Emotional Growth, Healing and Recovery

This Chapter Includes

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself. "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

For most birth families members, reunion is a very profound experience. It can be thrilling, exciting, scary, and evoke a whole host of emotions.

The ALMA Society has a web page with links to reunion stories. Reading a variety of stories about reunions with a wide range of different results can help you have a more realistic idea of the possible outcomes.


For many adoptees, having been adopted includes both joy and sorrow. Having been relinquished and/or adopted affects people in many different ways. Some adoptees say that until they decided to search, they didn’t believe adoption played much of a role in their lives. However, during a search, many emotions and issues often surface for adoptees and they may have some issues to sort out.

For most birth parents, adoption generally represents loss and pain. Few birth parents consider adoption a positive experience, particularly closed adoptions. Although birth parents acknowledge the loss, they are often blindsided by the enormity of emotions that reunion can bring to their lives.



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Credits: Jan Baker