Dani,
Try adoption.com. There are message boards. There are blogs. There is a ton of information at this site. There is as well a registry. I do not know if you will be able or not to register with them if you are under the age of 18. But you could try. Then there is a teen adoption zone. Where adopted teens go to voice there concerns and find support. I do not know the website addy offhand. But you can try putting: Teen who are adopted in your browser and see what pops up? Or try:
Google Alert - Professional Web Alerts, which is a great search engine.
Most of the information that I have gathered about this issue was obtained through open browser searches through Google or through search and support sites located at yahoogroups or googlegroups. But you can also make a webpage or blog about why you desire to find your first family, etc.
Something as easy as:
adopted - Information from Reference.com
May explain the complex issue surrounding adoption. Once looking at this site, even for someone who had searched, belonged, reunited, and found -FOR FREE- still finds additional information online to learn!
If it is in your heart to know. Do everything you can to find out. It is far too sad that this country feels that adoption is something to be so closed minded about.
There are millions of adopted children. Some decide to search, while others do not.
It is a personal choice. But what runs in your veins wasn't a choice.
Hope this helps. You are NOT alone.
For instance:
Open adoption is where the adopted person has access to their file and/or original records. This may be a right available at certain ages - e.g. at age 18, a person adopted in the United Kingdom becomes automatically entitled to their birth certificate and may access their adoption records.
In the U.S. the adults adopted as children can only access their birth records in Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Oregon.
Again, try adoption.com, do a browser search. Start a blog about your feeling's. Tell the world how you feel. Get it out. Release it. Learn as much as you can related to this issue. And once you are an adult, no one should ever tell you that you shouldn't have a right to know. Especially if there was no closed adoption agreement to begin with at the time. It is a matter of Civil Liberties that are and have been taken away from many of its adopted citizens and this needs to stop, once and for all. I answer these questions related to adoption issues on this board, to try to help people like yourself. You are NOT alone. And whatever you feel now, maynot be what you may feel in a year from now, and then in 10 years from now you may go back to wanting to know, where 20 years from now something else.
But once you turn 18, you should be treated as a adult. Not a child any further. Good or bad. Reunion or no reunion. You should have unquestionable access to YOUR records. All of them. And if you decide to contact your family, may it be just a phone call away for you. It will then be their choice to either answer it or let the machine pick it up. It will be their decision to call back or even have their number changed. And if that is their choice, at least they had/have one.