My 30 days of 30… or what my husband just calls my birthday

This year was my 30^th birthday so because there are 30 days in June I decided to celebrate the entire month. (Or what my husband will tell you in the 11 years we have been together that I do every year, but whateves it’s not my fault I’m an only child and expect to be doted on… but that’s another post for another day) HOWEVER this year I did name it and post it all on Facebook for the world to see. One of my good friends who turned 30 about two weeks after me and adopted my same plan had the great idea to take a picture a day as well… so I now have a photo album with 29 pictures in it of fun things I have done for the month. Today is my last day to celebrate so I’m doing something character motivated to sum up my older and wiser-ness. After being a bit of a chicken for a few weeks I’m pushing past my fears and using my final 30^th day of 30 to post my blog for everyone to see. (Well at least anyone who happens to friend me on Facebook that is)

Celebrating my birthday for 30 days was actually harder then I thought it would be (contrary to what my husband might tell you) Anyone who is a parent knows how hard it is to carve out anytime for yourself, never mind trying to come up with something fun for 30 days straight! But I sucked it up and managed to get through it (note the sarcasm)

I will say it was a good reminder to me that I alone control my happiness and if being excited about finding Godiva on clearance at Target makes my day that much brighter who am I to argue with that… the small things in everyday life are what keep you grounded. So while my 30 days of 30 are officially over at midnight… and 31 days of 31 just doesn’t have that special ring to it… I hope that will continue to find something special and fun about every day because that’s who I want to be. (I will spare all my friends and family on Facebook though)

Happy Fathers Day... Kinda?

I'm never really sure how I'm supposed to celebrate Mothers Day and Fathers Day. When I was single it was easy I would spend that day or at least part of that day with whichever parent and it was great. Once I got married then it added in a whole other element with in-laws and dividing time between the two families. Now that I'm a parent it gets extra tricky... I feel selfish if I don’t celebrate with my family or allow my husband to spend time with his family, but where in that equation do I fit in? Where is my celebration when I feel like we are traveling between two families with two tired kids? Never mind trying to figure out what to do for my own husband for Fathers Day...
This year had an added benefit of having two extra "parents" to consider. Not that I felt obligated or pressured by them, but somewhere in the back of my conscious was at least a consideration followed by a "crap I should probably have done something" thought in my head. This is rather odd circumstances that Hallmark has truly neglected cards for. Where is my thanks for giving me up for adoption so I could have a better life but Happy Mother's/Father's Day regardless! (I think I need to contact them, I might have a winner there)
All in all I guess it's about balance. For my Mothers Day this year we had a lovely lunch with my parents, and then my husband took the kids to his parents and I got a blissful three hours alone... Happy Mother's Day to me indeed! My poor husband got kinda screwed out of Fathers Day this year working on our bathroom remodel, but we did manage to see both sets of parents in between adventures in drywall = plumbing nightmares... and in the middle of it, I managed to send a heartfelt text to my bio-dad to wish him a Happy Fathers Day too... mission accomplished... sorta.

Not so lost but still found...

I debated starting a blog for a long time, unsure if what I had to say was important to anyone else (and it might not be) and if I really could be creative enough to keep up with it (even though my mom thinks so) but after dealing with some intense issues and looking online and elsewhere for anything that looked even similar to what I was going through and finding nothing I decided to put it out there in what may be only a cathartic experience for me.

Many people over the years know that I was adopted as an infant and raised by my parents. Yes they are my "real" parents, and even though I understand what people mean by asking if I ever wanted to find my "real" parents, it's still hard not to get defensive simply because DNA a parent doesn’t make. Well fast forward 29 years... a long story short I was contacted by my birthmother. That was a major shock to my system to say the least and sent me into what I can only describe as an identity crisis. I've always been the type of person who felt like I knew who I was and all of the sudden I didn't. It was a really stressful and eye opening time for me. I now had a birthmother, birthfather and 6 half siblings between the two of them.... coming from an only child I was completely overwhelmed. I have never thought of myself as a coward but in that moment I was afraid of what I didn't know, how this was going to change my life and what I was going to do with it. See I thought I knew who I was and part of me was the big unknown of my birth family... in fact it was great because on all those forms at the doctors office I would just put a big X through, write adopted next to it and turn them in record time... all of the sudden I had medical histories and people who were complete strangers to me and yet it was important to know this stuff and it freaked me out, part of who I was had changed and there was no going back... but I'd also rather be open to change in my life then stagnant and unwilling to accept something new. I would never want to cheat myself out of the possibilities life had to offer... which was something I had to remind myself over and over again.
I'm grateful to my parents for instilling in me the sense of self and the ability to ask myself is this the person you want to be in this world, because the person I am doesn't want to be someone who runs from difficult situations. For the most part in all of this, the good outweighs the bad, and even though I have days where I wish this had never happened, having people who love you in your life is never a bad thing and you can never have too many of them.

I promise not everything I write will be like this and if I get the courage up to post it (which remember not a coward...hopefully) I hope that someone can see and take something from my experiences and life and use it to better their own.