If there is one thing I have learned throughout my searches for birth family, it is that collaboration with as many people as will further your cause, the more likely your skills and goals can be reached. Going solo in any field that touches an adoptee or birth parents search is just not going to pan out well. Making our search for family a learning experience, as well as, an emotional journey, can give us the perspective and skills to handle our experience most beneficially.

As described before not every search ends with a happy ending. However, I do feel fortunate with the results of my own search. I certainly do not want to discourage others on what may be at the conclusion of their own searches. Yet I feel obligated to clearly describe the circumstances I encountered and how things transitioned past the honeymoon of reunion. There is always some compromise I have encountered with assisting others and that mirror some of the pitfalls of my own results. Consider my narration just one possible outcome amongst many other scenarios that can and do come to fruition.

There are occasions where traditional search methodologies and autosomal DNA test results can only get you so far. When forced to approach individuals with requests for information I try and do my best not to pose as a threat or other type of weird stranger. I usually come at the individual to offer up what I already have, so it appears that I clearly know enough to be a problem, but ask harmless questions that try and distinguish my intentions are not ill conceived.

While genealogy and DNA test interpretation is my specialty, I am occasionally asked to search outside of that scope to help locate an adoptee for a birth mother. These searches are certainly not conducted the same way. They require a knack for following leads that potential locate individuals who may or may not become someone we can substantiate with circumstantial evidence.

Today’s post is intended for my social media audience. It is anticipated to wake up the reader with the mention of mainstream, current events, because they may be unable to really easily identify with the needs of adoptees and birth families requisite basic human right to know of their ancestral roots.

Unless you have been in hiding all your life since the day you relinquished your child, or you are an adoptee who has gone out of your way to become a hermit; living the majority of your life outside the public domain, it is almost impossible to not be found. You don't even have to be the one who is the social media fanatic. Consider a relative who has taken your picture on a smart phone, or posted a family outing on Facebook, there is likely a shadow cast somewhere unbeknownst to you. If someone is out to find you, the odds of you not being found are very slim. Unless you are in some witness protection program, then maybe there is a chance you have fallen off the grid. Let me share an example. Not only was I an adoptee, but my birth mother was too. She was also married three times, and had an alias name given to her when she became a news reporter twenty plus years ago. I found her. Let your noodle bake on that for a little while, now imagine how hard it really is to find you.

While documentation can sometimes help build out a tree and substantiate findings. Obituaries and links to find-a-grave, can become an enormous contribution to a genealogical search. Many thousands of people have been very diligent contributing information to find-a-grave, and it has the potential to really lead us much deeper into a family and the history of individuals. Some just contain a copy of the obituary, while others may have been taken much further providing details about how these people lived.

While many things have changed over the years to help us work with genealogy, and refined search techniques, the need to strike a balance, and give ourselves time to cope with the ups and downs of searching for biological family, is still necessary. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle both physically and psychologically is essential. Plan accordingly, and don't wait for the bad feelings to settle in before considering how to deal with them.

Triangulating the location of a potential birth family can be an exciting possibility. Although it normally does not become something one substantiates at the genealogical level, without a lot of family members on a tree. I have not seen one any closer than one thousand five hundred people in size. Sometimes it may even have to be double that to be worth moving on theories or hunches. However, with the help of Ancestry.com, we can perform a similar alignment with relatives on the distant level with the help of a tree based on a close cousin; perhaps at the second to third cousin level. In the case I am reviewing this evening, the non-identifying information is actually the weak link; if the theory proves to be substantiated by the science of a DNA test.

Sometimes the best of intensions is not realized, no matter how much we put towards an effort or cause. Mind you, that falling short on an endeavor does not mean the objective will never bear fruit, but in the midst of taking a tumble it can be difficult to see past the moment of disappointment.

Given enough time and effort other mediums can be used besides those now available to the adoptee or birth relative for finding those we are seeking out. As our information begins to narrow, it is not about the quantity of information, but instead the quality. Being able to tap into a community of similar thinking people who have their own inspirations, knowledge, and experience in the other fields required to perform things like genetic genealogy, traditional search, or international familiarity to foreign lands and cultures, makes social media a very attractive medium to try and tap into for knowledge. You just have to be willing to gather these people with items of interest, then occasionally ask them questions. Not too many, as we don't want to drag them into something they may not want to participate in, but bragging rights have an appeal in these spaces, so the payoff for them can be easily accomplished.

