Adoption Search and Chance

Finding a sibling

Adoption search and chance can be good partners. Sometimes it takes a little luck to find the person you’re looking for. Sometimes it takes a lot of luck. Or in some cases, people aren’t really searching at all, but chance plays a role in revealing a sibling or a birthparent.

The world is full of adoptees and birthmothers, some reunited and many still unknown to one another. There are siblings out there, too. So many siblings. Some of whom dream of having a brother or a sister and don’t know that they already have one. And maybe that person they’re wishing for has the same brown eyes or the same dimple. Or a similar set of freckles, or loves the same kind of chocolate ,or drives the same car. I’ve seen statistics that say there are somewhere between two million and six million birthmothers alive today in the U.S. Probably no one knows how many are reunited with their children. If you consider the siblings that have been separated by adoption, there are millions of people out there looking for each other.

 

Finding my son

I dreamed of finding my son by chance almost from the moment I let him go. And although, coincidence has salted a pretty healthy dash of “you must be kidding” to our story, I don’t think we would have ever found one another if I hadn’t searched for him. Searching for my son, due to the sealed records in the state of Iowa, was a frustrating and useless venture. But Chance was there all the same waiting in the form of a person who’d happened to hear of a person, who knew of a person who could help. I have no idea who that person was. If it was a man or a woman, an adoptee or a birthparent, maybe even an adoptive Parent. but if I had to give the person a name, I’d call him/her Mr. or Ms. Chance.

1 thought on “Adoption Search and Chance

  1. Rebecca

    Denise – so glad to have found your blog. I am a birthmother who was reunited with my daughter almost 10 years ago. She thought she was finding her bmother, but in fact I had married her father later in life and then had another child, her sister as well. Incredibly, I will attend her wedding later this month and my younger daughter will be a bridesmaid. Never in my wildest dreams could I have hoped for this. I will really look forward to pouring through what you have here – thanks!

    Rebecca in NY
    (bmother/surrendered in closed adoption 5/8/82/reunited 12/31/199)

    Reply

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