Searching for Birth-Parents

Thank you for letting Doug Brown do such a sensitive and realistic story on the Concerned United Birth Parents groups and also on reunions.

I am a record searcher for Los Angeles County and have reunited many adoptees and birth-mothers with their birth-families. About 95% of my reunions have worked out beautifully. I never make the final contact, I believe the final step is doing that on your own, but I do provide insight and try to prepare for what may happen.

My birth-mother did keep me, and my step-father adopted me so I am sort of a half-adopted. But I did search 11 years on my own, and through the help of an assistant, I finally found my birth-father in 1981.

I hope you run more stories on the positive sides of reunion, because although my search took so long and was so emotionally draining, it was all worth it when I finally got to look at the eyes of my own father and feel so much more complete inside. Now I have another “family” that accepts me. Our reunion was very helpful to me, especially in gaining the medical information I never had before.

But I didn’t go out seeking a relationship with him I just needed to know more about who I really was and who my grandparents were, something so many others take for granted. Since I have finally found most of them, they have been so understanding and want to include me in their families.

ANTOINETTE NASON

Los Angeles