My Story.

Today at work I had the opportunity to take 10 minutes out of our staff meeting and talk a little bit about who I am and why I am the way I am.  Too many ams.  I told Haley about a week ago that I was doing this and she was like "oh how are you going to do that?" I said I'd probably talk about adoption because I thought that'd be easier than talking about how music defines me, or why I love student affairs, or about my college roommate dying, or about how I'm divorced.  Adoption is easier, I talk about it all the time.  She didn't think I could keep it under 10 minutes, but I think I did okay.  But it was harder than I thought.

Being adopted isn't something that happened to me.  It's just who I am.  I've never blamed any of my problems on being adopted and I've always acknowledged how lucky I am that I get to be adopted and get to have a ton of people in my life who love me and I get to love right back.

So I went into it just creating a simple powerpoint of pictures of everyone.  Mama, dad, Deirdre, Bridget and Hail.  My stepbrothers and stepsister were in there, as well as Willy, Grace and Jonah.  Not wanting to get too much into Haley story I did include a picture of her Zack and Scott and briefly introduced them.

But I didn't really think about the presentation of it too much before hand because I talk about adoption all the time, it's a normal part of conversations to me.  "Oh my birthfamily this, my birthmom does this and mom does this" It's just normal for me so I was very shocked when explaining my family or my story I got a little teary eyed about it.

I can't really remember everything I said, but I hope I got across how lucky I feel that I'm adopted and how important it is in defining me, and if I didn't get that across then hopefully I at least got across that love and family are the most important things in my world.  That the more people in your life that you can love and that love you back the better.