How Ancestry24 helped me

As an adopted child in South Africa and having very little information about my birth parents and my adoption, meant that tracing my ancestors and living relatives was proving to be impossible.

Before 1987, the Social Welfare Services would not divulge any information whatsoever to an adoptee about the circumstances of his/her adoption – even if the adoptee was over the age of 21!  Now things have changed and Ancestry24 helped me.   Even if one has the most wonderful adoptive parents and a very happy childhood (as I did) there is a fundamental need and a natural curiosity to find out about one’s background.

• Where did I come from?
• Who were my natural parents and what were their names?
• Do I have brothers/sisters/cousins out there that I don’t know about?
• What genetic traits have I inherited from my grandparents and great grandparents?
• What were their names and occupations?

A lack of knowledge about one’s background is unsettling.  It doesn’t sit well in one’s psyche, and it affects one’s sense of identity.

What is my Indentity

One’s sense of identity is made up of so many things – your childhood experiences, you family dynamics, your education, your friends, the choices you make and the paths you go down through your life.  It is like a jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces, that becomes larger and more complex as you get older.  When you are an adoptee, there is a piece of one’s identity jigsaw that is missing.  The picture is worryingly incomplete.  And the piece that is missing is a significant one as it is right in the middle of the jigsaw.  Weeks can go by when you don’t think about it at all.  But every now and then, it surfaces into your consciousness and is disturbing.

I found Ancestry24 to help me

I had recently watched the TV series of ‘Who do you think you are?’ with great interest.  The message that comes through loud and clear is that tracing one’s ancestors is an enthralling and deeply fascinating exercise.  Ancestry24  provided me with the necessary tools to help me achieve this – knowing some names of relatives and birth dates can help you with your search.

I began actively searching for my birth mother in 1989.  The adoption laws in South Africa had changed, but not so in Zimbabwe where my adoption took place.  The Social Welfare Services in Harare were immovable in my request for information about my natural mother and the circumstances of my adoption.  Letters were written and phone calls were made, but to no avail.  We did not have the power of the internet in those days, and the postal system in Zimbabwe was dire.

I decided to approach the Child Welfare Adoption Centre to see if they could help me.  A report to the International Social Services in Geneva was written to ask them to intervene on my behalf.  It took two years for the Adoption Authorities in Zimbabwe to release information to a social worker giving details of my mother’s name, birth date, and last known address.  At the age of 42, I finally knew my mother’s identity.  It was mind blowing, but unfortunately, this small amount of knowledge didn’t seem to help me very much.

I wish that I had kept a diary of all the avenues I went down in my search for my birth mother, and all the blank walls that I hit.  I have lost count of all the letters that I wrote and the phone calls that I made.  We now had the internet to help me in my search, but nothing came to light.  Life was busy, and the years went by.  Fourteen of them!  I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I was not meant to find her.  So much time had elapsed since my adoption and it was very possible that my birth mother had died.  I thought about my mother on what would have been her 87th birthday in July, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened in the next few days.  Fate intervened and took me totally by surprise.

Using simple methods + records

Fate came in the form of Heather MacAlister of Ancestry24.  She gave me some excellent and simple advice:  “Ask the neighbours”.  In other words, ask the people who lived on the same street as my birth mother if they remembered her, and if she still lived in the same town.  From this point on, things moved very quickly, thanks to the awesome power of Google.  Phone calls were made, new facts emerged, and finally, the estate records of my natural mother were called up using Ancestry24.com Government Gazette records.  She had indeed died, but at the bottom of the record was the name of her daughter, and my half-sister.  My search of 21 years was finally over.

Since then, I have made contact with my half-sister, my half-brother, and a cousin and an aunt.  They have unhesitatingly welcomed me into the family, and given me all sorts of information about my other relatives (hoards of them!) and my ancestors.  Aesthetics have always been important to me, but I have never known the reason why.  I have learnt that creativity and artistic ability are very strong traits in my family.  I am now in a position to use Ancestry24.com to draw up a family tree and I can’t wait to do it!   I now have closure on a matter that has been troubling me for years, and my identity jigsaw puzzle is now complete.

Belinda Press

Tags: adopted child, adoption, government gazettes, social welfare services