There is a desire that creeps to the surface and eventually takes hold as a need to find our roots. Although we did not all start hungry for this information. Many of us have lived our lives with the knowledge of being adopted or putting a child up for adoption, only to finally reach a point where we cannot hear society telling us to keep quiet and do as were told. There eventually comes a time where we either fully assimilate into the people we want to be in society, or turn about and break away to find the answers to questions that have plagued us our entire lives.

In our youth we engage in our use of imagination to learn, dream, cope, and evolve into the people we eventually become as adults. Experiences shape us, both real and imagined. So too are the base motivations and feelings adoptees learn as coping mechanisms built into their base instincts. Like the primal instincts of our lizard brains, there is an impact upon children who are relinquished to adoption. Some cope perfectly fine, while others learn to cope over time. Adoptees do not seek out their birth families because they are damaged goods, they seek them out to understand a great many things others who were not adopted take for granted; everything that came before us and led us up the moment of conception and birth.

There are challenges in following a genealogy through eras where conflict tore at the very fabric of a region, forcing people to flee towards more peaceful areas where a family could survive. This was not just a time where people were displaced or killed, but also a time where infrastructure and records were certainly not as important as conquest. Working with what is now left of those records in areas unfamiliar to the genealogist can certainly present difficulties trying to obtain anything with accuracy enough to substantiate truth. Such is the case with one of my adoptee friends who has already endured a lengthily journey on their quest to find birth family.

It is a challenge to work in genealogy in general. However, it becomes even more difficult when we come to the modern era of marriage and the frequent divorces that occur these days. Trying to track down living relatives accurately enough to reach out to them and eventually encourage a DNA test to prove or disprove a working theory about birth relatives can become tricky to pull off. That does not even take into consideration the actual awkwardness of contacting people and telling them our tale. I understand how emotionally turbulent it must be for a birth mother or father to be confronted with their past decades after it took place. However, it is just as challenging for an adoptee to spill their guts and reveal a lifetime of what has led up to this moment with a complete stranger.

In some of my cases the search is still in various levels of anticipation and looking. Some are even caught in a web of historical and geographical challenges to break through to the next individual to fill a spot on a family tree. While other still need specific examination of individual names to see if they qualify as the parent of an adoptee. In one case today we are at the stage of reaching out to discover whether or not we are close to the birth parent. This is where high tech goes old school. Plain old empathy and sensitivity goes into contacting living relatives; otherwise known to adoptees as strangers. Getting them to believe we are not telemarketers trying to swindle them is the first challenge. Getting to a point where there is enough earned trust to engage them in assisting us is a whole other thing that really tests individuals with their soft skills.

My participation in an adoptees or birth parents search is different than the first hand experience the individual searcher endures. These people are simply not my relatives, so my decisions are not made by being emotionally connected with the search. It does not mean I am not invested in the success. I certainly know what is at stake. However, when we reach a point where an educated guess means making contact, that is when the rubber meets the road and searchers need to be prepared to take the next step.

For some the pain from relinquishment occurred the moment they were separated from their birth mother and they never truly recovered from the loss. The same may be true for the birth mother's who were lied to and told that it was the best choice available to them and that they would once again recover when they married and had children again. Even still, there are others who grew into adulthood knowing they were adopted, and never completely fit in anywhere they went or whomever they came to find a partner in life with. However, in most of the cases I have worked with the pain and loss of not knowing one's root family, history, and natural connections with birth family became like a thorn that could not be removed until a search concluded with some level of knowledge and understanding.

Time has a strange way of putting experiences in the past juxtapose to the present day and give us time to reflect upon the decisions that led us here to this moment with a sense of calm. While I am avidly involved and dedicated to the assistance of my adoptee and birth relative friends I am also in the midst of my own reunion. In about thirty days I will be putting my life on pause as I travel to embrace a family I have yet to see face to face; a life and location that might have been called home. It is the goal I wish I could grant all those I help. While I have certainly read many other people's stories, how these moments unfolded, there is still enough momentum in the results of my own search to let these chapters unfurl in the present day. Something I never expected, nor even imagined possible.

Understand the difference between a deep dive and tumbling down the rabbit hole. Give yourself time to dig deeper into your genealogical past, but also the wisdom and familiarity of what kind of toll this all will take on yourself ; on a weekly and daily basis. Knowing when you have reached a point where you are saturated with anxiety or depression regarding your search, is just as important as making any progress with the discovery of birth parents, half-siblings or children lost to relinquishment.