For those about to/already in sibling reunions?

I am in reunion with one half-sister. Apparently, my bio-mom also has 3 boys so I have 3 half-brothers that I haven't yet met because I am not yet in contact with my bio-mom.

It is going okay so far. It is a little awkward. We are just very different. We have very different personalities. Also, she is 16 and I am 26 which is not only a fairly large age gap, but those are two very different life stages, developmentally speaking. Also, I really feel like I need to live up to her expectations for how this is supposed to go and that is never a comfortable feeling. But she is sweet! And it is nice to know I have a little sister! I grew up with all brothers, so a sister is kind of a cool thing to me :-)

As for the 3 I have yet to meet, I am trying not to think about it too much. I have a lot going on right now with my life and the reunion with bio-dad, so for now, I am trying to not think about future reunion stuff until I get the current reunion stuff settled down a bit more :-) But it will be interesting! It is also hard for me to think ahead that much about it because other than the fact that they exist, I have no information about them. I don't know how old they are, where they live, anything. So it is hard to realistically predict anything when all I know is that they are somewhere out there and there are 3 of them. :-)

Good luck on your search!!

I am in reunion with my 2 sisters. The youngest moved to my state last summer to be close to me and to get away from a bad situation.

We had some conflict due to being raised differently. I had to ask her to find her own place after she sat in my front yard and smoked pot (I have young kids and while I don't care what she as an adult does, I don't want it around my kids)

She tried living on her own but got mixed up with a bad boyfriend and ended up going back to her home state. We still talk by phone and e mail.

My other sister has visited me twice, once for a week and once for a weekend. She had some drug problems a few years ago but has herself together now and is starting college in the fall. We talk on the phone once every couple of weeks.

I love both of my sisters. Sometimes I feel more like a mom to them. They are 14 and 16 years younger than I am and our mother didn't raise them either. Their father did and he was...well less than desireable as a parents but I guess at least he was there for them. They had no mother figure.

I will be meeting my brother in person for the first time in 12 days...We have been talking on the phone since late December.

He is 5 years younger than I am and has a family. We seem to connect on a different level than I do with my sisters. I think because we are older and have some perspective behind our situations.

I am so excited. This is my final reunion. I will have FINALLY put all the pieces of my family back together.

Just the other day, I talked to my first mom, both sistes and my brother. Then I realized it was the first time I had ever talked to every member of my family (biological) in the same day. We have yet to all be in the same room. Amazing what non-adopted people take for granted huh?

Good Luck, I hope you find her soon

I'm in reunion with 3 of my 4 half siblings.

It's basically non-existant with my one half-sister (21) because she's just in a very different life-stage and doesn't really have the time or energy (JMO) to dedicate to getting to know me. she's struggling to finish her HS degree, pay bills, etc. and has not put any effort into our relationship.

I am doing fantastically well with my other 2 half-sisters (ages 9 and 5). I adore them. They love hanging out with me. I am over 10 years older than them, but I love being with them and hanging out. I cannot wait to continue getting to know them...see them grow up and graduate from H.S. and have them as aunts for my kids.

Okay, I'm getting a bit sentimental.

I am still ambivalent about meeting my n-bro (he's the one related to the n-sis I'm not in contact with). I don't know why it feels awkward for me, but it does. We are reunited via myspace, though, so I guess that's a start? :-P

I reunited with my mother a few months ago, and have not yet met any siblings. There are five boys! They don't know about my existence...yet. I have seen pictures and found some of the family on Facebook. I really would like to meet them. At this point though I am happy to get to know my mother. I'm hoping that as time passes she will be more open to letting her kids know about me. I'm not going to rush it and I'm not going to go out and find them myself. I'm fine with letting her take the lead on this.

I have met my younger 3 half brothers and half sister (birth father's family) and my twin sister. I have not yet met my brith mother, but my search for her led me to finding my twin sister. We all communicated via e-mail and phone before we met face to face. When I did meet them, I made sure I had my own hotel room (I had to travel out of state for all the reunions) which gave me the personal security to know I had somewhere to go to cry or laugh or whatever I needed to do. It also alleviated that "What if we don't get along" worry. In the end, I am closest with my sisters. Maggie is younger than I am by 11 years, but boy was she thrilled to not be the only girl anymore. LOL Cynthia and I have 31 years of catching up to do. We are both having to work through our own feelings of anger and betrayal that we were seperated and lost the experience of growing up together, but in many ways that helps our relationship since we have eachother to talk to about it. It also answered some questions we both had about childhood experiences. One of our favorite ones is the time I was rushed to the hospital because everyone thought I had appendicitis, only to discover that there was no explanation for the pain I was in. That was the same day she had her appendix removed in an emergency surgery. LOL

The biggest thing I learned was to not expect and instant connection. I spent my time talking to my siblings and getting to know them as people. All of them except Maggie have their own lives and families, Maggie just got married a few weeks ago and she was so thrilled to have ALL of her siblings there for it. None of these relationships happened over night, we talked for months before we met face to face. There were rocky patches with most of them as we dealt with our emotions and learning to communicate with eachother. In many ways my half siblings were easier than my twin simply because my birth father never hid the fact that he had another child out there somewhere that he very much wanted to find. He didn't know we were twins either when our birth mother decided she was done and didn't want to get married and raise us with our father. I had thought I might find there were siblings, but I never imagined there might be a twin. I was simply much less prepared for it. All in all, it has been a wonderful experience, but not without it's drama. :-D Best of luck with your sister!

It's a bit awkward at times but we've been alright.

as much as my sister says she doesn't know English, she has been able to recall random words to help us along if we are faced with a dire situation.