1. Keep your search a secret mission until it’s accomplished. Do not tell anyone else of your desire to find your birth parents.

2. When you tell everyone, including random strangers, of your desire to find your birth parents, be prepared to answer questions like, “Why would you want to meet your mother?” Or, “What if you ruin their lives?” Or, “Are your adoptive parents okay with this?”

3. Practice your poker face. When the adoption agency asks why you want to know your parents’ identities, insist you are just looking for medical information. This will keep the non-adopted calm and less wary of your quest.

4. Don’t refer to your search as a quest. It’s just a fact-finding mission; no emotions need apply.

5. Don’t think about the fairness of paying gobs of money to learn who you are. Just write the check.

6. When answering the required psychological assessment questions, try to answer as the social worker would want you to. If that’s unclear, pick C.

7. You are still a baby in the court system’s eyes. Do not try to convince them otherwise, that you can handle your own information as a 30-year-old. They do not speak your baby language.

8. When the agency calls you back, fawn over the social workers. Make them feel special. They are the only thing between you and your file.

9. If a social worker leaves the room with your file still on her desk, read it. This is a gift, one that may never come again. If you’re bold, take pictures on your phone. Wear baggy clothes in case you need to steal it.

10. Do not write anything offensive in your first letter to your birth parents, which the agency will censor. Offensive material includes your last name, the city in which you live, your email address, and phone number.

11. If the agency tells you to “go slow” with direct contact, know that this is code for, “Your birth mother is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.” Blaze ahead anyway.

12. If the agency tells you your birth father is not interested, don’t take their word for it and wait five years before contacting him directly. Time delays are not your friend.

13. When you finally see pictures of your birth parents, cry. Notice physical similarities between you and another human for the first time in your life. You will be broken open; let the pieces fall.

14. When you first speak to your birth parents by phone, don’t cry. This might make them uncomfortable. Don’t scare them off.

15. When you first meet your birth parents, rejoice that you are breathing the same air or sitting at the same table. Take pictures. Don’t think about what comes next; think only about how you found them. Quest … er, Mission accomplished.