That they were happy and healthy and that his decision had been the right thing to do. After that explanation, my mom ultimately decided to find her birth father. She worried about disrupting his life, however. She felt prompted not to reach out to him directly but to contact someone else within his family. She found a daughter-in-law and sent a Facebook message explaining in a nutshell who she was and who she was looking for, and asked if she fit any description the daughter-in-law was aware of.
A few weeks passed, and the message remained unopened. As it turns out, my mom was common knowledge among the family, and there was always a prominent hope that they would meet her someday. My mom was able to video chat with her birth father and his wife in early When my mom contacted her birth father, he knew exactly where all of her things he had kept were.
Pictures and the likes were easy to access because it had always been important to him to keep them nearby. As I mentioned earlier, my sister, Katelyn, made the decision to meet her birth mom in At the time, she had no desire to find her birth father.
She asked her birth mom to disclose his information to our mom, however, if she ever changed her mind. Years passed, and Katelyn got married and had a son. As fate would have it, she found herself living in a city not quite an hour away from her birth father. She finally felt a readiness and a desire to find her birth father just last year. He embraced her with open arms and has enjoyed getting to know Katelyn and his biological grandson. Katelyn and her little family have since moved across several state lines, but they keep in contact with her birth father through video chatting and texts.
When I was placed, the understanding was that we would exchange first names but not last names and annual forwarded through the agency. This routine was carried out effectively for the first five years of my life. Around my fifth birthday, however, my birth father was told that he could no longer have contact with me.
He recalls being devastated but respected the change of procedure by the agency. He and my birth mom still live in the same city they did when I was born and had rare contact with each other.
At some point, my birth father found out that my birth mom had continued contact all those years. He was able to reach out, and I vividly remember the excitement of hearing from him again. We had assumed that the end of his communication was because he had married and was starting his own family. We were curious but never had an explanation to confirm our theories. After all, as a working mom of two in New York, my schedule was full.
I had enough love in my life. And, honestly, I was afraid of what I would discover if I dug deeper. I put the topic on the backburner. Then, when hit like a pile of Legos waiting to be stepped on and January brought with it the possibilities of a new year, I decided to check my Ancestry.
When I logged on, much to my surprise, I had a message from a man in Connecticut who turned out to be my biological father's uncle.
He suspected I was his nephew's daughter. Once we established that we were indeed related, my great uncle and cousin told me family details: My grandfather, a Harvard graduate, became a minister and moved with my biological father and the rest of his family to Brooklyn. That's where I was eventually fostered as a newborn and adopted at age 5.
My paternal grandmother worked as a social worker. I immediately wondered if our paths had ever crossed. They told me she passed in the early s. I grieved that loss and struggled with the resentment I felt toward my adopted family for keeping me in the dark for so many years.
They showed me baby photos of my biological father; I saw a resemblance in my children and my own baby photos. They also told me that my biological father was alive: He suffered from substance abuse issues for years and they were completely estranged. We continued to communicate via Facebook, then our exchanges faded. I needed to process the information while focusing on my own life.
But in March or April, with the pandemic claiming thousands of lives a day, I thought about my own mortality: I didn't want any regrets if Covid were to claim my life or my biological father's.
So, I reached out for contact details. In April, after receiving his phone number, I called and texted multiple times. My attempts were unsuccessful, but his non-reply was a response in itself. I trust that my search reached a dead-end for a reason. I reflected on what I truly wanted to get out of the experience, and that turned out to be being brave enough to make the effort no matter the outcome. I knew my biological father is estranged from his family members for a reason.
If you were adopted or otherwise separated from your Birth Father, you may be wondering how best to make contact again? RecordClick is pleased that Mr. Galloway has reached out to us and to our readers to share his thoughts and recommendations on making contact with a Birth Father. AG: When Mothers give birth to a child, they know it is theirs. Fathers have no such guarantee, thus you need to be as certain as possible that you are approaching the correct person.
Your adoption or birth record may have stated a father; check this with your mother, as sometimes false details were given to protect the true identity. AG: Once you receive the research result, you need to be completely certain that you have the correct person by knowing his date of birth is correct? When you have a name, address, phone number and perhaps email, you need to decide which contact you will use.
You might want to use the telephone to get a quick answer. You might even be tempted to drive over and knock on the door, figuring you can get your answer in a half an hour. None of the above are recommended. For best results, use an intermediary a third person who specializes in theses reunions who is used to dealing with this kind of approach. If you do need to make the contact yourself, consider the following.
If the answer to any of the above is NO, then he will need time to consider his position. That may well mean he has a lot of explaining to do to his family before having any contact with you. RC: What do you suggest is the best approach to making contact with a Birth Father? AG: A letter by snail mail will give him time to think and plan. How you craft your letter is important. Each topic can be a paragraph and should be salient points, not complete descriptions.
It needs to be written as a concise but flowing letter.
0コメント