Having thoughts re contacting birth family

Blender44

I'm adopted and 59 years old now. Had done a bit of research a few years ago. I found out my birth mother had died but she had married and had another daughter. As far as I know they are still alive.

I've no idea if the husband is my father or not at this stage. Unlike many I don't really have a burning desire to know the full story but as I get older I do realise that time is running out...

I feel that it might be nice just to say hello before it does get too late, but I'm undecided if it's the right thing to do as it may open up a whole can of worms etc.

Has anyone else had a similar scenario to this? If anyone has any advice or insight they could offer I'd be most grateful as it's been on my mind and it's not really going away as the years pass.

Ghekko

I think you should pursue it. Your sister may well be delighted to hear from you and if not then at least you know you tried. You could also make contact with other relatives - aunts/uncles/cousins - who may have known about you. To start off you could register with the National Adoption Contact Preference Register to see if there's a match, and also request your non identifying information from the relevant adoption agency. Did you find out your bmum's name/age/area she lived in when you researched? If so, finding her marriage Cert and daughters details might not be a huge task. Once you have the information you can decide if you then want to take it further.

Blender44

Ghekko wrote: »

I think you should pursue it. Your sister may well be delighted to hear from you and if not then at least you know you tried. You could also make contact with other relatives - aunts/uncles/cousins - who may have known about you. To start off you could register with the National Adoption Contact Preference Register to see if there's a match, and also request your non identifying information from the relevant adoption agency. Did you find out your bmum's name/age/area she lived in when you researched? If so, finding her marriage Cert and daughters details might not be a huge task. Once you have the information you can decide if you then want to take it further.

I did register around 5 years ago but there hasn't been any matches so I really don't know if anyone knows about me or not. I have all the adoption paperwork and details on birth mother's name and marriage details already. It's quite a common surname though so I could be a long time searching for where they live now all these years later.

My sister (also adopted) ended up putting an ad in the local paper saying "Seeking details of (birth mother name) last seen (my sister's birth date)" and she got a response almost straight away, so that might be a fast track way of doing it. Any other suggestions welcome ;-)

180567

Have you thought about doing dna testing with somewhere like Ancestry ? It might help you connect with some other relations further out than immediate family and build a picture of your family tree. Good luck.

Blender44

180567 wrote: »

Have you thought about doing dna testing with somewhere like Ancestry ? It might help you connect with some other relations further out than immediate family and build a picture of your family tree. Good luck.

I hadn't at all - how does that work?

Ghekko

Order the kit online. You just have to gather some saliva into a tube included in the kit, and send it back in a prepaid box which is also provided. Results take a few weeks. From what I understand you can upload your results onto websites which may well match you with cousins - could be as far out as 4th or as near as 1st. Some people have been matched with half siblings. Dh sent his off this week - more out of curiosity as he knows who his birth parents are. I might even try it myself, again out of curiosity. I do see from adoption Facebook groups that many have done it and some are successful in finding relatives. It all depends on other family/distant family members doing it too.

180567

Blender44 wrote: »

I hadn't at all - how does that work?

I did it last year, and it helped me find my original family. It costs about 120 euro, and I used Ancestry as they seem to be the one with the largest database. It took about 3 weeks for the results to come back in and then you can connect with other (perhaps distant) relatives. One good thing is that anyone else who has done dna testing usually is in some way curious or interested in family trees and geneology so you can get chatting with them and try to work out how you are connected. I found I had a lot of distant cousins in the USA, and then through one of them I was able to work out my original dads surname (which I hadn't known before). Once you have your dna results there are loads of people on various facebook groups who can help you work out the connections. I found people really kind and helpful.

Best of luck with your search. I hope you find what you are looking for.

pawrick

Ancestry.co.uk is easy to navigate and the DNA thing is simple to do a sper above post.

Also re the DNA side, once you get your results I recommend you upload them to www.gedmatch.com this allows people to cross reference results for free from multiple ancestry type websites where people have added their results.

Best of luck with your search also

Chelon

Thanks for these suggestions; though it does seem like a long shot if you're depending on others in your close family doing the same? Is the DNA matching not more for exploring your general genetic background, etc? Surely there's not that many people doing it to make an accurate picture? Or do you just make some initial contact with a few disperese people and build up a picture from there?

Hermy

Sometimes researching your family tree is like looking for a needle in a haystack but for adopted people there's the added complication that often we don't even know which haystack we should be looking in. And that's where DNA testing can help.

On it's own DNA testing may not get you very far but done in conjunction with more traditional research methods it can be very helpful.