Letter Writing

This is about the time of year I start mulling over what I am going to write in the annual "holiday letter."  I work hard for it to sound natural and not braggy and gross and it takes time to craft it.  Then I put it in a Word doc that I can tweak slightly for each person. It is more personal than just running off a ton but still takes me far less time than the old days when I would write about 50 or so by hand.  I clearly was demented!  LOL

Thinking of the holiday letter also makes me think of two other letters I write annually. I write letters to my 2 youngest children's first mothers in care of the agency we adopted them through.  Our adoptions are closed.  We were told that neither woman wanted to have contact.  There are good reasons why each of those women may legitimately feel that way.  Or have  felt that way.  But people change and I always worry that they are out there somewhere wondering how a little baby boy and baby girl are doing.  So I have always written an annual update letter to the folks at the agency, and enclosed a letter for each mom with instructions to please keep this on file should they ever want information or contact.

Writing these letters is infinately harder for me.  I spend hours wondering if I sound the way I feel--which is incredibly blessed and lucky.  I realize they made a really hard choice for deeply personal reasons.  I don't want to sound like I am talking down.  I worry that I don't include information that they would want.  At the end of the day, after the 15th re-write or something like that, I say "it is what it is" and hit print.  I also enclose a scrapbook page collage of KC and Elisabeth with random shots taken that year.  I don't know if either mother will ever see these but it is important to me that they be there, waiting for when the time is right.