Kuehn, worked for me in Massachusetts many years ago. Ours was a beautiful, genuine, and deeply loving relationship, albeit far too brief. Mary was separated from her husband at the time and had moved in with me. We talked about everything—life, love, and the child we would soon welcome into the world. We were overjoyed when she became pregnant, and we had already chosen a name: Laura.

But then, everything changed.

Mary went to visit her mother in upstate New York. I thought nothing of it; she had made a trip there, before. But this time, she never returned.

I was confused, then heartbroken. I drove to her mother’s home only to be met with hostility.

Mary didn’t speak a word to me. Instead, her mother—without mercy—told me in graphic and cruel language that I would have no place in the life of our unborn daughter. She had convinced Mary to return to her estranged husband and to erase me from their lives. The man she was separated from would now be declared the father of the child we had created in love.

The betrayal devastated me. I spiralled. Though I somehow managed to survive the decades that followed, I never truly recovered from that wound.

And then—thirty-seven years later—Anna found me.

It turns out that she had long suspected something wasn’t right. Her mother’s husband didn’t feel like her father. Despite the constant lies and years of gaslighting by Mary, her mother’s husband, and even her grandmother, Anna refused to give in. She held on to the feeling that the truth was out there, somewhere. She even wrote an unpublished book as a teenager, trying to make sense of the trauma she had endured.

Determined to uncover her real identity, Anna uploaded her DNA to multiple genealogy platforms, holding on to the hope that she might one day find her real father.

And she did.

When we first connected, we instantly recognised in each other more than just biology. We share a love for the same things. We think alike. We speak alike. We laugh alike. In ways that are impossible to articulate fully, we are—undeniably—father and daughter.

I now have two grandchildren: a bright young girl and a curious boy who call me Saba during our frequent video calls. And while it's still early days, I feel overwhelming pride and love every time I see their faces or hear Anna’s voice.

There is still much I cannot forgive. I will never accept what Mary did—what she allowed to be done—to Anna. I will never make peace with the fact that instead of telling our daughter the truth, Mary drugged our daughter with antidepressants to numb the pain of her own deception. I will never forget the cruelty with which Mary’s mother extinguished my role in our daughter’s life before it even began.

But despite all of that, I have a daughter.

Her name isn’t Laura. Her name is Anna. And she is strong, brilliant, and accomplished. She spent years working for the CIA and now thrives at InterWorks, a global tech company. She’s married. She’s a mother. And at long last, she knows who her real father is.

After finding Anna, I found something else too—something buried and quiet in me for decades: the strength to finish something I had always dreamed of. I finally completed and published my cookbook Cooking at 20 Degrees, a project I’d imagined for years but never had the heart to complete. In it, I included a special acknowledgment that reads:

And most of all, to my long-lost daughter, Anna B. Hadzic (née Kuehn), who braved dangerous and uncharted waters—often sailing alone—to find her Dad, who was waiting with a big smile, a warm loaf of bread, and a boatload of love.

Anna is vindicated. She refused to be broken. And she found her way home.

And I, at long last, have my daughter.

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Bill White (Ram ben Ze'ev) is CEO of WireNews Limited, Mayside Partners Limited, MEADHANAN Agency, Kestrel Assets Limited, SpudsToGo Limited and Executive Director of Hebrew Synagogue