Adoptee Searching for Birthmother 40 years Later

“Forty years ago this past November, a baby girl was born at Methodist Hospital and placed with a foster family who adopted her. The baby girl is all grown up now and looking for her biological parents.

The word, “FAMILY” sits above the kitchen cabinets in the apartment Robin Schaffer shares with her three daughters.

It’s a word that sums up Robin’s hopes for this new year.

“I feel like maybe this year’s my year and maybe this is my time,” Robin said.

Time, Robin hopes, to finally get the answers she’s longed for, 40 years after her mother gave her up for adoption following her birth on November 23, 1977.

“I’ve always felt like a part of me wasn’t there,” said Robin.

“My biggest thing is on my birthday, if she ever thinks about me,” the school bus driver, who recently went to back to college, wondered.

After years of searching for her mom off and on with no luck, Robin decided it was time to try Facebook. The post she made this past Saturday already has more than 4,000 shares.

“Maybe she’s been looking for me just like I’ve been looking for her and she just hasn’t had the resources,” Robin said.

The single mom who lives in Noblesville says she knows very few details about her birth mother, because the adoption was closed and handled through Saint Elizabeth’s.

She knows her mom was 19 or 20 at the time and got counseling there.

“She just came for the groups and the counseling and went back home,” Robin explained.

Robin used to have papers with other non-identifying details about her birth mom’s family, but lost those papers.

“It says that my grandmother would have been a homemaker, that my grandpa was employed in transportation,” Robin said.

She also knows her biological mom came from a family of eight or nine siblings.

“I do know there was diabetes and high blood pressure and that’s basically all they gave me,” Robin said of the information she had.

A change in law regarding opening up closed adoption records is set to take effect this July, but Robin, with her adopted parents’ support, wanted to look now.

“They’ve always encouraged me to find my biological parents if I wanted to. It was never something that they were against,” she explained.

Robin knows she’s taking a risk.

“I’m scared that if I find her, she will reject me again. That’s my biggest fear,” Robin said.

It’s a risk, though, she’s willing to take.

“Whether it’s good or bad, it gives me closure,” Robin said.

Robin has also signed up for Indiana’s Adoption Registry. If her biological mother has signed up too and both parties agree to exchange identifying information, that exchange can be made.”

Woman given up for adoption 40 years ago turns to social media in search for biological family

[Wthr 1/3/18 by Emily Longnecker]

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