As 2015 comes to a close, I am reminded of how blessed I am.  From a family who loves me and friends who would do anything for me to just being alive. This, however, hasn’t always been the case. Six years ago, I didn’t look at my life as a gift.  I looked at it as a source of humiliation and shame–all due to the circumstances surrounding my birth.

When my birthmother pulled out a police report and told me that I was conceived through rape, I was devastated. This was not what I was told while growing up as an adopted child of loving parents.  From the very first moment that my parents told me I was adopted, I was reassured that my birth parents were young and in love, but were still in school and couldn’t care for a baby, thus the decision to put me up for adoption.  I was a loved and wanted child of two people who loved each other.  That is what I have believed for 37 years. How could I have spent the last 37 years of my life living a lie?  So many questions raced through my mind, but answers were in short supply.