NEW BEGINNINGS

Exactly a week ago today, I lost my job...the job that I have been working at for over 3 years now...the job that was the first one in my field of study that I got right before graduation...the job that I started as a college intern at. It's so strange to just wake up & go about my day & it just doesn't include going to work anymore. To be there one day, working as usual & then to just never go back after that day. I'm still feeling a little discombobulated...I'm not entirely sure that it's really sunk in yet. I still get the urge to set my alarm clock or to put gas in my car as if I'm going to be needing either for work in the morning.

I can't honestly say that I'm exactly "sad" about this change though. I've been on the job-search for almost a year now...just haven't really put 100% effort into it I guess. I revamped my resume, made sure to get out to lots of clients' homes to take pictures of my design work for my portfolio, & developed a mile-long list of places I'd love to apply for a new job at. But I don't think I'm quite ready to jump into it with both feet just yet. I kind of like being home, being a housewife, being free to accept plans at any time & do whatever my mood suggests. I think I'm going to take more time off before I really venture out into the workforce again.

In the meantime, I plan to spend lots of quality time with my husband, my parents, my brothers, my baby nephew, my in-laws & my friends. I plan to live in the moment & go almost anywhere that I'm invited to go, do as much as I possibly can do on a daily basis & just really let myself enjoy life before I get dragged back into the monotonous routine of everyday work life. Maybe after all of this, then I will be ready for new beginnings. Wish me luck! ( :

WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING

Yes, this is yet another post about "Adoption Voices", the adoption website that I've been participating in since it launced a few weeks ago. They held a contest to see who had the most accepted "friend requests"...kind of like how you can add friends on Facebook & Myspace. I won! I worked very hard to try to get to know as many new people on the site as I could...I've been so inspired by all of the interesting stories of love & hope & even heartbreak, regarding adoption that I haven't been able to tear myself away from the site!

My husband is getting a little worried, referring to adoptionvoices.com as my new obsession...I think he may just feel a little left out since he obviously realizes that I'm sharing my story with all of these people on there. I have shared it with him too, countless times, but I think because I so rarely bring it up he is feeling like he wishes when I did I would choose to confide in him instead. But he's been very supportive & understanding, I think he's happy that I've found a sort of "outlet" for my emotions related to my adoption story.

It has been somewhat of an "outlet" for me...I experienced so many negative feelings while I was a pregnant teen & then after I placed my daughter, it was so taboo to even talk about it around my friends & family. So most of my feelings were burried & kept secret for all this time & I finally feel like I have someplace safe to go where my situation is not only accepted, but understood. It's a very empowering feeling & it makes me just want to share my story with everyone I see! I'm getting better at it, I'm not used to openly discussing what I went through & it's hard because it brings back the reality that I haven't received any letters or pictures from her adoptive family since her first birthday 7 years ago. That hurts. But I'm getting used to letting the pain out instead of holding it in.

Anyway, so I won $100 for having the most "friends" on the website, & I felt very honored, but nothing can compare to how it feels to be able to release all of these pent-up feelings I have been holding in for all these years & to be able to share with people who can empathize with me instead of sympathize for me! That has been worth so much more than $100 ever could be!

FROM STEFANIE WITH LOVE

As you've read in my last post, I am now participating in a brand-new website called "Adoption Voices". This site is for anyone & everyone whose lives have been touched by adoption in some way. Most of you know my adoption story, for those of you who don't, I believe I have a post on my blog about it somewhere, or you can read through it on my Adoption Voices profile too ( :

Through this site, I have met so many beautiful women who have been courageous enough to share their incredible stories with all of us. Some of them were adopted as children, some of them have adopted both internationally & nationally, some have placed babies for adoption. All of them have wonderful stories & powerful things to say about them, as well as encouraging words to say about their peers' stories. I have found the site to be uplifting & supportive. It has become a safe-haven for me where I can openly talk about adoption without having anyone feel sorry for me or pity me for my circumstances. It's been very empowering to share my story with these wonderful women & it gives me the strength & motivation to want to be more open with everyone I meet about my personal experience.

One of the beautiful women I had the pleasure of meeting is Stefanie. She is a very brave & optimistic soul who is planning to place her unborn baby for adoption. She reminds me of myself in some ways, yet she seems much more wise & thoughtful than I was at that point in my life. She is very open & warm, sharing about her experience in such a positive way that you can't help but smile ( : She's been very inspirational to me & I'm sure to everyone around her too. I know that God will bless her choice, her baby, & the rest of her life...the beginning is only yet to come!

