One of the first things I do before I take an adoptee client on is manage their expectations.
As you can imagine, many adoptees who have no knowledge of their birth parents’ identities often craft an imaginary birth mother and birth father in their minds. They imagine the situation that prompted their adoption. It’s difficult to refrain from filling in the holes when there are so many.
So we discuss their imagined scenarios and often add to their incomplete possibilities. If they haven’t allowed their brain to imagine any scenarios, we begin to craft the plethora of scenarios together. Because I want my clients to be emotionally and mentally prepared before they embark on a search. I don’t want the results of a search to devastate my client or completely rock their world.
We discuss it all, from the worst case scenarios to the best. Here is a fairly comprehensive listing of what can happen when I identify and/or contact a birth parent:
They are deceased.
They are addicted to drugs.
They are in prison.
They are a pretty unsavory character in general.
They want nothing to do with my client.
They deny their parentage entirely.
They are hugely upset that I have opened a long-closed door to a situation wrapped in trauma.
I learn that my client was conceived as the result of rape and/or incest.
They are upset that my client is even looking for them and want to know why.
They are terrified that I will “out” them to their family members who have no knowledge that my client even exists.
They are willing to provide a health history, but nothing else and ask for no further contact.
They are willing to answer my questions in the moment, but ask that no one contacts them again in the future.
The birth mother is unwilling to give my client the identity of the birth father.
They are cautious at first, but then eventually willing to establish some kind of direct communication with my client.
They are elated that my client has finally found them and hope for a face-to-face reunion as soon as possible.
They welcome my client with open arms.
They reveal that my client has several siblings and that everyone is excited and happy to welcome my client into their family.
As you can see, it’s impossible to predict what my client is walking into with the initiation of a search. There are just so many potential outcomes. And the above list isn’t even exhaustive.
I do my best to prepare my client for all possible scenarios. I can make an educated guess on how I think a case might turn out, based on the known facts. Sometimes I’m right. Sometimes, I’m very wrong.
I was certainly wrong for this one.
I had a client who was 77 years old and wanted to finally discover the identities of his birth parents. He knew he was searching for two people who were likely long ago deceased, but he was curious to fill in the holes that were his past. Who were they? Does he have any siblings? What are the circumstances of his conception and adoption?
My research stunned me. My client’s birth mother was very much alive and only two months away from turning 100 years old! I helped my client to uncover the identities of his birth mother, birth father, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunt, uncle, half brother, and two half sisters.
As I dug deeper into my client’s still-living birth mother, I uncovered quite an amazing past. Back in the 1940s, her job caused her to brush shoulders with many celebrities such as Clark Gable, Joe Lewis, and Jimmy Stewart. This is just the tip of the iceberg. She has lived quite the long and fascinating life.
To date, she is the oldest living birth mother I’ve found. It is because of her that I tell each of my clients that anything is possible. I don’t make many assumptions any more.