I was interviewed for an article!

I was Interviewed for an article And here is the result: Identity Crisis: Some finding adoption registry a one-way street Siobhan Connally The Record /EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series concerning issues facing adopted children and birth parents who set out to find one another. / Adrienne Kerwin knows her parents, she knows their histories and knows they were as present at her birth as they were at her graduations and other life accomplishments, but the Menands attorney’s heart goes out to those who can’t take such a simple understanding for granted. For the past three years, on her own time, Kerwin has been helping adoptees navigate the tedious work of unearthing their biological past. She’s answered questions in online forums, searched primary records in her community and even traveled to New York City to do research for people she’s only met online. “It started when my friend’s oldest daughter had medical problems and needed a bone marrow transplant. … She became interested in her own medical history but didn’t want to upset her parents by looking for her biological mother. So I offered to search for her.” As an attorney, Kerwin said her skills put her in a unique position to know where and how to look for information, but provide her no greater access to identifying facts. Although Kerwin has not been able to find her friend’s biological mother to date, she has been able to access some information vital to being able to proceed with the search through the state’s adoption registry. “There are tons of resources online, but everyone should start with the adoption registry,” she says, noting that while people will get more information from the adopting agency, the registry can help people who are looking for each other make that connection. In search of history Sherry Lilly, a 32-year-old expectant mother of three from the Rochester area, has been searching for her biological mother since 1996. Although she hasn’t been able to locate the woman, she was able to find her biological sister, Kaylee, through the registry. Ironically, the two women lived within minutes of each other their entire lives. They even had friends in common, though they never met one another. “We met in a coffee shop, and she was pregnant at the time so she told me to look for the pregnant person. … I would have known her anyway. When she walked in I recognized her right away. She had the same facial characteristics.” Lilly had registered to find out some medical history after her infant son suffered a seizure. “There’s a lot I would like to know about my genetic history,” said Lilly, who adds she feels getting a chance to meet her biological parents would be a bonus. “But I would also like to meet my biological parents … to see if I looked like them. That would be great,” she said. So far the search has only yielded minimal results: “I got some non-identifying information like my mother’s age at the time of birth, her nationality from the registry and I got more information from the Catholic Family Center agency where I was adopted, such as the reason for relinquishment. Things like my father grew up in Pennsylvania. “It can be difficult. You don’t know if they’ve made mistakes. You can write to the family courts, but in most cases, requests are rejected.” “I don’t think anyone gets much information,” says Margaret Graham, a 42-year-old research analyst in California, who’s been looking for her birth parents for the past three years. Like Lilly, health issues — her own and those of her son — compelled Graham to seek out her family’s history. “My son has a genetic disorder that isn’t on his father’s side,” she said. “And last year I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of melanoma. … I thought, considering the health issues, I might be able to get more answers but that didn’t cut any ice.” Graham has been able to obtain about three pages of non-identifying information from Catholic Charities in Utica, where she was adopted in 1963, all of it anecdotal. “My parents were married and I have at least two full siblings,” she said, adding that she also knows her mother came from a family of nine and her father came from a family of four. Both of them worked in manufacturing She also knows that at the time of her birth her parents had a four-year-old and a one-year old, and had experienced a miscarriage and a still born in between. Although she’s signed up with the state’s adoption registry, it’s been three years and she’s still waiting. “It’s possible that my birth siblings don’t even know I exist. Since they already had a stillborn child, they may have told them I died, too.” Another challenge is the fact that both parents’ names were listed on the original birth certificate. “Because both of them signed off on the adoption, they both have to sign up on the registry. If my birth father signed up and my birth mother was dead, they won’t connect us.” Often adoptive children search for their family of origin in hopes the answers give them a clearer understanding of their own lives. Ted LeRoy, a 40-year-old from Rochester, knows little about his birth parents other than they were college students attending RIT when they gave him up for adoption as an infant. “My adopted mom told me as much as she knows, but it’s not a lot. … I’m not sure why it became so important for me (to find my birth parents) when it did. I suppose I’m just ready.” LeRoy began his search in September and knows he’s got a tough road ahead, but he thinks the answers are worth asking the questions. “I had been going through this book, “Keeping the Love You Find,” by Harville Hendrick, and realizing that my fears of abandonment went much further than my fear of relationships. I thought, ‘I have to look into this.’ Once I made the decision to do it, I just filled out the forms and started researching how to do it.” / / / / / / / / Siobhan Connally The Record /This is the second in a two-part series about adoption issues facing adopted children and birth parents when they set out to find one another./ The process of finding adoption information in New York state is a daunting, arduous task that takes the skill of a detective and as much resolve as one can muster according to Adrienne Kerwin, an attorney whose made it a personal mission to help adoptive children gain access to information about their family histories. Changing times “The more I learned, the angrier I became,” says Kerwin of the difficulty she’s encountered trying to get information contained in adoption records. “The laws for upstate New York are that after 75 years the records can be accessed. That’s good for genealogy but not for adoptees. “New York state is by far the most archaic in adoption laws. … I understand that you have to protect the mothers’ identity to ensure that children are put up for adoption but the kids don’t have any rights, and that’s not fair. There should be some form of middle ground.” “Since I started this, I’ve been talking to adoptees and am hearing the same thing,” says Kerwin. “Adoptees know about the registry but parents do not. They just don’t know about it or they don’t understand that they have the right and ability to find their child. … I mean, if you’ve been told 30 years ago or so that you can’t see this person ever again, that there’s no way to find your child … would you look?” Lisa Maynard, director of the Adoption Resource Network Inc., says that laws need to be changed but the political will just isn’t there. “The laws in New York state are antiquated and foolish and wrong-minded,” she says. “Adoption today shows that openness is a solid, smart way to go. There’s been some research into it, and although I don’t know how scientific it is, it shows that 90 percent of adoptions in the U.S. are open. Whether birth parents have monthly or twice-a-year visits … there’s just not the secrecy there was, and what they’re finding is that the secrecy causes more problems for everyone: Birth parents, adopted children, it even causes trauma for adoptive parents.” Maynard explains that historically adoptive parents were told if they were successful parents there should be no need for their children to seek out their biological parents. “… And if you were the birth parents, you were told that you would ruin everyone’s life if you tried to find your child. If you were the adopted child you were told to be happy with what you got.” A delicate balance Claudia XXXXX, a life-long New Yorker, relinquished her firstborn son, “Max,” in Massachusetts 18 years ago. “I did a lot of searching and decided to go to a small agency in Massachusetts because they said they were nurturing and that’s exactly what I needed at the time,” said She, who acknowledges she’s not sure whether the differences in laws in the commonwealth state actually helped her find her son this past April. “When you are talking about (an unplanned pregnancy) and you’re a teenager you don’t think beyond the immediate. I signed every waiver that said he can open his records when he’s 18 … but as you wait and wait you begin to think: ‘Will I search?’ You end up talking yourself out of it because (adoption) is an implied promise. This is what you agreed to do this is what you promised.” After establishing that it was legal to search for him, She, who had a traditional closed adoption, began scouring the Internet. She went back to the adoption agency and asked for updated material on her son, and received recent pictures and a five-page letter from the adoptive parents, whom she knew to be licensed CPAs. “Once the dam broke I had to know,” said She. “I did Google searches of all licensed CPAs in Boston with the same last names and then started to look city by city. “The night that I found him — that he was alive, I knew his (new) name, and where he lived — it was an amazing feeling. I knew that I could — even if I wouldn’t — just go and see him, and that was the most amazing feeling of all.” Soon she began seeking out more specific information on her son and started looking into *******, an Internet community and message board.(whose name I have deleated so that the paranoid cannot keep their children off of...less they be found!)After fishing around, she found him and made his virtual acquaintance. “There he was. His profile on his blog said ‘Mysterious Max,’ and he listed “Where the Wild Things Are” as a favorite book — the two things I gave him when I let him go. And he was just a message away. … This is it. This is who you are. Seventeen years of waiting, hoping, thinking, praying. … There’s no way I can not (e-mail him). “So I e-mailed him: “You are not mysterious to me — I named you Max.” The message that came back was: “Holy smokes, Mom?” Since her son has not told his parents about their correspondence, She is keeping her distance and taking an actual meeting slowly. “I’ve learned to have patience —I don’t want to push him. I don’t want to overload him with this heavy-duty emotional stuff. I can wait. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve also learned that adoptees like to be found. And it makes perfect sense, too, since they were the ones who were lost.”