A new show debuted on ABC last week – Find My Family.  The premise, according to the show’s site, is simply “to bring families together”.   With the help of a dedicated team of researchers, hosts guide people searching for lost loved ones through the emotional journeys that will change their lives forever. On national television.  Yeah, that’s appropriate.  Is there nowhere that reality television will stop, no line at which producers will stop short and say “Hmm, maybe this isn’t really fitting for a national audience”?

Commercials have promoted searching for birth parents as well as long lost siblings.  I can’t speak to long lost siblings, but I do know that the search and potential reunion between a child and birth parent is an extremely loaded and emotional journey.  It is a series of months or even years filled with hope and then disappointment, dreams and then nightmares, questions, histories, hugs, tears, fulfillment, and insecurities.  To simplify this search into an hour long program, to belittle the journey, to bottle it into the predictable routine of 44 minutes of programming plus 16 minutes of commercials belies not only the producers lack of sympathy, but also their willingness to take advantage of someone so desperate to find answers to their questions.  It falsely glorifies this reunion, which can often be hurtful, harmful, and nothing short of life-shattering.

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I was reunited with my birth parents over ten years ago.  Which is hard to believe because my relationship with both my birth mother and birth father still feel new and raw.  We are still learning about one another, trying to figure each other out, to understand choices made, to accept personalities, to find room in our hearts and homes for this new family, to look beyond the often awkward interactions to try to see who the other really is, beyond the qualifiers of “birth mother”, “birth father”, or “birth daughter”.  Will we ever become completely comfortable with one another?  I don’t know.  I certainly hope so, but I can’t say for certain.

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I can see some positives to this show, I understand the opportunity tis might afford someone – the resources made available to participants, the time and money and expertise in seeking out lost people.  It may be their only real chance, their last chance, to find answers.  But the sacrifice you would make, to have to share your story, in cliff note version, to a judgmental audience, is not one I can wrap my head around as being “worth it”.  And you may read this and think that I am being overly judgmental, so let me leave you with this last little tidbit about the show….  After 50 minutes invested in someone’s story of loss, the reunion is held in a manmade field, with perfect lighting and weather.  There is a small hill with a path leading to the top, where a picturesque tree stands alone against the horizon.  The reunion inevitable always takes place here, under this tree.  Which, I shit you not, is called “The Family Tree”. {Groan………}

This isn’t about helping people.  This isn’t about individuals who have suffered enough.  This is about ratings.  This is about the next marketable product, and each person on the show is just that, a product.