I got a comment on this post that needs to be addressed.

Krickett made the following comment:

Well, as an adoptive mom that has written a “relatively small amount” for our contact to go searching for us and has put up posters in our finding area I can say without hesitation that your assumption that I simply want to be let off the hook by my daughter is wrong.  I would love to build a relationship with someone in the area and “have the stress of doing the work”. How do you propose I do that?   I would love to know who specifically to contact in the area to build a relationship with?  Especially since we could not visit the area when we were in China due to many circumstances.

I congratulate you on your success and have read your blog along with other resources for tips on how I may continue my search.  I wish there was more support from those that have been successful to us that are new on this search road rather than this criticism.

Wow, this comment left me nearly speechless.  I mean, where do we start?

First, you wish “those that have been successful” would support you?  What do you think I am doing here?  Do you think I am baring my soul about our search and the adjustment we are going through now for me?

Do you have any idea how many hours I have spent writing posts about how to search to help people who can’t be bothered to do any thinking or research on their own?   Do you think I compromise our privacy for fun?   No kidding, I have taken more than enough time away from my family helping complete and total strangers have resources for how to search in China here an in a variety of other places online and in person.

In fact, Krickett, you live near me.  I distinctly remember sending you an email and personally inviting you to coffee back in July to talk to you more about our experience searching.  You never bothered to email me back, so how exactly would you like me to be more supportive of you??

There are only a handful of us who have searched successfully and it is a brutal, gut wrenching process.  Sorry, I guess I have a little too much on my mind to handhold you as you go through the difficult check-writing process.  Even if we were all willing to spill our guts about our searches, odds are your situation is different and our successes will only offer hints as to which directions you should go.

And yes, I am being a sarcastic bitch there.  I know it was hard to get together and send off the check and documents to the searcher. I know it because I went through the process of deciding and re-deciding to search for several years.  Each time it is hard. Each time we didn’t have success I had to pull up my big girl panties and recommit to doing what was best for my daughter.  But you don’t get to sit back and blame other people for the hardness or for not helping you enough.  Searching is between you and your child.  Either you think it is important enough to do the work, or you don’t.  And if you don’t, DON’T SEARCH.

For the record, your comment (and maybe not your actual actions or intentions) is a perfect illustration of the half-hearted searches so many adoptive parents are doing.

You didn’t visit your child’s area and now you can’t find any local contacts?

I call bullshit on that.

There are 1.5 billion Chinese and at least half of them have internet access.  I guarantee you, no matter where you live in America, you are likely within 50 miles of SOMEONE Chinese who you could approach for help navigating the Chinese internet to find a local contact.  And Krickett, I know for a fact that you live in an area where there are thousands and thousands of Chinese students (likely from every Chinese province) you could approach for help.  And even if you aren’t, there are a gazillion Chinese on the internet who speak English who you can try to contact to help you.  Or for crying out loud, hire some Chinese college student to help you.  I put an ad on Craigslist several years ago asking for someone to do internet searching for me and I got several good offers of help.

Can I point you to the right person? No way.  That is why this is WORK.  In China, to get anyone to help you, you need a personal connection.  In most cases to search successfully, you are going to have to know someone who knows someone first.

I will tell you that honestly, I am very very worried about adoptive parents who use professional searchers, because there is a small chance they will succeed.  If you stumble upon the birth family right out of the gate, before you have had time to get your feet wet and get-on-the- ground experience with local people and a good feel for your translator, you may very well find yourself in WAY over your head.

So what is your plan, then? You send a searcher in to locate the birth family, then what?  Who will translate for you over the next 20 years?  Does your searcher offer this service long-term, because I have never heard of that being the case.  You need a relationship with the person who will translate for you to make sure they are really looking out for you and your child’s best interests.

Do you have a real personal connection with someone who you pay $300 to stick up some fliers?  Do you trust that person to understand your heart and what you want from birthfamily contact with your child?

Are we going to add an additional sob story about financial hardship?  Bullshit again.  I spent less than $1,000 for several YEARS of intensive searching (internet searching, translations, phone calls, DNA testing etc.)  and relationship building.   Hiring a searcher is much more expensive (and I daresay less likely to be successful) than doing the legwork yourself first.  And anything I had done I could just as easily exchanged child care or English conversation practice if I found the right person to help me.

