Being Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving. It's a day to give thanks for all of life's blessings, so I decided that I am going to dedicate today's post to voicing who and what I am most grateful for in my life.

First and foremost, I am beyond grateful to have such a happy, healthy, smart, loving, amazing child. C is my reason for waking up each morening, getting out of bed when I would much rather sleep, and for braving the cold, heat, wind, sleet, rain, hail, or snow, to catch the bus and work all day. I am so proud of that child, and each day of his life, there hasn't been a moment where he hasn't ceased to amaze me. I don't know what the past 8 years of my life would've been like without him in them, and although they haven't been easy times, I wouldn't trade them for the world. That child is my motivation and determination to succeed and be someone he could be proud of one day.

I am beyond grateful this year to have one of the most amazing, loving, caring, sweet, generous, sexiest boyfriends in the entire world. Having J come into my life a year ago was the biggest blessing God has ever given me, aside from being able to become a mother. I have never in my life thought that I would be so lucky to find someone who I could consider to be my soulmate. Ever since the moment he came into my life, I have known that J was different, and throughout the past year, he has proven me time and time again that he is. The gratitude I feel for him is almost inexplicable, as he has taught me many life lessons, such as patience, unconditional love, happiness, and how to be able to count on someone. He is the one person who I love to hear from when I wake up, and the last person I want to talk to before bed. He is my one true love and I cannot wait until the day we start our own family together.

Speaking of family, I am quite grateful for having the family I have. I know they are the source of many of my gripes and complaints, but they have been there for me through thick and thin throughout the roughest years of my life, even if they didn't support my choices and decisions. Thanks to my parents, I have a roof over my head and food in my tummy. They help me out with C and I don't think I could ever repay them for all they have done for the both of us. In addition for being thankful for my own family, I am also very grateful for J's family. They have amazingly wonderful and supportive of everything in my life throughout the past year, and I don't think I could've been so lucky to find an amazing boyfriend with an equally amazing family.

I didn't know where to put this next item on myy list at in regards to the order of things I am thankful for in my life. It's probably a weird thing to be grateful for, but I am. I am most thankful for having had the opportunity to have been blessed with a wonderful family to adopt my little angel. While holidays are usually the source of pain throughout the past few years, this year, I am more thankful than anything that my child has been blessed with a loving, caring family who loves her tremendously. As selfish as this next statement may sound, I am grateful for all the opportunities I have had since the adoption to make my life "right". I promised my little angel that I would be a better person the day she decided to meet me in the future, and slowly, but surely, I am living up to that promise. I wouldn't be where I am at in my life without that experience, and while I miss her so much everyday, I know that I made the best choice for all of us and for her.
I am also pretty thankful for having a job. In this day and age, with the economy being what it is, anyone with a job should be grateful. Yet, within the past year, I have gotten a raise, kept my job, and been given more hours to work. I am most absolutely blessed for having been given an opportunity to not to have to struggle or stress like many people out there. Although life is definitely not easy, it is a lot easier to know that I have a steady income that I can depend on to pay for what needs to be paid for.

While some may not consider it an opportunity to be grateful for, I am super lucky to have the to have the chance to go to school and be on my way to earning a degree. Nowadays, you can't work a decent job without having AT LEAST a Bachelors.

Most importantly, I am super grateful for the chance to wake up each day, open my eyes, take a deep breath of air, and walk out of bed. I have my health, all my body parts, and a positive attitude that has helped get through some of the roughest days. Thank you, God, for all of these things and more.

Crazy Month

I feel like so much has gone on in my life during the past month, and I really haven't had much of a chance to blog besides a rant about birthmoms. It was a great month of celebrating two very special birthdays at the beginning (C and J's birthdays that are about a week and a half apart from one another) and the rest of the month has been spent planning the trip J and I are taking to Sand Diego this weekend. This trip couldn't have come at a better time.

After C's birthday was over and done with, I was on a mission to plan for J's birthday. After all, he was about to turn 30 and that was a big milestone, in and of itself. I had gotten together with his mom and she and I planned a surprise birthday party for him. It was one of the hardest and biggest secrets to have to try to pull off. Luckily, I did and it was a great success.

On J's actual birthday, I had gone over to his house as soon as he left for school. His parents and I got everything ready and I rushed home to get ready since he was supposed to pick me up for "dinner" with his family later on. When we got to his house, with C unable to look J in the eyes the whole way there, the family came out with balloons, and his friends came out behind them. J was in absolute shock. I wish I could've taken a picture of the whole thing. I thought he was upset with me as he didn't talk to me for almost an hour after we had gotten there. Luckily, he was just so extremely happy, he didn't know how to react (or so he says).:) It was nice to be able to celebrate his birthday with his family and some of his closest friends. I'm sure he enjoyed it as well.

In addition to a Chargers themed party, I bought J tickets to the Chargers/Broncos game this weekend. Since the craziness of party planning was over, and the relief of not having to keep such a huge secret from him took over, I got to look forward to planning a trip down to San Diego for this coming weekend. We both have been in desperate need of a break from reality, and J, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, decided that we should have double reason to celebrate on this trip. The occasion: his 30th birthday and our 1 year anniversary! YUP! 1 year! Well, not technically yet a year because our anniversary is a week from Sunday (December 4th) but this weekend will be a year since we first started talking. Its so amazing to see how far we have come in a year, and I am so beyond excited to celebrate it out of town, together for 4 days and 3 nights in one of our favorite cities. I am looking forward to the surprises that my wonderful boyfriend has planned for me when we get there on Friday, and am also looking forward to hanging out with our friends who are coming on Saturday to celebrate with us as well. It will definitely be a weekend to remember.

