Finding Birth Parents

I recently received my first case to help a young girl find her birth parents. The adoptive family knew names and birth dates which made my job a lot easier. As everyone knows, many adoptions are closed and the families go their separate ways and very little evidence is left behind. This luckily was not the case with my file.

The girl is now a teenager and her adoptive family never hid the adoption from her. She's had a fairly good life in a middle class family but, as many often will as teens, she decided she wanted to find her birth parents. Hence I was contacted.

I started with a general Google search and that led me to multiple police databases across several US states. It was surprising. The birth parents were still fairly young, had other children together and had pretty much stayed involved with the court system since before the baby had been put up for adoption all the way through last year. Now their children they had kept are showing up in court records as well.

It took me just over a week to find a phone number for a blood relative (one of the siblings). The father is now deceased and the mother is homeless and has proved much harder to locate. It's been difficult though because how can I feel good about finding these people for her when I know this could have a massive impact on this girl.

Thankfully I wasn't working directly with her and her parents can choose how they handle the information. I can only hope that the girl doesn't decide she comes from a criminal family and thus follow suit in a rebellious, upset outburst as some do.

I can say though, this girl was very fortunate that she was put up for adoption and did not have to grow up in that environment. Her siblings were not as fortunate having been drug all over the country, watched their mother be thrown in jail and then get out and do the same thing again. They didn't have a stable home life, they didn't have a nurturing mother. Life has not been good for them.

It's very sad. My search is also not done. I am sure I will learn some interesting things about searching for someone who doesn't have roots.