Both my foster parents and birth parents are dead now.
I have a foster brother (mentioned earlier somewhere) who has struggled his entire life with chemical dependency and a variety of mental health issues. He was functioning at a pretty high level until he got involved in drugs, at which point his life became pretty much a complete mess. I hadn't seen or heard from him in years until recently when he turned up again living about 10 miles from where we grew up. He's able to live independently with some help from social services. We keep in touch, but he's always marching to the beat of a different drum, and it's often difficult to get in sync. I hope we can continue to stay in touch, but he has a tendency to go off to wherever his dreams guide him, and then can't be found for months or years at a time. Maybe this home will stick - only God knows.
My foster mom had some extended family, but neither they nor I ever made any real effort to keep in touch. My foster dad's only family was a brother that died before he did.
My birth siblings, however, are a different story entirely. There are 10 of us (the nine mentioned earlier plus a half sister that lived with my mom until she died), and most of us see each other quite often. All things considered, we've all done pretty well. The girls in particular had it much worse than I did as kids. The two oldest were placed in a home that, while perhaps not abusive, was certainly not welcoming. The other two fared quite a bit worse. My brothers and I all got lucky and went to pretty good homes. Although we've had our problems (lots of failed marriages in particular), we've mostly built pretty successful lives. Between the 10 of us, we've had 26 kids (bio, adopted, and step). Quite of few of the kids are married and there are grandchildren popping up all over the place. When my wife and I first started to consider adoption, we both agreed that my family would be a great help, because we know they would accept any new kids into the fold without a second thought, regardless of race and regardless of any problems they might bring along. We've really seen just about everything.
Sometimes I think I should write a book about our experiences, but I think the whole story is just too strange to be believed.
