My finding a grave at the end of my search is what truly inspired me to spend time helping triad members with their adoption issues, more specifically with search assistance and educating them about the issues that come along with adoption search and reunion.
When I started my search I attended a support group meeting regularly and met a lot of adoptees and natural parents. After searching for 15 months, I attended my first adoption conference and then continued to attend both after finding a grave. What I learned was that I was not alone in my pain and that all members of the adoption triad were in pain.

I had many false starts in my search and hit many brick walls but in hindsight it was these setbacks or even the steps forward I experienced that help me to learn about myself. For me, and many one of the things about searching is that it is an opportunity for self knowledge. After completing my search and as I began to grieve and heal, I feel more connected and more focused. There were times before my search that I would start something and never finish it for whatever reason. It was completing my adoption search that helped me change that and now when I choose to start something I finish it. This is just one example. It has also helped me to trust my own intuition more and has taught me to trust others intuition more but to also honor it as well as their hopes, fears, dreams, pain, joy, and sorrow.

The thing about adoption search and reunion, for most it is part of being adopted. After all, no matter how you look at it, creating an adoptive family means separating another family.

The search and reunion issues are in the closed adoption era. In an open adoption the triad members communicate with one another. However, in a majority of the cases of adopted adults today there is no communication and they don’t know where or how the other is. Search and reunion is exactly what it says, an adoptee or natural parent search for one another, contacting each other, meeting for the first time in X number of years and figuring out how each other fits into their lives today.