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Originally Posted by Ravencadwell
The agencies charge you exorbitant fees and try to justify it by saying that it takes time and $. Well I doubt that anybody doing the searching is getting $100 an hour, so somebody is making $$ off that. Also I feel that it's a deterent to searching. Not to mention that all the info they give you is "what is in the best intrest of the adoptee and everyone involved", so you have no guarentee of getting anything. And how do you know that what you got was even true? How do you know the agency is covering something up? I feel that the whole process is an insult to my intelligence and disrespectfull of adult adoptees in general.
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Hi Raven and all other adoptees on this board. Having to pay my agency $500.00 was a deterrant for many years. I was angry and determined to do it on my own. I petitioned the court and was denied. I searched on my own for years. But when I reached a dead-end in my search, I decided that I had to play the game to get what i wanted. The game included paying that outrageous fee, going along with the ridiculous rules about what I can and cannot know (i was lucky i had a great social worker), trying to distract myself while i waited for news (and realizing and accepting that this was out of my hands now!). It had a pretty good ending in that my birthmother granted her permission for an exchange of information and later even signed the paperwork for me to get my original birth certificate. It resulted in a reunion, but I have to say that Maury and Oprah just don't get it in that at least for me, the reunion was not the ultimate goal . . .it was having my information. I was actually forced into a reunion in order to get it, but again, i had to play the game to get what i wanted. It sound callous, but that is how i look at it. I'm somewhat dissapointed with the reunion end of it, but I can't be happier knowing the narrative of my life. It has helped me to move on from standing in one spot and focusing on the here and now instead of always wondering about the past.