[RavenSong]

Jackie, I think never being able to know my son as a child...all that lost time...is the hardest part for me in reunion. I know I've written before about how I found myself grieving for my "little boy" after I had reunited with my grown-up son. It's still a bitter-sweet feeling that I wrestle with.

I have a photo album of his childhood pictures, spanning his first eighteen years. I often go for months without looking at it...it's just too painful sometimes. I want to reach through those photographs and touch the child I lost to adoption. Some nights, I dream of my son as a baby, a toddler, a young boy. In my dreams, I'm always looking for him ~ he's lost and I can't find him. I have a hard time sleeping some nights.