It finally feels like fall here at last in my neck of the woods! I can break out my boots finally! I took a break this month and headed out of town where I re-charged my batteries in the Great Smokey Mountains. It was a nice break, but unfortunately I caught walking pneumonia and brought it home with me.

Although I took a little break, it was still a busy month here in the blogs. I started the month of October out with a post about a lesson I have learned from my son! Charlie has taught me that I shouldn’t be afraid to be open about adoption because he’s not!

When Charlie recently began asking me questions about his adoption, I realized that I am totally unprepared for his questions and that prompted the post entitled Unprepared for Questions. I went on to to share a few tips for answering those tough questions.

In the post, You’re Not What I Expected, I discussed how someone who knew I was a birthmom before they actually met me in person, recently told me that I wasn’t what they were expecting. That post led to short series of posts on comments including how to respond to negative comments, as well as establishing boundaries and positive comments. I also posted about how the general everyday conversations can be hard for some birthmothers.

I discussed how I have been struggling with depression lately, yet the depression seems to have listed as a result of forcing myself to work on my crafts a little bit each day. Apparently, I find crafting very therapeutic. Speaking of crafting, my crafting post for the month of October was how to make your own fabric covered photo album. Did you make one yet?

I talked about the importance of my friendship with Charlie’s adoptive mother, A. and I also shared some ways we had bonded over the years.

And in the Love Thursday category for this month I shared what I think has become my favorite Love Thursday post that I have ever written in this blog entitled Love Letters. I also wrote about my field trip with Charlie to the apple orchard and about how my babies aren’t babies anymore!

What’s coming up in November?

Well November is National Blog Posting (also known as NaBloPoMo) month in which many bloggers attempt to post one blog post per a day. I will be attempting that here in the open adoption blog. Jenna turned me on to NaBloPoMo last year and she came up with the idea of posting about what we were thankful for. Myself and several other bloggers jumped on board and wrote about what we were thankful for, but this year I will be writing daily about the positives and negatives of open adoption. One day, I will write a positive post and the next day I will write a negative. Sometimes they may be the same exact subject where I am just looking at both sides of the coin, while other times they may have no correlation.

Also, starting in November, I will be sharing one “Crafting with Coley” post a week in preparations for Christmas. I will be showing you simple Christmas ornaments and gift ideas you can make for the other members of your open adoption.

So, November will be a busy month – hang on and enjoy the ride! As always, if you have any comments or suggestions for posts and topics, please leave them in the comments section below or email them to me directly at coleys@adoptionblogs.com.

Photo credit: Coley S.