Fellow blogger Jan in a previous post spoke of siblings separated by adoption and keeping them in contact. Having experienced this as an adoptive mother, I wanted to share what we currently do.

My husband and I, with no small amount of work, have helped our three children maintain contact with birth siblings. It just feels like the right thing to do, but that does not always make it easy. Things have changed as the years pass and new children come along. Each family situation is unique and the contact has had an unpredictable rhythm.

My oldest daughter Danika has three older siblings who were adopted by her birth grandparents. For the first few years, when all the children were small, we saw them quite a bit. Usually we got together for holidays, birthdays and summer events. They live just 20 minutes away so it seemed easy and we planned for it to continue this way. As the time passed, we added two other children to our own family and became busy building relationships with their birth families. Our daughter’s birth siblings grew into teenagers with their own very busy lives. The oldest A has recently become a parent herself. Our Danika is now an aunt to an adorable little girl D who looks amazingly similar to her at that age! Danika was so excited about the new little niece, for me though it has been a reminder of how fast her own childhood is flying by.

Thing is we seldom see her birth siblings all together for visits in our home anymore. They are quickly growing up too. We make more calls. We chat when we run into each other at the store or a town function. We take bits and pieces where we can. I mourn the times when we were closer and had longer more sociable visits. I understand that life changes and some adjustments are not always what we would desire. I would have liked to have remained as close at this stage, but drifting has occured over the years. I hope for our oldest daughter we have at least laid the ground work that she can build on as she becomes a young adult.

Continued in part Two

Photo-Aunt Danika and baby D