Anyone here who has been adopted and?

gibberish

I am an adoptee and have never felt that searching was a proper or respectful thing to do. It comes with great heartache for all involved.

gypsywinter

"" She hasn't made an attempt to find me(which I'm not expecting anyway)""

How do you know she isn't attempting to find you? Was your adoption a closed adoption? If so, she probably has very little information to even begin a search with or possibly the little info she has...is leading her nowhere. If your adoption was handled by an adoption agency, doesn't mean that the adoption agency will help her in finding you. That was my specific experience with Lutheran Family Services..they were incredibly unhelpful, terribly dismissive and just plain awful. I enlisted the aid of a 'search angel' and found my daughter (and spoke to her) in 6 days!! By then my daughter was 34 yrs old...

I know you directed your question to adoptees, but just thought my experience could help shed some light on 'searching'.

I love Chris!

I have wanted to contact my birth mom, but i haven't done much research yet. my dad explained to me that during the first few months that i was adopted, my birth mom and my adoptive parents wrote each other. but my adoptive mom started getting paranoid, and asked her not to keep in contact anymore. my dad has no clue where she is living, if she ever got married, or if she ever had any other kids.

cantstopLinnyG

I am an adoptee, and I completely agree with Gypsywinter. You do not know if she has been trying to find you or not. She probably has less info than you have. Another thing to remember, most of our n moms were told to NEVER even think about us, much less dare to search.

Do you have any info at all? Her name, dob? Agency? Lawyer name?

Start google-ing. Even google your OWN birthdate, she may have entered it into a search registry.

Call the agency that handled your adoption, get any info you can. Here is a link to a good reunion site. Also get a classmates.com account.

http://www.plumsite.com/isrr/

Mei-Ling

How do you know she hasn't tried? Maybe she doesn't have any information about you or doesn't know where to start looking.

You'll never know unless you try.

IMO, it is better to know and get rejected than spend your time constantly wondering IF you'll be rejected.

Laurel J

If you want to search, go right ahead. I did not have the classic happy reunion, and I don't have a relationship with my natural mother now, but I ended up with more information about myself than I had before, and that made it all worthwhile.

I won't say it didn't hurt to realize that we were never going to meet, but I'm glad I searched, and I'd do it again.

kateiskate

Since Possum and Linny gave you some great ideas and resources I will answer the "How did you Feel?" part of the question....

I feel nervous, anxious, weepy, angry, scared, excited, passionate, and worried about searching.

Part of me is afraid that I might offend my aparents. You know, wouldn't want them to think I'm ungrateful or anything. But I also think I should still search while I'm young (I'm 21) because a part of me is scared that if I wait to long they could be gone before I even start to search. Part of my need to search is to fill the "hole" inside of me that has caused me to always feel like a loner. I want to be at peace with my demons so I can finally rest.

I'm not sure if the others said this or not, but always try myspace and facebook! My sister's fmom found her through myspace. If she's looking for you, she might well be on there as my sister's mom was, just scoping the territory.

chazas

I completely agree with the previous posters who said that you shouldn't think your bio mother doesn't want to find you, because you haven't heard from her. I found my bio mother a couple of weeks ago and she has been thrilled to hear from me. But she had no idea it was even possible to search in a closed adoption.

I also agree that you should first register with as many reputable reunion registries as you can. You don't know if she's looking for you until you do.

You should look on your state's websites to find out what official resources are available to you. Where I'm from, we are entitled to "non-identifying" information, that we get from the adoption agency if there was one, or from the state for a private adoption. There is also an official state registry.

If you want to actively search, you should hook up with a "search angel" in your state who can guide you - or if you will be doing a lot of the work yourself join a locally-focused search/reunion email list. I don't know about wherever you are, but here is a very active nationwide email list:
http://www.adoptiondatabase.org/

There are also some more active internet discussion forums out there, as well as some good books about search and reunion. From the birth mother's perspective, a great one is The Girls Who Went Away. From an adoptee's perspective, I like Birthright (which I don't think is in print any longer but you can find used copies on Amazon, etc.). The resources are a bit out of date but the stories and general outline of the process are wonderful.

Good luck!

yeahright

I know your question was not to AP's but I thought I'd answer what I am doing to support.

I have a whole box of every little email and documentation/summary of every phone call and visit we've ever had with the natural parents including our thoughts and feelings during the process, agencies, social workers, were their siblings, what I perceived was going on with the families and anything else I could capture that would provide information to my children at the right times. Also, though one of the mothers involved more recently asked for closed adoption which we are tring to gently suggest she won't always want, one of the pieces of paper does have her full name and place of her birth (it was a mistake by the social worker that it was in the files at all).

mom to be

I know my biological mother, she is not a nice person and if she were not my mother I would have no relationship with her. I feel obligated to be nice to her.
By the time I found my biological father, he was dead. But I did learn I had two older half-brother, we talk, but I have no desire to meet them. We have nothing in common and the conversations are kept rather generic. They were able to answer questions for me. I was much better off with my adopted family.

Cool Hal

Each story is different and until you make enquiries you will never know.

Both me and my sister (both adopted separately and not blood related)have found our birth parents her story is very different from mine.

She contacted her birth mother at the age of around 28 - her biological cousin met with her and explained that her birth mother waited until my sister was 21 and then decided to close the chapter in her life and move on. She decided that if and when my sister contacted her she would not meet. My sister was a little hurt at first but it hasn't changed her life at all. She has lost nothing as she had nothing to lose in the first place.

Me after pondering for years and having her address for a while I wrote a letter a few days before my 36th birthday in December last year and meet last week. Early days but it is ok at the moment I have a half brother who wants to meet and I have spoken to him on the phone and lets see. Slowly slowly.

What is the worse thing that could happen - if like my sis she doesn't want to know you have lost nothing. If she has closure then maybe you can too.

Good luck.

_X_FREAKZOID_X_

my step -dad adopted me when i was 6 years old, i cant remember my real dad much. i haven't seen him since i was 4 when he came to say goodbye. i dint think i want to find him, im curious but it get angry when i think of how he abandoned me. i might change my mind when i get older though. i know i have a half-brother, he is older and keeps in contact with me, he lives with his mum and he only saw our dad a year ago.

Peanut88

I never knew my dad, and my mom died when I was ten. I was lucky and placed in a loving family in my neighborhood (I went to school with one of the four sons). I don't ever want to find my dad. I guess I'm kind of taking the attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!". He obviously didn't want to be a part of my life, so why would he now. Besides he's missed over 20 years of my life...20 years that cannot be replaced. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, and I think I'm ok with that...

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