Digging in the Weeds....

....so to speak. I mentioned the other day that I've started writing a blog about my adoption story. I'm not quite ready to share it yet - I've got a few people reading it first...I only have three posts written so far. The story is so fascinating - painful at times, surprising at others, and in the end I really want it to be a source of hope, inspiration and resilience for anyone touched by adoption. 

It's absolutely cathartic, to answer a question from the other day. I have amassed a great deal of information over the years - research, family history, photos, years of letters and emails between me and my birthmother and sisters. I started feeling like I needed to search for my birthmother/parents when I was pregnant with my son (who's now 40). And of course when I started searching we didn't have the internet (!) so it was a lot more difficult. I finally found her when I was 40 but the story did not end there.
 
Sadly, she passed away last October, and you might remember that my parents (my adopted parents) both passed away fairly recently. But their passing has allowed me to share my story freely. They've all been integral in my life and I'm eternally grateful to all of them for cherishing me and allowing me to become the person that I am today.

I found this terrific photo of my mom and dad and me - it must have been quite shortly after they were able to bring me home to Massachusetts from Vermont, where I was born. The state didn't allow adopted babies to cross the state line until they were a month old, and by that time I'd been hospitalized due to infectious diarrhea and was not thriving. The side of my head was shaved because I was being fed intravenously and I don't look particularly happy, but my mom sure does! And dad looks like he's going to pass out from exhaustion ;-)