“I wasn't crazy after all. I wasn't the only one who experienced fear about loss and guilt towards their adoptive parents. I was relieved that it seemed very common. Adoption is an emotional subject and the problems don't end with reunion. In some ways, reunion is just the beginning of the road.”

“To any adopted person searching for help and support, I saw this: find people who really know and understand the adoption experience and stay away from people who think they know. Avoid like the plague those who are just interested in being a part of your reunion stories because it sounds like fun. Be open to professional counselling to understand and help process all the conflicting emotions you may feel so that your reunion can be the best possible experience; so that you, as an adoptee, can pass on to your children the joy in their arrival that you never felt was connected to your own.”

“What I wasn't prepared for was the realization that an adopted person is always an adopted person and that there will always be passages throughout life to remind one of that fact. I will never not be an adopted person, and somehow that still takes me by surprise.”

“Yes they are my parents but unlike those who haven't been adopted, I also have another set of parents. I know my adoptive parents love me and I love them, but I have a different connection with them than I would experience if I had been raised in my birth home. I still need to know who my birth parents are.”

“I began to read everything I could find on adoption. It amazes me that, prior to starting therapy, I had never done it. I think it was my way of believing the myth that I was really OK. After all, I had two parents and I'd been told often enough how lucky I was, and how grateful I should be.”

“I strongly believe that to heal from the adoption wound we all have to grieve our losses individually and then together. I don't regret finding my birth family, however hard it was. It has given me a sense of self that I didn't have before.”

“I began for the first time to really understand the loss my adoptive mother must have felt from not having her own child. I was terribly sad for her and realized that she had missed out greatly - we both had - and there was nothing I could do to change that. I could never be her natural daughter and I could never make her feel better about that loss. Guilt is a strange waste of time in the cold light of day.”