In 1890, Families First was started as the Leonard Street Orphans’ Home for Colored Girls. In 1937, we became the first private licensed adoption agency in the state of Georgia. So, for over 124 years, we’ve been helping children find families and vice versa. The Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry helps those affected by adoption find their birth families. Here is one touching story of the reunion between a mother (Kathy) and her daughter (Claire); 38 years in the making. “This picture was taken on the first day that Claire and I met which was 2/2/08. It was 17 days after we first talked to each other on the phone and 24 days from the day I knew she was OK and alive! I had waited 38 years to see her again and I was convinced for all that time that it was never going to happen. But thanks to the Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry we were able to find each other. And, now, it is almost 2 years later and my daughter and I are still communicating every day. Claire and I have developed a strong bond and a relationship built on trust and love. I cannot begin to express the absolute joy that I feel to be able to have my child back in my life – to once again have that which I had thought was lost and gone forever. It has been a journey that has taken a lot of time and effort, healing and emotion, but, oh, the wonderful rewards that are achieved! I now know when she broke her arm, when she lived where, and that she thought about me all those years and always wanted to find me. I have a wonderful loving relationship with her children and I have met her friends. I even have the Christmas tree ornament that she made in kindergarten and it goes on my Christmas tree along with the ornaments that my other daughters made as kids. Claire and I have talked about everything that happened concerning her birth, and we have both healed our wounds and are now at peace with the past. Reunion has been a beautiful, beautiful thing; and, hopefully, we will have many years together in our future.” — Kathy, birth mother to Claire