The Sunflower Bmom's led by Alana Miller, are a group of more than 700 women, scattered across the globe. They are all ages, nationalities and religions, but all share one thing in common. Each has experienced the loss of losing a child or children to adoption. These women have now joined forces to support each other through grief, healing, and even search and reunion.

While searching for their own children, and helping others to search, it became apparent to some of these women that there were just too many registries for them to search. It was like hunting for a needle in a haystack.

A few women began saving these search posts for areas that they were searching, in the hopes that they would one day help someone else. What developed were massive files of search posts for specific regions, Florida being among them.

Some of the women began to get excited about what was developing and began to see a vision much larger than that of helping fellow Birth Mom's. "What if these databases were made public to anyone in search no matter what their position in the triad? or What if they were taken to places like the March on Washington, or Reg Day?

A call went out for volunteers to commit to being coordinators of individual states. At that time I volunteered for Florida, and have been with it ever since.

What began as less than 400 posts, now consists of somewhere between 10,000-15,000 Florida search posts (possibly more), representing all sides of the adoption triad. They are sent from Volunteers within the Sunflower Birth Mothers themselves, from Registry Owners, from dedicated individuals, and from individual searchers.

This database has served as an offline registry, and archive, protecting the information that was posted on registries that have since gone out of business. There are posts within the database that can be found no where else online. People now send me information for people that do not own computers, or that they have stumbled across in their own searches, and even information on friends and neighbors that they know are adopted, even when those people are not actively searching.

This database is a free service to the adoption community. All you have to do is drop me a line with the subject line of "Sunflower database" to find out if you are in it, or if the person you are searching for is waiting to be found.

The databases themselves have become an enormous success. In Florida we are averaging several possible matches a week. Because the databases are searchable by both DOB & non-id we have reunited family members who have been searching with DOB's that were off by over a year. And very recently we reunited a Bmom within 4 hours of her first post appearing online.

Given the success of this database, we have recently begun networking with others within the state, in an effort to double or triple these finds. I invite you to check out The Florida Search Network to see how this database is now being used and accessed by those within the state of Florida. Perhaps you will consider joining us, or working to develop this type of network within your own state.

If you are a Birth Mother, I invite you to check out the Sunflower Birth Mom's . I think you will find not only support and search resources, but also some good friends.