I was adopted at about 5 months old, so I had no memory of my birth parents. My birth mother was addicted to drugs, and her boyfriend was an abusive a*****e. Well, a few years after I was born, she managed to get away from him, and started her road to recovery. Now, she's totally clean and owns a bakery.
I know all of this because when I was 37 years old, she managed to track me down, because in her words, she "just wanted to be sure that she made the right decision". And I think she did, because we're both doing pretty well now, and I don't think we would be if she had kept me.