For me, today was a normal day. I went to work, I came home from work, cooked dinner, and spent the evening with my husband. However, for a young man, and his birth mother, today was not the run of the mill day.

This morning, I received an e mail from a man who was born in 1971 and said that he was curious to see if his birth mother is searching for him. He sent this e-mail at 2:06AM. His e-mail contained all his information and I immediately looked it up in the PARR database. PARR had a birth mother who registered a few years ago on March 17th. The information appeared... more

I highly recommend that one of the first ways to begin a search is to sign up with ISRR, Adoption.com’s registry (Reunite.com) and any state specific registries. If the person that you are seeking has also registered, a quick match can occur.

However, I will also caution anyone not to have very high expectations that a match will occur from a registry. There are several reasons that I believe that it is unwise to expect much from signing up with a registry:

First, many people are not aware of registries. Most registries are "mutual consent" registries and can... more

The photo above was taken at an event called RegDay(Registration Day). RegDay is an annual event to increase public awareness of the International Soundex Reunion Registry; a free humanitarian service better known as ISRR. This event happens once a year all over the country in different sites. RegDay sites are coordinated and run generally by triad members. Included in this photo are three birth moms, including me at a bookstore where our RegDay event was held in 2003. We also had an equal number of adoptees volunteering at our site.

ISRR is a non-profit mutual... more