So I got to thinking yesterday after hearing and talking to my husband about how some people tell their life story to others and use it to help others or to help themselves.  I know I have heard some really moving stories and some people who have really gone through a lot in their lives.  But it got me to thinking why have I never told my story?  Why have I always hidden things away?  Why do I always think that I can just find away to fix it, move on, or hide it from everyone? 

I know I am a strong person and I have been through a lot in my life but when I got to thinking about my life I was like oh my goodness I have not just been through one thing I have been through a battle.  My life is an on going story and well I don’t even know where to begin but well I am going to try just a little.

So one story I have in my life is about who I am and where I came from.  Well growing up I thought I was like all the other kids.  I had a sister and a mom & dad.  I went to school like everyone else. Played on the bars, jumped rope, hop scotch, tether ball, you name it.  Well one day at school I was going to play jump rope with my sister and the other girls but the girls wouldn’t let me play.  They said that we weren’t sisters and I couldn’t play with her.  So I went in crying.  I went home crying and asked my mom why I looked different from my sister.  Well she sat down and then told me in her room that I was adopted.  She told me that she had told me before but I didn’t know she had and this was the first time I knew I was different from everyone.  I also found out that day that my parents got me because they had lost a child at birth. 

Well as the years went on a little more of the story came out but not much more.  Then 10 & 13 years after I was adopted my parents adopted 2 boys.  So then I had 2 brothers that were adopted. 

I had to grow up early to take care of the boys.  After school I had to watch them, change diapers, and do all that stuff since both my parents worked as teachers.  My sister didn’t like to do that stuff and didn’t do much to help me watch them.  So I was the one that had to do it all and my school work and everything. 

Well later on in life as I grew up like most teenagers they start to not like their parents for some reason.  Well I had a few.  I had never really got to be a kid.  I never got the same treatment as my sister did (at least I thought).  So I started to act out especially to my mom.  Well she took that as a sign that I didn’t like her and wanted my natural mom. 

So my mom had a family friend that found my natural mom.  Got in contact with her.  And then he set up a meeting with me.  After school one day after track.  He took me to Denny’s and started to just have chit chat with me.  Well after a while he told me that he had pictures and letters of my natural mom with him and wanted to know if I wanted to see them?  Well I didn’t want to and I wanted to go home and be with my parents and find out what was going on and why they would do this to me.  When I got home I walked in to see my dad in tears like he was going to loose his baby girl and then I saw my mom who was sad but wondering what I was thinking and wanted to do.

I have always been close to my dad my whole life but as I got older and things and started to have my own family that is when some of these feelings got more clear to me.  I believe now as a mom that I was close to my dad so much because my mom got pregnant with my sister and that was something that she didn’t think would happen to her again.  Her doctors said back then that she may never have a child again so when she got pregnant well that was to her a blessing.  And with us being so close in age well someone had to raise me and do things for me and that was my dad.  He rocked me to sleep, stayed up with me when I was sick at night so I could breathe, he was there for me.  I bonded with him and well it makes sense.  And my sister was and is close to my mom because she was the blessing my mom was told she couldn’t have.

This Christmas my mom told me a little more about this and said that when they lost their son at birth that back then churches helped people find babies to adopt.  And so they had some calls and some fell through.  And that the state wanted them to undergo a psych evaluation to make sure they were ready to have a kid.  Because people all around them (friends, family, my aunt,) were all having kids but they weren’t.  But my mom thought that was crazy and that they were fine. 

Well I know now from having lost children myself through dnc’s, miscarriage’s, and things.  I at times don’t know if I dealt with it.  I think I was pushed and just kept going through the motions and that maybe I got a cold heart at times.  I didn’t have a chance to deal with the losses the way I needed to.  This has been hard for me.  And it is something I have to carry with me for the rest of my life.

But something I have learned through this is that no matter where my kids come from, how hard it was to get them, the struggles it was.  It is not their fault and that I don’t want them to carry with them pain, hurt, or wonder their whole lives.  I just want them to know that no matter where they came from or how hard it was that they are mine and I love them so much.  And I will go to the ends of the earth to love them.  To me I don’t want to show one more love that the other, make one ever wonder or guess where they belong, or make one of my kids feel out of place.  They are my kids and I love them no matter what. 

It is amazing to me to see full circle now from being a kid to now being a parent.  And I know that my dad always loved me the way I want to love my kids.  I am going to pass his big heart on to them I hope.