On Searching or Not

I never searched for my foster family. They found me. I also, for most of my life, never went looking for my birth family, and I still haven't, not seriously.

I mention this because I think there's an assumption that every adoptee is either actively searching or secretly wants to be, and that not searching means something is being suppressed. I don't think that's true, or at least it isn't true for me. Not searching has been its own complete answer, not a placeholder for one I haven't gotten to yet.

I've met adoptees who searched for decades and adoptees who never wanted to and adoptees who searched once, found something difficult, and stopped. I don't think any of those choices needs defending to the others. Searching isn't a stage everyone has to pass through to be considered healed, and not searching isn't proof of denial. They're just different ways of relating to the same open question, and I think they can all be right for the person making the choice.

What I'd push back on a little is the idea that there's a timeline you're supposed to be on — that you should want to search by a certain age, or that if you haven't by now you never will, or that finding someone automatically resolves something that not finding them left open. Real searches, when they happen, are messier and slower and more mixed than that. So is choosing not to.

If you're somewhere in the middle of deciding, I don't have an answer for you. I just don't think there's a wrong one.