Ever changing, ever learning

The first few years of my daughters life was a learning curve. I had spent so many years working I had few friends with children and certainly none in similar situations. The health centre ran information sessions for new mums and they put me into one of those groups. While I had hopes of it providing me with some friendships I held no illusions that it may well not happen. My daughter was the only girl and the only adoptee. Fortunately another mum had an older child through adoption and one of the mums was my age so I wasn't quite the "shag on a rock" I had feared. After the information sessions finished we chose to try getting together regularly. We're fortunate enough to still all be friends and catch up a few times a year after 12 years. One had more
children, we had a couple of people join in after we started meeting outside of the health centre but we are friends still. I have no family closer than 550kms distance and friends are important, they're my family :) All my mum's group friends (which is referred to as the Fuzzies now) are great. I'd be lost without them. Just needed one of them to have a child when my son came along lol

Anyway, we slowly found a rhythm to life and the relationships with my daughter's birth families slowly bubbled along. We met up in the Botanic gardens whenever we went to Melbourne. In December 1999 we met the first of her birth aunts. We spent a fabulous day at the zoo with her and my daughter's birth parents. They had made an agreement that if one wanted to see my daughter then both would go, as support for each other. It was amazingly easy to meet and have a lovely day. I worried that we would run into someone they knew and they would have to explain but we managed to get through the day with no-one any of us knew being spotted. Having met one of J's birth aunts, the door was wide open for meeting more of her birth relatives. We did that slowly over a few visits to Melbourne. I have wonderful photos of my daughter meeting her birth grandparents and other relatives. Over the years she has met most of them as well as any number of their friends.

It's not always straight forward but it's all been surprisingly easy to meet these people. There's been little awkwardness although I do recall when J met her Birthfathers brother she was wary of him. We couldn't understand what the issue was, he was a funny, friendly, cheerful young man but she seemed to dislike him. After a few gentle questions I got the answer of "I'm the only one who can have curly hair". J got over this and became firm friends with her uncle. One of my favourite memories of J and her Uncle was when we were visiting J's birth father's family and went to her Uncle's cafe. They danced in the middle of the cafe, he twirled her and she was smiling & giggling. A staff member asked how J & her Uncle knew each other and my fabulous 5yr old daughter said "He's one of my special friends and that's all I can say right now". At that time it was not widely known that J was biologically related to her Birth father & his family. I hadn't coached her on what to say although we had discussed that it was not public knowledge. If J hadn't already wrapped her Uncle around her little finger she certainly did at that moment.