Should I keep going?

I logged in to Blogger today for the first time in a long time.  I am amazed looking at the stats that there are still some page views here.   A lot has changed in the past few years and if it would be helpful to anyone, I'm happy to resume this blog.   I've learned a lot and have worked through much in the past few years.  I am such a huge advocate for adoption and especially for responsible adoption. There is so much more to good child rearing than a loving, safe home.  There is emotional safety, understanding of differences and true unconditional love.  If anyone is reading and would like to read more, let me know, after much exploring, I'm ready to write!   If you are reading this, thank you for visiting!

The end of a very short blog

After much reflection, I've decided that my whole story, thus far, is just too personal to put out there for the world to see.  I like to finish what I start and I would love to be a source of support to anyone who is on their own journey of self discovery, so I will summarize my experience.  If anyone runs across this blog and would like more info, please comment and I will find a way to communicate with you personally.
Long story short,  I was contacted by my birth mother circa 1990 when I was about 21.  While the contact was cool and exciting, at the time, I didn't feel a need to pursue more of a relationship with her. After all, I had had a perfectly "normal" upbringing, a great family etc...etc...
About 5 years ago, after years of struggle with my religious upbringing and the ways that it did not make sense to me, I started along a path of spiritual self discovery.  Shortly along the path I began to feel compelled to have a more intimate relationship with my birth mother and possibly pursue finding my birth father.  I reconnected with my birth mother and once again, it was very exciting and seemed like the beginning of a wonderful relationship.  With the help of my birth mother and aunt, I found my birth father and was able to develop and a close and fulfilling relationship with him.  He died last year and I am forever grateful for the time that we had together.
About a year in to the re-developed relationship with my birth mother, I began to experience angry and/ or ambivalent feelings when I was around her resulting in very passive aggressive behavior towards her and some personal experiences with her of which I am not proud.
Wondering why I was acting this way and how she could have such power to "push my buttons"  I began to research causes of underlying anger and discovered that it was very likely to be related to my having been put up for adoption.  I began to read, and read, and read books about adoption and it's effects.  I learned that despite my very happy childhood and my good relationship with my adoptive family, that it was very normal to go through a "honeymoon' period with a birth mother that could lead to subconscious abandonment issues resulting in angry and erratic behaviour.  If fact, looking back, I could see that I had a history of infrequent by sudden outbursts of angry and erratic behaviour for no reason that I could understand.  It seems to have all stemmed back to triggers of abandonment issues.
Once I was able to identify these triggers and emotions, I learned to deal with them in a healthy way and have since been able to develop a much healthier relationship with my birth mother and much of my biological family.  New feelings come up all the time but I am able to work through them now much more easily.
What I would like others to know is that it's okay to have a great adoptive family and pursue a relationship with your biological family.  It's also okay and quite likely to have a lot of ungrateful feelings towards your birth mother/and or father despite the understanding that you should just be grateful for the wonderful family that you got as a result of their decision.
For now, this is where I leave this story.  Short and bittersweet but all good in the end.  If you read this and would like to learn more from me, please post, I'm happy to share in a more private fashion but blogging my whole story to the world is not in my nature and seems to be something that I cannot do at this time.   My best wishes to anyone finding their way through the world of adoption.

Growing up adopted with nothing to complain about.

In an nutshell, up to the age of 17, my life as an adopted child was great!!  My parents did an awesome job of making me feel special, I never felt that my parents loved my younger brothers, who are their natural children, any more than they did my older brother and I who were both adopted.  My parents always told my older brother and I that we were adopted from before we could even understand what it meant.  I believe that this was and still is the best approach.   Leaving a child to find out "later" that they are adopted sets them up for a world of identity crisis, pain, mistrust etc.....  I was always "different" and looked different from the rest of the family but this is something that just became part of who I was and never felt like an issue.  My dad was an officer in the US Air force and my mom stayed at home with the kids.  They are decent, moral, Christians who love each other and are still married now.  They gave us all everything we needed including a lot of love.  Of course, with parents being on the conservative side, we caught a lot of hell for the music that we listened to, some of the TV shows we wanted to watch and so on, normal stuff that leads to teenage angst.  Anyway, the point of this blog is that I had a normal, loving childhood and am blessed beyond belief to have been adopted in to this family.  Years later when I began to wonder what the hell was wrong with me and went in search of my own truth, I learned more than I could have ever imagined about the effects of adoption regardless of upbringing and a whole lot more....I'm a 43 year old woman and this is the first chapter of my adoption story.