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It has been a couple of years since I found my mother now, but I would like to share the story. I was pushed into this by my partner's mother and eventually got going with it.
I was adopted at 21 months old and whilst my adoptive parents told me that from an early age, all I knew was that my mother was / had been as school teacher, and that I was born in Great Yarmouth. I knew her name was Meredith. (This actually turned out to be Lowestoft!)
When I started looking, which is 12 years ago now, I eventually came across Genes reunited and found nothing. At that time as I recall there were 17 million names which I thought was a lot. I did join up eventually but nothing came out of it for ages and ages. The number of names kept growing and growing, but still nothing.
Then one day I got a contact. My 'brother' had found me and told me my Mother was still alive but in a home. We spoke on the phone and slowly an element of doubt crept in. The name was right, the age was right. Service in the WAAF was right AND there was a missing adopted child called David.......but it was not me. Eventually I had to tell my new found 'family' that I was not the David they were looking for, and I was back to square one again.
What were the odds of there being two people withe the same name and very nearly the same birth date, who were both in the WAAF and who both had TB in their 20s (another key identifying fact) and who both had a child called David put out for adoption?
Genes Reuinited was growing faster and faster and whilst identifying my true mother was not actually through Genes Reunited - I found her in the BMD lists and using electoral rolls, once I had found her Genes Reunited was a fabulous tool for tracking down more members of the family.
I have found my mother, and she is still alive and well at 88 years old. Using Genes Reunited I have also found brothers and sisters on my father's side - who knew I existed but had no means of contacting me. I have also managed to put together a large family tree with some branches going back to the mid 1600s. Most of this has been through contacts within Genes Reunited, without which it would have been so much more difficult.
My subscriptions to Genes Reunited have been the best money spent and it is great to know that with so many more names coming on daily, people looking for lost family now stand an increasingly better chance of success.
Mainly thanks to Genes Reunited I now know who I am and where I came from!
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