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What is an adoptee looking or hoping for when she wants to search for her birth family? This is a common question that an adoptee may hear. The truth is every adoptee has different desires, hopes, beliefs, dreams and needs. There is not one pat answer to this question, but there are different answers for each adoptee.
I will share what an adoptee possibly hopes to learn or thoughts that an adoptee may have. Every adoptee will have totally different thoughts and ideas, but hopefully this will shed some light on what an adoptee maybe thinking about.
Curiosity can be a major reason that an adoptee goes searching. Do I have birth sibling? Do I look like my birth family? Where do they live? Do they think about me?
Wanting to know your medical history can be very important. When I was faced with my daughter possibly have an genetic disease, I had to find out as such as information as possible for my daughter.
Getting answers to questions that an adoptee has thought about for years can send her searching. Why was I given up for adoption? How is my biological father and does he know about me?
Some adoptees want to get to know and connect to their birth families. Some are looking for an ongoing relationships and other just want the chance to meet their birth mother. Some are hoping for the beginning to have a mother and child relationship. Where others just want to learn more about themselves and find a child and mother relationship without that being their intent.
Most adoptees do not search for their birth mother to become their mother or to take the place of their adoptive mother. When most adoptees do decide to search for their birth mothers, this has nothing to do with the adoptive parents. It is about the adoptee.
Related articlesa at adopting.org:
What do I hope to find? is an essential question. Even more importantly, what are my motives. Why do I want to know about my birth mother and why now.
Having young children of my own, I imagine the sense of loss, possibly relief, that my birth mother may have felt when she gave me up for adoption. The gift that my adoptive parents gave to me, the love and nurturing, education, support is so selfless. It’s also a gift that they gave to my birht parents by taking on the responsibility of raising me. Since my adoptive mother died over 11 years ago and since I became a mother almost 7 years ago, I have become increasingly curious about my birth mother, her experiences with pregnancy and birth and the adoption process. I now have something in common with her besides our genes, we are both mothers. If I ever do actually find her, and if we ever meet in person, one my hopes is that any trauma or unresolved feelings she may have about it are healed. And if she doesn’t want to be found or met, that’s ok too. But I at least want a name. I want to be able to tell my children my whole story. I know my life story from the time of my adoption. But It would be so nice to have the completed one. That would be a gift to me.
I’d say that most adoptees search for their families for the same reasons. Why would each adoptee have different reasons for searching for their families?
I want to know who I look like – I want tknow my ethnicty, who my father is, why I was lost to adoption…what is my mother’s name, who are my ancestors – there is tons of information that adoptees search for – perhaps the order of importance in which the information is placed can differ from adoptee to adoptee, but the core reasons for searching are the same.
I didn’t want a relationship with my mother when I started searching – I convinced myself that I only wanted information about my identity and past. But when we reunited a relationship developed anyway.
Before searching I changed my mind a million times about what I wanted – I just knew, like I’d always known, that I had to find my mother, father and siblings – that would lead to understanding me.
I wasn’t trying to replace my a-family – the idea that I would or wouldn’t never entered my head. But, had I wished to replace my a-parents with my found family that would have been okay, too. I was taken from my mom and dad then sent to live with strangers…..how could anyone not understand why an adoptee would have the desire to go back and be part of the family they lost to adoption?