The past three years have been filled with a myriad of searches in every direction imaginable. It has not just been a personal journey, but one shared by a dozen volunteers, thousands of hours of dedication and over a hundred solved cases where adoptees have been gifted in the realization of their roots.
It has not been a journey I could have accomplished alone. It took everyday people sacrificing a lot of their time to devote to complete strangers in need of their help. Some searches for birth family were completely driven by the volunteer genealogists and others were from the adoptees themselves striving past brick walls that defy imagination. Everyone of these searches were unique and each with a myriad of challenges and outcomes.
Some adoptees found birth parents, while others found a half-sibling. Many were surprised to be welcomed into these families. Yet others may have encountered those unwilling to admit the truth, still rattled with decades of shame they felt they brought upon their family; a shadow of what they used to be, because of how their own family treated them as outcasts from the day they became pregnant out of wedlock. In each instance, tears, joy, fear and elation were experienced and embraced.
Some birth families welcomed a reunion, while others wished to remain in the shadows. Still when all was said and done, a peace fell over the adoptees that had never quite been there before. A knowledge kept from them all their lives; their truth of their beginning. Just how the stars all aligned to bring about their birth onto this world.
This is not to say that many are not still looking, or don't have any the answers they started their search looking for. However, we've managed to give many, if not all, a chance to keep their hope alive and the path still visible on their journey.
We have been honored by the years of trust, patience, and dedication of people willing to help others. A true philanthropy spinning out step after step toward the thing we all deserve; just where we came from and what makes up our very nature.
Thank you one and all for your participation, and that the next hundred people we meet can find the truth they are seeking as well. To look into the faces of our biological aunts, uncles, cousins and perhaps even siblings and birth parents and know more about ourselves to take through the rest of our lives as cherished wisdom and understanding is simply priceless and we've been able to do it only because a community of adoptees all came together, day after day, to make it all possible.