Due to circumstances beyond my control 22 years ago, I gave my baby daughter up for adoption at birth.

It was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life. I never stopped wondering and as time went on and as she grew, my curiousity grew too.

Eventually, a year ago she made a contact with Social Welfare and I wrote a letter to her. She got cold feet and only a year later she collected the letter and pics.

To fill you in, I eventually married her father and we had a son 5 years later, so she has a full blood brother.

As soon as she read my letter she was ready to meet me. She wrote me the most beautiful letter and a couple of weeks later we met.

Wow!!! What an experience, she is wonderful!! I am proud of the way she has grown up, and despite having had a wonderfully stable home and loving parents, she is definitely a chip of the old block.

She is very involved with her brother and we see her often. He took the news very well and has accepted her into his heart. He is thoroughly enjoying his older sister.

I sometimes find it difficult to believe that this girl is my child and having met her I often regret not having shared her life. But fortunately we are both very stable strong people orientated people and we can relate together and assist each other with our new life. Yes it is a new life for both of us, she has a family, and I have mine completed.

I met her parents as well. This was a very overwhelming experience for me, as I had always held them in high esteem, as the most wonderful people on earth. That they could be so unselfish and take my child as theirs and give her everythingg she could ever want.

After meeting them I knew that she had had a great life, brought up with the same value systems as I devote my life to.

I would like to thank every adoptive parent out there. Thank you for giving these children the homes and love they deserve. Thank you for giving my special child the life you did. When pregnant and carrying her, I knew from early on that I was carrying a gift for a couple that could not have a child. I could not have chosen a better family for her myself.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

M