So I Wanted to Know Something

After I graduated from college in 1992, I decided it would be a good idea to visit the Catholic Charities office that I had been adopted through. After all, it was still in exactly the same place, people seemed friendly on the phone and the case worker was willing to meet with me. I called, explained that I would like some information about my birth family and first encountered the term "non-identifying information".

Non-identifying information is how the narrative surrounding an adoptee's birth and birth situation is characterized. It is designed to be informational about the birth parents and what was known by the agency at the time of birth. Some are very very short and some can be quite lengthy. What goes into the non-identifying information varies greatly from agency to agency and social worker to social worker. At Catholic Charities, all non-ID goes through a review process before it is released to the adoptee inquiring.

Naive me, in 1992, I thought it would be as easy as walking in and talking to someone. So I did. And the CC social worker at the time sat across the desk from me, WITH MY ORIGINAL FILE, and told me the above story about non-identifying information and why I would need to wait for the information to come in the mail. SHE HAD MY FILE IN FRONT OF HER...WITH MY NAME and everything else I wanted to know. I remember leaving CC and sitting in my car and crying, I was so frustrated. It seemed so unfair that someone could know everything about my background and being unable or unwilling to share it. I've since learned that many adoptees, meeting more sympathetic social workers, find themselves left in offices with their file on the desk while the social worker "goes to look for something". That was not my experience.

So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. I first asked for my non-ID in September of 1992. I moved to Houston and continued to wait. It would be Spring of 1993 before I would get the first version of my birth story.