The Internet, through online databases & social media, has rendered closed adoptions virtually extinct. There are still surprises, though, as Andrew Cadieux shared with HuffPost Live host Abby Huntsman. For Cadieux, the surprise came in the form of a Facebook message from someone with the same name, who he had never heard of before, which led him to find out that he had been adopted.
"It was strange because I was 21 and in my final year of college and they had never... mentioned the fact that I was adopted, and there was never any kind of inkling that I might have been," he said of his parents.
Cadieux reacted with shock, but has moved past that response to an understanding.
"The people who raised me are still my family," he said. "I call my mother my mother and she'll always be that to me."
Also joining the discussion were Carrie Goldman, author of the blog "Portrait of an Adoption", Adam Pertman, the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Dr. Stephen Betchen, a marriage and family therapist, Robin Fleischner, an adoption lawyer with two adopted kids of her own, and Glenda Cain, who met her own biological family later in life.