You have made the decision to meet. Now, you are probably at the worrying stage; both of you most likely are some stressed out. The good news is your child or birth family member probably does not care if you are heavy, thin, pretty, ugly, etc. In fact, if you are already exchanged photographs, they probably already have an idea. Hmmm, that is assuming you did not send pictures of yourself taken 20 years ago and pretend that is how you still look. You wouldn't do that though - would you?

For birth parents, if you saw your child at all after birth, the last glimpse of your child may have been a baby only days old. Some birth moms in decades past were not allowed to know the sex of the child that they gave birth to, much less hold or see their child.

Your child is not a baby any longer, even though in your mind they still are. Though some people do say that we all regress at the time of reunion, remember that your child is all grown up now. You must replace that baby image in your head with the grown-up version of your child.

Also, you must keep in mind that this child of yours has most likely known one sets of parents - their adoptive parents. While you may feel like the parent of your child, they may feel that they already have parents. It may be difficult, if not impossible for your child to see you as a parental figure.

For an adoptee, you probably have no conscious memory of your birth mother or father if you were adopted at birth or shortly thereafter. Therefore, some of your issues at reunion are different.

You may want to maybe micromanage every detail of that first meeting. Resist the temptation. Allow your birth family member to also have input and/or control over the situation. It is important that you both feel comfortable with the meeting details.

Try not to attach too much importance to everything working out perfectly. Both of you may falter and/or make some stupid or insensitive remarks, but, that's not unusual. There's no script to read, you are figuring this all out on the fly. Mistakes will happen, and that is okay.

Reunions rarely unravel over a few stupid remark. Thank goodness! I can attest to that. I know that I made my share of stupid remarks, and they did not drive my son away. I must admit I cringed at myself at times and worried, but luckily he understood and hung it there with me anyway. Most of us do at times stick out feet in our mouths.

What is most important is to try to be as relaxed and "normal" as you can under the surreal circumstances. That first meeting does have a somewhat dream quality to it, and it is an important event.

Relax as best you can and savor every precious moment of that first face-to-face contact.