I was adopted as well. (Wow, there seems to be an unusually high percentage of us on this board!)

I was adopted when I was just several days old. Like some of you I was given up by my birth mother because of her life circumstances. She couldn't keep me. (I found out years later- when I was about thirty- that I have a brother and sister in Seattle by her. But that's another story for another day.)

My adoptive parents starting talking with me about my adoption when they thought I'd be old enough to grasp the idea. I was about seven. They were both very troubled people in many ways and both have since died but they handled the adoption news very well. I never felt any different from my friends whose parents were related by blood. And of course as I grew older I began to meet other kids who were adopted as well.

I have never felt the need or desire to  try and find my birth mother. Whatever choices she made so many years ago were the ones she had to make then. So many years have passed now that I wonder if she is even still living. I wouldn't re-open those days of her life even if I had the opportunity.

The only time I really wondered about my genetic heritage was when my daughter was born. It never bothered me that I didn't know mine but I realized that half my daughter's background would forever be a mystery to her. She really doesn't seem to mind though.

If anything, these details of my life have given me more of an existential, searching viewpoint. Our identities- who we think we are and who others think we are- seem somehow more malleable, more changeable and more improvable. Don't know if that makes any sense but there it is.

Ed