“Part of me wished that my birth family could have been there too, but it would have been too hard for my parents, and I didn't want that day spoiled with strained feelings. In an ideal world, both my families would have come together.”

“Yes they are my parents but unlike those who haven't been adopted, I also have another set of parents. I know my adoptive parents love me and I love them, but I have a different connection with them than I would experience if I had been raised in my birth home. I still need to know who my birth parents are.”

“I wish I could tell you that reuniting with my birth family fixed everything in my life. It didn't. What it did do was fill a lot of empty spaces in my heart. Just by knowing the facts, the real truth, I have been forced to give up the fantasy and look at it all squarely in the eye.”

“I strongly believe that to heal from the adoption wound we all have to grieve our losses individually and then together. I don't regret finding my birth family, however hard it was. It has given me a sense of self that I didn't have before.”

“As for myself, the part of me that still believes that I was given up because there was something wrong with me will diminish with the passage of time. But I feel sad when I think about all those years of not really knowing the truth. Would it have made me feel better about myself if I had known my story? Or would it still have taken me this long to understand what it all meant?”

“I watched my brother and sister interact with their grandparents and their mother. I could see the shared connection that comes only with years of being a family, years of history with one another, and waves of sadness crashed over me. I would never have that connection with them; those years were truly gone. As Pat had missed watching me grow, I had missed seeing my siblings grow, and I still felt like an outsider. Paradoxically, reunion helped in many ways to fill the void, but in other ways it made the void bigger than ever.”

“I began for the first time to really understand the loss my adoptive mother must have felt from not having her own child. I was terribly sad for her and realized that she had missed out greatly - we both had - and there was nothing I could do to change that. I could never be her natural daughter and I could never make her feel better about that loss. Guilt is a strange waste of time in the cold light of day.”