Whatever your custom for celebrating the new year, I bet we have a few things in common. With the start of a fresh year I seem to feel better able to let go of the previous year struggles and look forward to a new lease on life.

Hello to everyone. My name is Deb. This new year’s day is the start of my new adventure as a blogger here. I am quite happy about it, downright excited! To start things off right I’ll share a bit about myself.

My husband Jim and I have been married since 1989 and I am an adoptive mom of three children, Danika(age 10), Cierra (age 4), and Carson (age 3). All their adoptions were domestic, newborn, independent and are open. Contact varies for each child. Our family is also a transracial/cultural one. Our son is Kenyan (Africa) in heritage, born in the U.S. to birth parents from Nairobi, Kenya. Open adoption has had many challenges for us. I am hopeful that some of what our family has been through, can be shared to help others who might be in a similar situation (or afraid to begin one).

Growing up I was familiar with adoption. My two youngest brothers, now grown, were adopted as toddlers and we had an amazingly open adoption with their birthmother’s family. I think that early experience has helped me be at ease with being open for my own children.

Before my husband and I went on to adopt, I became a birth family member myself. My middle brother has four children placed in two closed adoptions. It was a very difficult time for our family. I think it was especially hard for me because I wanted to adopt my nieces and nephews but was unable to. At that time my husband and I were just beginning our journey through infertility treatment and the loss to our family through adoption seemed to compound that grief. I feel that what the extended family of birthparents go through is sadly seldom acknowledged.

With each of these life events I found myself looking beyond my immediate comfort zone to find information about adoption and the specific things that were happening to me. I would say reading and researching adoption has become a major interest. I am always looking for ways to learn and help my children, friends and family to do the same. In 1999 I also began coming to Adoption.com to chat with others. I made many friends here among them Coley, who I am happy to be able to co-blog with now. If I appear after some time to be any good at this writing gig, and I hope that I am, I would like to begin work on a children’s adoption-related book. Perhaps I can put together something that I would have liked to see for my children in a book and it can in turn be helpful to other families.

Wow. You know quite a bit about me now! Don’t run! Hang in here with me. I think we will find some things in common. I am hoping this will be a very interesting year for us all.

A new year for a lot of us means renewed HOPE.

My new year’s wish for all of you is that you might find some bits of hope here in the coming year, whatever your journey through adoption might be.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, from a Happy New Blogger!

Deb