When an adoptive mother says...My daughter isn't interested in searching

Lorraine

What do you say to someone you meet at a luncheon who says that she has an adopted daughter who "isn't interested in searching" as soon as she hears the subject of your recent book. Daughter is in her late twenties.

I said that many adoptees don't search until their parents are much older or dead, because then they feel that are free to do so. I said that adoptees don't search because unconsciously you [adoptive mother] have made it clear that doing so would hurt you very much. She understood. And she added that she always thought her daughter would search one day. I realized that my new acquaintance instinctively understood that the desire to know one's history and reconnect with kin on some level was instinctual, and not unusual. She wasn't being aggressive; I think she was simply surprised to meet a birth mother in real life, at a New Year's luncheon in an artist's studio.