In the past, when anyone asked if I was married or had children, my answers were easy: “Yes” to the first and “no” to the second, because my husband was alive and the new born I had placed in an open adoption when I was a teenager hadn’t yet found me on Facebook.

Before the answers became complicated, my husband, Alberto, and I had spent the weekend in Connecticut celebrating my 34th birthday. The advertising agency he had founded with his best friend was weathering the recession, and I was climbing the ranks at a Manhattan public relations firm.

There were no overt signs that Alberto’s 40-year-old heart was about to give out, but one terrifying Sunday in March 2009, I awoke and he did not.

The year that followed came with a different set of questions, often from well-meaning friends: “Do you regret not freezing his sperm?” and “Don’t you wish you had children with him?”

Alberto and I had discussed the possibility of children on our second date. Maybe someday, we agreed, but no rush. So during our three years of marriage, we had placed a premium on spontaneity, passport stamps and sleep.

There were moments in the first heavy months of widowhood when I wished Alberto’s laughter or balloon-shaped toes were living on in a toddler. Yet I was also relieved that I didn’t have to sublimate my grief for motherhood. And grieve I did: on Twitter, on Facebook, on Tumblr.

What began as catharsis evolved into a public narrative, and among the strangers following my story was a teenage girl in North Carolina. In the summer of 2011, she exchanged her anonymity for a friend request.

Because her Facebook name didn’t match the one on her birth certificate, I failed to make the connection. I didn’t realize the historic shift my life was about to take until the next morning, when I noticed a Facebook chat window on my desktop. It was initiated at 1:10 a.m. and contained one elongated word from someone named Laurie: “Heyyyy.”

Hey back, I thought. Who are you, again?

When I clicked on the chat, her profile page loaded and I recognized her father’s dark Filipino eyes and my family’s Irish bone structure. My biological daughter had just friended me on Facebook.