Adoptee Searching

Reunion Flashback

I wrote this some time ago as a submission to some contest some place. I have been holding on to it until today. It was ten years ago today that this happened. Last Hours of Cold She couldn’t find a freaking parking space to save her life. After all the meticulous planning and her careful timeline, she was going to be late because she couldn’t find any  visitor or public…


Between the Extremes; Complexity of a Birth Mother

Yes, it is complex being a birth mother. This one act involves a duality of polar opposites. How can I be a victim of an industry, yet I made a choice? How can I be selfless and selfish at the same time? How I can I be a survivor, yet completely broken? How can I do the unthinkable, and then manage to carry on? How could I have been so weak as to lose my child, to not fight for him, and then so strong as to breath into another day?



The Truth about Troy Dunn “The Locator”

The arrangement Search Quest America made as Troy’s third party search provider started in 2008 and ended in early 2014. According to Troy, he has not charged anyone for doing a search since 2002 however he did receive compensation from Search Quest America as his third party search provider. This arrangement ended after the website traffic leads were diverted to his “Troy Alert” app and the requests coming in through the TroyTheLocator.com website dwindled.


Opposition to Adoptee Rights in Missouri

Help Missouri Adoptees

It is URGENT that Adoptee Rights supporters come out in full force Monday March 16th. This is the hearing for the agency bill HB1112, and we need to show strong opposition. We need to gather anyone who can be there IN PERSON to support HB647. They don’t all have to speak, and they can be friends, neighbors, co-workers whoever can fill seats on our behalf.





Supporting iReunion

If you have ever searched, then you know that the numbers of “online adoption reunion registries” is daunting. There is no lack of places to look through or to register with, but many are outdated, cumbersome and really NOT searchable. There comes a time when one must say “it’s time to build a better mousetrap”. Enter iReunion. iReunion is a new adoption search and reunion that is an App based program designed to search FOR YOU! Once you register and if no internal match be found, the software will search web-based sources for a potential match. It will actually network with over half a million other registries beyond the internal listings. It searches 24/7 on your behalf and gives you back any potential matches.


Hope for Ethiopian Families; An Ethiopian Adoption Search Registry

Ethiopian Adoption Connection is a searchable database, the objective of which is to match Ethiopian adoptees living around the world with their families in Ethiopia. I’m really very proud of it. It’s clean and simple which was key. We had to anticipate language and cultural issues, plus privacy verses searchability. Check it out at http://ethiopianadoptionconnection.org/.


How to Use Social Media for An Adoption Search

To get your search found by the right person should they be searching for you. There are usually three things that are identifiers in an adoption search: Sex of the adoptee, birth date and location. These three things are usually known by both parties and not likely to be altered.





I’m No Secret

My birth mother’s husband knew about me from the beginning. He married my birth mother after I was out of the picture. I remember him pulling me aside in their living room and saying how he regretted he couldn’t see what I looked like. He had lost most of his vision to cataracts and diabetes and could only see shadows and outlines. We shared my secret in common, he the only cast member in this charade that seemed real.