Missing pieces: The drive to find birth parents

Shelley Brown has spent much of his life feels ashamed and embarrassed that she does not know the identity of her father.

Brown may refer to the recent revelation that Oprah Winfrey has a half-sister, Patricia, and shame that Winfrey says her mother, Vernita Lee, said he had done: to Patricia adoption.

As human beings have been separated from close relatives of childhood, the journey to revive the father of Brown and his family was not an easy or totally happy, but he's glad it happened.

"I do not want to die without knowing my father, and he does not know me," said Brown, who is also an iReport share their experiences.

Find a parent or a sibling is as opposed to a death in the sense that someone who has no place in his life seems suddenly said Argie Allen, director of clinical training in Family Therapy Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia. You can be the beginning of a happy relationship, but also can bring strong emotions of anger, frustration and disappointment.

People usually begin to explore a parent or a lost brother wants answers to where they came from, "he said. This idea of the missing pieces of human history is welcome to September in order to find lost relative, Allen said.

Many say they are happy for a new commitment with someone new. Others believe they can catch up on the ground.

But it is unrealistic to think that you can instantly resume where you left off, or erase the past, "Allen said. And there is a risk of having a fantasy about this person that you are looking for, then know that he or she is completely different.

Just as the friendships are not built overnight, it takes time for the development of relations between biological parents, who have just met for the first time, "he said.

The search begins

For Brown, his father married another woman when Brown's mother, a teenager at the time, gave birth to her. Brown never know why his father and his family moved away at this point. This may be due to the career of basketball, which he later learned about, or because his wife learned of the birth of Brown.

However, Brown has had no contact with the family of his father until the age of 26 when she decided to contact her father's mother, brother and sister. These parents would not help him connect with his father.

"What was so wrong I want to meet my father?" Brown asks. "It 's a question I just want to ask people who are in the same situation: what is the problem"

Brown has decided to send his sister from his father a picture of herself with her own son. He thought that if you saw the image, which could help, and maybe you could see that I'm just a human being, "said Brown.