You want to sit around and feel powerless because it is SOOOOO HARD.  Well, yeah it is.

You know what is a lot harder?  DEALING WITH THE BIRTH FAMILY.  You know what is going to be much more costly?  Keeping in touch with the birth family.   You know what is going to turn your life upside down?  FINDING THE BIRTH FAMILY.

Searching SHOULD be hard because it weeds out the people who are NOT committed to success.  (Didn’t I already write this post before?)  If you can’t handle talking to some random Chinese people, I promise you, you won’t be able to handle reunion.  It is so, so complicated and overwhelming.

You want to tell your kid how you searched soooooo hard for her birth family?

Well, my how to search posts are going to remain on the internet forever.  When she grows up, she can look at those lists (here and here and here) and ask you which steps you took.

I don’t answer to your kid, I answer to mine, but I know for a fact my daughter is too smart to buy the whole “I wanted to find them for you, but it was just so hard…” 

Do you think your kid won’t fill in the rest of that sentence with “…so you let 15 or 20 years pass and the trail has gone ice cold?!? Because that definitely made it so much easier to search now. Thanks Mom.”

I know this is harsh.  I am bruising some adoptive parents’ tender self images right now.  That is OK.

Someone has to be the voice of reality here.  SOMEONE has to tell you that searching is not and will never be rainbows and unicorns.   From the start (and likely for the rest of our lives), searching and successful reunion will be like slogging through a neck-deep emotional minefield— not only for us, but also for our children.

NO ONE is saying you should search.  In fact, I have come around to telling people DO NOT SEARCH. This is not a time to go with the peer-pressure (assuming one can have peer pressure from passively reading a blog about someone else’s completely unrelated experiences) induced flow if you are not emotionally ready and committed to success.

And I am sorry that you can’t find the support you wish you had.  Honestly, I am pretty wrung out over here.  There are days when I (a non crier) am crying in the grocery store because I am not able to do a better job managing our reunion, never mind helping other people.

Over time, there will be more and more of us with successful reunions.  We will have more experience on how to search and how to manage the after.  But right now, we are just babies at this.  I have spend the last two years trying to build a framework for how to share information about searching and for those who are searching and I can tell you it is a thankless job.  I (a person who has panic attacks doing public speaking) have even offered to do in person talks for FCC and other adoption groups. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up, but I think it is important, so I offered.

And then to be told I am not doing enough for people who aren’t doing much at all for themselves?  Well, Fuck that….FUCK THAT.

Jenny asks:

It didn’t even cross our minds to find our daughter’s birth family because we were told that in China it was 1) impossible and 2) dangerous for the birth family. We didn’t speak Chinese, we weren’t even taken to the city where she was found and where her SWI was located. Now that we see (from your blog and elsewhere) that searching is possible, our daughter is six. Do you think it’s too late, that the trail is too cold? Should we make the effort? We are emotionally prepared to do it. We were just ignorant, and when you know better, you do better.

 

I can’t say if you should make the effort or not.  By sharing our story, I hope that adoptive parents will have a better understanding of both the challenges and the rewards of searching in China.  Despite my personal struggles, I really believe we are an example of the best case scenario…and even that is very, very hard.  Are you prepared for the fallout of a worst case scenario?  Are you prepared to navigate the challenges of building a relationship with the birth family for the rest of your life?

I can’t say if it is too late or not because I don’t know your child’s specific circumstances.  In some cases, an adoption file will have enough information to find the family now or to find it in 30 years.  In most cases, there probably isn’t enough information to find them ever.  By searching sooner, you increase the (likely very slim) odds of success.

This isn’t really related to your question, but I would like to mention another phenomena that I have observed:  the adoptive parent who wants to give the impression of “searching” without actual putting in the effort that would actually lead to success.  I suspect these people want to be let off the hook by their kids. They can say they searched without actually dealing with the stress of doing the work and/or dealing with the birth family.

These are people who want to write a (relatively small) check for someone else to go “search” for them.  In some cases, this might actually work, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that searching done by someone who is actually invested in success (rather than financial gain) is probably going to be more likely to actually find the birth family.   You *might* get lucky with some posters or sending someone on a “research project” briefly to the area in question, but you are more likely to be successful by building personal relationships with people in the area.