One thing that I have learned through my own adoption search and reunion is that although we cannot control those around us, we can control ourselves and how we feel about things. We can choose to let the facts bother and depress us, or we can choose to learn from them and go on. After finding a grave I did it both ways, acknowledging the past and then moving on has worked best for me – no matter how hard it seemed to do at the time or how comfortable it felt hanging on to that pain. Moving on does not mean forgetting or not dealing with it.

Recently, my husband and I became parents. We chose to create our family through adoption and a baby boy was placed with us earlier this month. When our son was placed in our arms my thoughts were all about him and in the present. We had little notice and were in a frenzy trying to prepare for this blessed event. However, now that things have calmed down, our son is home with us, and we are setting into a schedule I have been replaying in my mind the conversation with the agency who placed our son with us and since then.

As an adoptee, I know that there is a natural curiosity. It is important for the adoptive parents of today to remember that the curiosity and the need to know information has nothing to do with them as parents or the job they did but instead everything about the adoptee.
Our son’s adoption is a closed adoption and the day will come that our son is going to have questions that we aren’t going to be able to answer because we simply don’t know the answers. However, as adoptive parents, what can we do in a closed adoption now to help our children later in life when they want to know more information or even search for their natural parents?

Just like there is no hand book for adoption search and reunion there is no handbook for adoptive parents adopting today. Each situation is unique and information available will be different.

What my husband and I chose to do is to keep everything that has been given to us from the hospital and the agency that pertains to the adoption and/or our son. We were fortunate to be handed a copy of his medical records from birth to be provided to our pediatrician, we are saving our son’s hospital bracelet, we have a certificate with his footprints that looks like a hand written birth certificate but it is a hospital certificate, etc.

I think that every bit of our son’s past will help him find himself in the future. Being adopted in the early 1970’s, I know what it felt like to be raised with secrets and lies. Being an adoptive parent in a closed adoption I want to be honest and open. No matter how good or bad the truth is, it may hurt but it is the truth and for us, truth in adoption is the only way to go.