With all the busy-ness of party and trip planning, as well as being busy with work that feels like two jobs, I am happy to report that I am in the midst of week 7 of the quarter at school and I am doing extremely well in my class. Yay me! I have put in tremendous hard work and effort into my school work and have really been proud of myself for kicking butt in school. I still have 3 1/2 more weeks left in the quarter, but I have faith in myself that I will get through it and succeed. So excited to get through the first hurdle of starting an online program. I am well on my way to a Bachelor's Degree in no time...

All in all, I have been in a positive, upbeat mood for the most part this past month. I have been super excited and happy for all the blessings that have come my way and I look forward to what else is in store for me. I am definitely one happy chick for having gotten through such a crazy month. Definitely excited for this upcoming weekend away. :)

Stop Playing the Victim

WARNING: This blog post might possibly be offensive to some, but I had to vent, so I am apologizing in advance.

I am a mom. I am a girlfriend. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a friend. I am a birthmother.

What the heck does being a birthmother mean? It means I have made one of the ultimate sacrifices to provide my blood with a life I wouldn't have been able to provide had I parented two children. It means I have to miss her on holidays and her birthdays, feeling a pain I never felt before. It means I have to wonder who she is, what she's like, where she's at, and how she is doing. It means I have to miss out on firsts, such as her first step, her first words, her first day of school, her first loose tooth, her first everything. It doesn't mean that I can go around with this woe is me attitude for a decision I MADE ON MY OWN.

Adoption is a hard and difficult choice. Do I regret it? Heck no. NEVER! Would I do it again? Umm, I'd like to think I wouldn't be stuck in the same position I was in 7 years ago when I found out I was pregnant. Would I change things about my adoption? I don't think so. Am I happy about the choice I made? I don't think happy is the word to describe how I feel about giving my opportunity to live a life I wouldn't have otherwise been able to provide, for her and for my son.

Hope, as well as C, have things that they probably would have been able to go without had I chosen to parent both. It was what was best for them, although I know it will be a difficult road ahead as they get older and have more questions and probably some resentments due to my choices. Am I prepared for that? Probably not, but how can one really prepare for the questions kids ask? I guess we will take it all as it comes in the future.

So why the blog post?

A few weeks ago, I had written about a support group I had joined on good ol' Facebook. At first, this support group was amazing. I read so many different stories about how so many women got to be birthmothers as well. All the women in that group had a different story leading to the same ending: pain, sadness, and the bittersweet thought of knowing that we were making the choice to give our babies a better life. We all deal with the pain and emotion that comes with grieving the loss of our babies that we technically didn't really "lose". We deal with the sadness of not being able to celebrate important milestones with "our children". It was almost like we were sisters, brought together by such a sad, almost unspoken, tragedy in our lives.

As time went on, however, I realized that I am very different from most other birthmothers. A lot of the girls on there seemed to be playing the part of the victim. Time and time again, I would read stories badmouthing adoptive parents. Stories of how terrible the a-parents were to these birthmothers, one set of parents having a case against the bmom for harassment. I read stories about these women who continue to cry over, and over, and over about their choice of adoption, and it almost disgusted me. The place for support was just somewhere to rant and rave about all the negative crap. Why not be happy about the good things.

I decided I no longer wanted to be a part of this group. I am in such a good place in my life, I didn't want to get sucked up in such a negative, angry energy. But for some reason, just like staring at a bad car accident, I continue to check back with the group from time to time to see all the train wreck headcases that continue to post. I am in awe by how terrible these "women" make being a birthmom look.

I get it, we all have made mistakes in our lives. In the case of a birthmother, giving birth is proof of such mistakes - lack of protection and better judgement, to say the least. Granted, there are some who didn't have a choice, who have been raped or assaulted, and to those women I give the ULTIMATE RESPECT to. But to the other women, being a birthmother doesn't necessarily earn you an award for runner up to sainthood like Mother Theresa. No one owes you anything for placing your baby, and I'm sorry, but you don't get my sympathy vote when you let it happen over and over again.

Let me take a step back to paint a picture as to what I mean. I was a single mother before I became a birthmother. I made the choice I NEEDED to make to fix my mistakes. Yes, as much as I love my children, it was a MISTAKE to get pregnant at that point in my life - BOTH TIMES. After having to go through the pain of placing Hope, there was no way in hell I would put myself through such an emotional roller coaster again. I have done all I can to ensure that I stay protected and don't have another "accident" as I did before. Granted, I am in a WAY better place in my life than where I was 6 years ago, but there's no way I am going to get pregnant until I am really ready. I wish I could say the same for some of the other birthmoms I have come across. Abortions, second sometimes third adoptions - when is enough, enough? When will women learn their lesson and stay protected? Is it that hard to purchase condoms or birth control in a country such as ours that offers birth control at Planned Parenthood for free to low cost? Adoption is AMAZING, but so is safe and protected sex.

So many people are talking about National Adoption Awareness Month, which is completely amazing that it is nationally recognized (although it seems more to be for the other two parts of the triad than the birthmother part). It is so great for there to be more awareness and education about adoption, BUT when will there be a National Safe Sex Awareness Month? When will people learn that while sex is so much fun, it isn't that much fun if you're not prepared and protected for it? When will they learn that adoption and abortion aren't forms of birth control? Why are people so afraid to talk about these things, especially in the birthmother world?!

I guess it's time to get off my soapbox, and honestly, I really am sorry if I've offended anyone by this post. I just really needed to explain how I feel. I don't portray myself as a victim. I made the choices I made to get me to where I am today. I feel like I deserve the pain and heartache I feel on her birthdays and near Mother's Day. It's a reminder of a situation I don't ever want to be in and deal with again, and it keeps me focused on making the proper choices so that it doesn't happen. I just wish other women would follow suit and keep from making the same mistakes over and over again....