Finding Family

I read a fairly diverse group of bloggers.  There are foster care and foster to adopt blogs that I read, because I have adopted through the foster care system. And because I think the system is broken I kind of "keep tabs" as I wonder how and what I could do to be an agent of change at some point in my life when the wee ones are less wee.  I read blogs that deal with kids with issues--disabilities, mental health issues--things that may not exactly mirror my situations with some of my kids, but have enough similarities to have a resonance in my spirit. I read blogs of adult adoptees, knowing that I need their wisdom as my children grow.  I read first mother blogs, knowing that I need to never forget all of my kid's family. I read several blogs of people who aged out of foster care--if you really want to know how broken that system is, I recommend reading a few of those.  We should be so ashamed as a country at what we allow to happen to kids in foster care.

 I read cooking blogs because I enjoy both the preparation and the consumption of good, healthy (vegetarian) food.  I read decorating blogs because I am all about decorating on the cheap.  I read about black hair care.  I read my artist friend's blog and my writer friend's blog and other friends blog.  I am nosy I guess.  LOL

Tonight I read that one of the adult adoptees whose blog I enjoy is now in dialogue with her natural father.  I am excited for her.  And it made me rather wistful and selfishly weepy at the same time. 

I have no relationship other than biology with my father. But it isn't one of those situations where he walked out of my life early.  He stayed there through age 18, making virtually every holiday and special moment memorable only in the ways he could find to mar it.  Then he divorced my mom and moved on to wife number two and her two children by her first husband. 

He kept in relationship with my sister  though.  In fact when wife number three passed away  recently and the memorial service took place in a far away state, he paid to have sis fly out and speak at the funeral.   If I had moved to some far flung part of the world, or wasn't on the internet, I could understand his lack of communication.  His lack of presence in my life.  But I live in the house I grew up in.  I am on the net.  My sister is my FB friend as well as our father.  So he could contact me if he wanted to. 

But he won't.  Because I was never quite good enough.   I think maybe the reason I read some of those adoption blogs is because I do feel some of the same issues of abandonment--though then I feel guilty because I wasn't in foster care.  I didn't ever have to worry about my physical safety or where my next meal was coming from.  But feeling loved?  Feeling connected?  That lack can happen even in a birth family and it is still so painful.