Lately I have been focusing on the DNA relatives that have similar surnames to those already connected to the family trees. It takes time to sift through dates, names and geographic locations to rekindle progress on certain branches.

Those that I have been successful in attaining multiple connections to genetic relatives, who also happen to have similar family trees that match, are being used collectively to see the most recent common ancestor many of them share with the adoptee.

We all have those certain something’s that cause us to be uncomfortable, concerned or even paralyzed by fear.

 A year ago I would have told you mine was taking on my new role as an IT manager. I was not so much concerned about leading my team, as I was communicating with the executive team and the company in larger groups. That required a lot more attention evolving my public persona; specifically, my ability to communicate with others both at the individual level and the public speaking level.

The New Year started off with working with three new adoptees looking for their birth families. One I am actively working with for the past two weeks, and the other two likely waiting on DNA test results from AncestryDNA.

Over the past few weeks I have worked with several family trees for all the adoptees I am assisting. Some I have refined my search down to the individual level. They require investigating each person who may or may not fit into their trees. While others I have set aside a tree of over a thousand people to try and create a new tree using another genetic relative and push forward using their non-identifying information as if it were gospel truth.

This evening I worked on a tree that I needed to put aside for a while. It has become one of the most challenging puzzles yet; as the family has strong ties to Hungary. I put a few hours into building out the family tree of a recent third cousin that popped up in the AncestryDNA results a few weeks ago.

This year was one filled with challenges. One where I am reminded of frequently with the people I am working with in the adoption triad. They vary greatly from adopted mother’s looking on behalf of their adopted children, to adoptees searching for their first family, to birthmother’s looking for their children relinquished to adoption, and finally with adults who were separated from their birth mother or father from a very young age looking for them now.

I wanted to take a chance to chime in and give folks something positive to think about. While some searches has yielded challenges, there have been successes that have occurred. I cannot share the details, but let’s just say someone already has a reunion to consider amongst the clients I have been working with these past few months.

During the past few weeks I have been busy with visiting my first family, getting over a cold, and then preparing for the holidays. Between all these personal endeavors I have been researching more on different ways to approach searching for birth families.

Once autosomal test results are completed they will set for months or even years with no one closer than distant cousins popping up amongst new relatives that align themselves with our accounts; no matter which company we are working with. However, on rare occasion a closer relative will appear that can have the potential to add great value to our search.

I have been on both sides of this coin. On the one side I had a first family greet me with open arms and one the other one that displays no interest in acknowledging me. However, that is not entirely the case. I have a half-sister who, while very busy, has shown genuine interest in meeting face to face. She comes from my paternal side in the first marriage my birth father started in his married life. She, in many ways, has a similar circumstance of breaking away from her birth father as I did through adoption. While mine was from birth, hers was from the time her parents split apart from the tender age of two.

Families were dramatically affected by their location, natural disaster, religious beliefs, war, peace and migration. Whether or not your well versed in history stepping outside hints provided by some Ancestry.com tree or random Census Poll, it will eventually become impossible not to step into historical context to understand why the family may have been impacted in one way or another.

So in about a week I will be traveling sixteen hundred miles away to see the home State of my maternal side of my birth family; in short, my natural mother’s home State of Texas. While she resides only thirty miles from my present location, many of her family reside down south.

This past week has been one where many family trees and other investigative work with both adoptees and birth mothers have seen some progress. However, many of the people I am working with have their family trees matured to a level that require a closer examination on a generation-by-generation level.

Tonight an adoptee shared a video link to an individual who spoke about adoption being classified as a trauma wherein the adoptee faces abandonment and ordeal as their first experience into the world. I read more on this subject in the book Primal Wound many months ago. Both feel like something I can identify with, but not from natural memory.

Over the past few weeks, I have been putting time into an adoptees search for birth parents. All our evidence points toward the biological parent being a recent immigrant. In this case, we actually do have the birth certificate from the hospital where this adoptee was born. We have a name for the birth mother, clues about previous births, and a last name. We even know the age of the birth mother at the time of our adoptee’s birth. You would think, search solved before it begins. Well that would not be accurate.

Investing in a search for family means something different to each adoptee. There are those who have marginalized it to fulfill a handful of simple questions. Others hope to find answers about an intangible need that they anticipate will be resolved upon making contact with their birth family.

For an adoptee this should be rephrased to, wherever you go there part of you arrives. Understand that many adoptees can go on through life never knowing where they started. Consider this, people generally like a predictable and peaceful life. Some of us get to a plateau and enjoy the view. Other’s turn about and see how far they have come and marvel. While others see the climb ahead and brace themselves for the next journey.

Prior to my search I had reached a point in my life where I was really starting to feel that a lot of people were placed on this world to just serve their own interests. I had become very jaded and had felt like places outside of my home were cold and uncaring. Not every day was so bleak, but generally I would not extend myself far from my immediate families needs. People just felt so vain to me after a while.

While every experience is unique, finding family is a life changing experience for an adoptee. It is almost comparable to an adult version of puberty occurring later in life. Everything you thought of and experienced up until that moment was not interconnected with physical feelings. So to does it become like earning a sense you never thought was missing. Integrating a natural family, beyond the myriad of personalities into one's life, up until this moment based on nurturing, is not easy to express in terms everyone can understand.

When it comes to using the non-identifying information we have to locate birth family every attempt is made to align it with the genealogy that is performed based off of our autosomal DNA related cousins. In one of my cases it has gotten to a point where no one in a tree of over fourteen hundred people match up with the clues on the maternal side.