Chapter 27 – Process

Bella

The road to finding my daughter was met with roadblock after roadblock. At first, I was told that reuniting with my child was impossible, so I spoke to someone else and they said reuniting with my child was next to impossible. They didn't even take my name or ask for my daughter's before refusing to help me.

I spoke to over ten different people, and all of them gave me the runaround before thankfully someone offered some real advice.

"If the adoption papers were forged, file a police report first, and after that gets handled, perhaps Social Services would be more willing to listen."

So that's what I did, but proving forgery on an official legal document was a difficult thing to do. On top of that, the agency that originally handled my daughter's adoption didn't even exist anymore. It took many long phone calls, and hours at a time just sitting on hold, but finally, after a handwriting expert confirmed that I never signed anything, Social Services were forced to take me seriously.

"Now, it's likely that your daughter was placed with a family as an infant. She may not even know she was adopted, which means it's in her best interest to take everything slowly," Jay, the agent handling my case, told me.

"I understand," I replied. "The most important thing to me is just knowing she's okay."

"That's good to hear," Jay said with a kind smile. "So many parents come in here demanding to reconnect with their children, and they never stop and think what the child actually needs. Now listen, I'm going to be honest with you, this is still going to take some time. As you know, the agency who initially handled your case wasn't the best at keeping records. Apparently, they did quite a few things crookedly, which is why they were actually shut down."

"Meaning it could take a long time to straighten everything out," I understood.

"Children who aren't adopted right away can sometimes be jumbled around from agency to agency, making it a little complicated to locate them. And well, if she was adopted, reopening a closed adoption file can also take some time. There is a process."

I wanted to shout at him that I didn't give two shits about his process, but the last thing I'd ever want to do was hurt my little girl by abruptly upsetting her life. I knew contacting her needed to be handled gently. If she was in a steady loving home with the only family she's ever known, then what kind of person would I be to take her away from that? But at the same time, I didn't choose to give her up, so at the very least, I wanted the chance to get to know her and be a part of that family. I had been cheated out of a life with my daughter, and no matter whose fault it was, I deserved to meet her. The fucking world owed me that much.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, well let's start the process then."

..

I really didn't get how it could be that difficult to locate a child. I understood there was a process, but every day when I called in for an update, they always said the same thing – "These things take time, Ms. Swan. There's only so much man power and there are so many cases ahead of yours."

It was absolutely maddening. I already had her name; shouldn't that have been enough to find her? Jay did tell me that her name could have been changed, which, to me, didn't make sense. If her name was changed, then what did that mean for my father's life insurance policy? There was so much about the situation that I didn't understand, so every second that I wasn't working in my café or sleeping, I was doing research. I wanted to know anything and everything I could do to help the process along, but perhaps even more importantly, I wanted to be informed on all the things that could get in the way and make the process take longer so I could do whatever possible to fix them.

I just wanted to meet my little girl and to know that she was safe and loved…