Preparing to meet your birth parent or birth parents for the very first time can be an extremely intimidating and stressful experience. Regardless of how old you are when it occurs, there are many issues that you should consider when meeting your birth parents for the first time.

First, it is important to understand what exactly you are looking for. If you are looking for acceptance, don’t count on getting it. If you are looking for a rational explanation as to why you were put up for adoption, you might not get it. If you are looking for some self-identity, you can’t expect to get that either. However, if you are trying to find out information about your family history, or even a family medical history, you can usually accomplish these sorts of things. Anything else, while great when it happens, may be somewhat unrealistic.

When you are meeting your birth parents for the first time, you have to be ready to confront in a very real way the fact that you were adopted. You have to admit that your adoptive family, whom you may dearly love, did not bring you into the world. You have to come to terms with the fact that the nurturing and love you received from your adopted family will not disappear, however, just because you meet your birth parents.

You can’t truly know ahead of time what sorts of emotions you will feel when you are meeting your birth parents for the first time. You need to be prepared for the fact that your emotions will probably be a mess, and you won’t be in control completely of how you react. Nothing you can do can truly prepare you, emotionally, for how you will feel. However, it can help to know ahead of time that this will probably happen.

Finally, you have to be ready to meet your birth parents as strangers. You’ve never met them before. They may not look like you, talk like you, dress like you, or be like you in any way. They may seem to be completely foreign to your eyes. Having said that, it is also possible that you will find some familiarity with them, but not familiarity in the way that you are familiar with your adoptive parents. Likewise, your birth parents are meeting you for the first time, and don’t know what to expect either.

Posted in Adoption

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