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.