NATURE AND NURTURE

My daughters like to cook - when they have the time. I think their interest and love of cooking was learned but their individual taste for foods is probably influenced by their biological make-up. Each of us has dishes we love, will tolerate and wouldn't even taste.

We all like down time, to catch up on sleep, regroup, pamper ourselves and spend time with nature or our many pets.

My girls LOVE animals. As a family, we have a virtual zoo that includes dogs and cats, a horse, a rabbit, a turtle and a bearded dragon. One daughter, whom we refer to as "the animal whisperer" works in an animal rescue. She has an amazing way with anything on four  legs. The other daughter has surrounded herself with rescued cats and a dog.

As a family, we always took home the school pets at vacation time. We provided vacation sanctuary to frogs, turtles, guinea pigs and more. All of our pets were rescued or re-homed, including the guinea pigs and four  dogs. I, myself, grew up in a home with a cat and a dog. We also provided care for classroom pets - the baby chicks, the guinea pigs, and the mice. It’s no wonder, I passed this trait along to my girls and they have continued to provide homes for animals too.

Like my own mother and sister, we text, talk or email daily. My girls continue this tradition, not unique to our family, but because they were raised that way. Would they do this if raised by their birth parents? We will never know.

As my daughters grew up, sometimes we wondered aloud if and how their life would have been different if they were raised by their birth families. While many children fantasize about a different life, for adopted children this is a reality. With information we had or obtained over the years - we realized some of the ways their lives could have been different. Without them, mine would have been, too.

Kathy Ann Brodsky, LCSW is a New York and New Jersey licensed social worker, adoptive mom and advocate for ethical adoption practice. Through her private practice and agency affiliations, she has prepared thousands of adoption homestudies, counseled adoptive parents, parents-to-be and adopted persons, as well as trained professionals to work with adoptive families. She was Director of the Ametz Adoption Program of JCCA, a member of the Advisory Board for POV’s Adoption Series, currently a member of the Adoption Advisory Board of Path2Parenthood and active in the Adoptive Parents Committee in New York. Her blogs and written contributions can be seen at her BLOG and as Head Writer for ADOPTION.NET  She was named an “Angel in Adoption” by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption in 2001. You can reach her directly at EMAIL.