I was born in Moscow, Russia on January 10 1994. According to the information my adoptive parents were given, I was abandoned a few days after I was born, given to an orphanage, and adopted in August 1994.
I always knew I was adopted growing up, but I was not sure what exact information I had access to in regards to my birth growing up. I did not have the ability to really start researching my birth circumstances until I was in my early 20s (I am 24 as of writing this article).
Recently, I was told by my adoptive family that every piece of information surrounding my birth (minus my first name) could have been fabricated. The names my birth parents left was equivalent to a “Jane Doe/John Smith” type name. The home address they left, the building did not even exist. My middle name (Ivanov) means “daughter of Ivan/John”, which is an extremely common first name in Russia. My surname, according to the paperwork (Koroliova) has less than a 1% usage across all of Russia and all other countries where the individuals live.
Due to some problems I’ve had with MyHeritage, they recently gave me a free premium subscription package for a year. I investigated the new features I had access to, but learned that it is useless to me. Since I do not have any information about my biological family or parents, I only have myself on the family tree. The closest DNA relative they have is a second cousin. This is a dead end, because they also have zero information on their biological family. These premium features only work if you have at least other person on your family tree.
This is why I am so scared of spending money on a pro geneologist or going to a geneologist convention. I am terrified of them telling me “Sorry, couldn’t find anything” because of the serious lack of information I do have about my biological family.
