Reunions part 1

**Finding my birth mother has been an amazing experience. I wanted to keep record of all of it for myself and to share my happiness with my friends. There is much to share and, due to the mind boggling lenght of my last blog, I decided to split this up into a few parts. Hopefully it will help me keep my thoughts a bit more organized and will keep others from being overwhelmed with reading it.**

Today holds a special significance for me - aside from the fact that this is the day that I was born on. I'm pretty well sure anyone who is reading this blog knows that I am adopted. For those of you who didn't, you know now. 29 years ago I was given up for adoption. About 2 months ago I was reunited with the woman who gave birth to me. Here's the story...

My birth mother was in high school when she gave birth to me. Before I was taken into foster care, she had be christened with the name "Naomi". My parents like the name so much they kept it, calling me Kristin Naomi Burton. In many ways it was the only tangible thing of her I had. I spent my life knowing I was adopted. My adopted parents always talked about my adoption in a way that helped me understand how much of a blessing it truly was. When children at school would make fun of me, my parents taught me to see it as something different about me that made me incredibly special. Ever since I was a little girl I had wanted to meet my birth mother. I have had dreams throughout my life of meeting a faceless woman. In the dreams I had always known she is my birth mother but I wake up frustrated because I never see anything more than the outline of a figure and a voice that sounds very much like mine.

The only information I have on either of my birth parents is the packet given to me by the social worker. It is filled with physical descriptions and some information about their situation at the time but that has only been enough information to torment me with all that I don't know. There is so much more to a person than a short biography on a piece of paper. What does she look like? Do my hands look like hers? Do I smile or laugh like she does? Does she think of me as often as I think of her? Is she happy and healthy? The question that weighed heaviest on my mind was "who do I look like"? For some this wouldn't be a big deal. But I don't look much like my adoptive family. I'm hispanic and the rest of them are all German, English or Irish. At family reunions I stick out like a sore thumb. I felt that knowing who I looked like would give me some sort of connection to a bit of who I was, genetically speaking anyway.

I have lived an incredibly blessed life. My adopted parents, Curt and Kathy Burton, are the most giving and loving people I have ever known. They had both encouraged me throughout the years to find my birth mother. I had tried numerous times over the years. I had even driven to the high school I thought she went to in San Diego and spent hours looking through the year books. But I always came up short. After so many dead ends I felt pretty defeated and gave up for a time.