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Hello, my name is John Border. Even though my adoption was "closed", some information was on the birth certificate. By birth name was John Andrew Wiles. I was born in Cottage Grove, Or. And I was born on 10/03/81.
I'm searching either for my birth parents and or at least some medical history.
Any help is appreciated.
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johnborder
Hello, my name is John Border. Even though my adoption was "closed", some information was on the birth certificate. By birth name was John Andrew Wiles. I was born in Cottage Grove, Or. And I was born on 10/03/81.
I'm searching either for my birth parents and or at least some medical history.
Any help is appreciated.
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The pros are that you will...
*know your history
*know if you have siblings, or not, sometimes siblings have known about the one adopted out, sometimes not, there is no rhyme or reason
*know if the story/reasons were true, or created by others
*know your family health history which for some is crucial
*you may just find your family has expanded
The cons are that you will
*find some things you might decide in hindsight, that you don't want to know
*find your mother, or father, doesn't want to acknowledge you exist - or one does, and the other doesn't
*find your siblings aren't happy you exist
*find you don't want anything to do with them
*find it is very overwhelming, and emotions you didn't know existed inside of you - are confusing and hard
Everyone reacts differently. The list above may, or may not apply to you. What your personality is, what your story is, what your maturity is - plays a role in how you will process and walk through it. If you are like many, you have accepted you may never know even if you rebelled against it - being given the key to know can unlock all those feelings you never worked through, because before there never was a reason to do so, to feel them. Only you can decide what to do.
Oregon when they changed the laws included a provision that allowed your parent or parents of birth listed on the original birth certificate a way to indicate whether, or not, they wanted contact. Not every parent would have heard about that option, but some did and filled them out. The preferences - no contact, contact through an intermediary (at least to start), contact welcomed. If you request your original birth certificate (OBC) and they/she did fill out a contact preference form then that will be included with your OBC. If they want no contact then they are required to provide a family health history to give to you (and I think a place to write social history etc), that's the hard one because for whatever reason they just can't do it, and it's hard to not take it personally - usually it is not you per se, but whatever it is they went through, or where they are now. If they/she didn't fill out a contact preference form then you can simply wait for a bit once you get your OBC, and take the time to determine what you want to do. Some adoptees take a long time between when they have the information and reaching out to make contact, some never do anything with the info, some try to make contact right away. You have to be prepared that contacting them can go either way, you need to understand that even if they want contact, they may not be ready because contact was out of the blue and need time (just like the time you are taking now). Some never want contact.
If you do decide to go forward - this is a good place to come to for moral support, help drafting a letter, or bouncing ideas off on what way is best to make contact to be the most discrete in case others don't know, venting, worrying, stressing - many have been where you are now.
Others will hopefully chime in...
Kind regards,
Dickons