Thank you Stefanie for your story & for the award, but I think you deserve it most for your honest & open, lovely blog! ( :

ADOPTION VOICES

I was recently invited to participate in the launch of a new adoption-awareness & support website called "adoptionvoices.com", through a group I joined on Facebook & then forgot about! When I first signed up for Facebook way back when, I joined a group about adoption & maybe entered one or two comments on it from time to time. Well, I eventually forgot I was even part of it. Then the other day I recieved a message inviting me to take a look at this new website & I was totally blown away when I did!

I haven't shared my adoption story with many people. It was something that happened 8 years ago now, which most of the time feels like an entire lifetime ago! It was also somewhat of a "secret". Most of my extended family has no idea I was ever even pregnant, which is shocking considering I spent 9 full months living in an out-of-state maternity home. But I was in high school at the time & most of my friends were just too young to be able to relate to the situation I was in. I lost alot of friends because of that...they simply didn't know what to say to me & I didn't have the self-esteem to handle it. I lived under a cloud of guilt & shame, & still do to an extent, about the whole situation. That makes it very difficult for me to open up & share about it.

This website has changed all of that for me...I can participate in discussions, meet other people who CAN relate to what I went through & offer words of support & encouragement. I think it has also been easier for me to share my story with strangers who I've never met before then explaining to my aunt & cousins, "oh yeah, remember 8 years ago when I was 16 in the 10th grade? Well let me tell you a story..."! I clam up when it comes to sharing face-to-face, but being able to blog about my experience & hear back from people who understand has given me such a surge of confidence. I've always intended to become an "adoption advocate" in some way & I've felt that God allowed me to go through what I did in order for me to be able to share my experience with other people & be able to spread adoption awareness. I truly believe the first step in learning how to branch out & share more openly with friends & family too & that is very exciting!

Please take a look & see what you think: http://adoptionvoices.com/profile/DanielleGinther

MY NAME IS RED

Okay, so this is a follow-up to my last post "Summer Book Club". We finally, FINALLY finished the nearly 1,000-page book by Ken Follett "The Pillars of the Earth" & had our final discussion about it last night. All of us in the book club unanimously agreed that the ending left us very disappointed. The whole focus of our book club is to share about the parts we enjoyed & discuss the events that occur throughout the books we read & also to make predictions for what we think will happen further into our reading. Well sadly, most of our predictions were concerning characters we assumed were going to become more of something further along & 9 times out of 10, this did not happen. It seemed that there were SO many characters & hardly any of them actually fully developed throughout the book. By the end, we were so frustrated with the drawn-out storyline that we all admitted had we not been participating in this book club, we would've put the book down many pages ago!

BUT...moving on, we drew out of a hat the title of the next book we are going to read: "My Name Is Red". It's a Nobel Prize Winning tale of a miniaturist (clay artist) in 16th century Istanbul who disappears shortly after being commissioned by the Sultan to produce figurative art illuminating the European style, which is a dangerous proposition that defies the laws of Islam. It is "part fantasy & part philosophical puzzle that journeys into the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, & power". And it is written from the perspectives of various people, animals & inanimate objects such as: Esther, a coin, a dog, & the color red.

We are all very excited to see how this book goes & hoping that it makes for much better discussion & has a much better ending than the last one!

SUMMER BOOK CLUB

My brother-in-law had the ingenious idea to start up a summer book club over the next few months to keep us busy...& enlightened. So far we only have 3 members, myself, my brother-in-law & his girlfriend, but we are expecting to add a few more next month after we finish our first book. We weren't quite sure how to go about starting things off, so we all took a vote & picked a book that we wanted to read. We had our first meeting last night & didn't really know what to do! We mostly talked about what we thought we should do for future meetings, then loosely discussed the book & the main characters & our predictions.

The book we all decided on is Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth". It's almost 1,000 pages & the excerpt on the inside cover doesn't give a very exciting description, which is why it's been sitting on my bookshelf for 5 months since I receieved it as a Christmas gift. I was a little bit intimidated by the number of pages & by the dry-sounding content, it's technically a "historical novel" & history is NOT one of my major interests! It's a story about a monk & his brother who is a priest, set in 12th century England during The Anarchy & the death of King Henry I on the sinking of the White Ship; when society, politics, & religion were all in a time of upheaval resulting from King Stephen's reign. However dull all of that may sound, the characters are suprisingly likeable & well developed, the plot is very interesting & unpredictable. We are only 110 pages in, but the book reads so much faster than I expected & I find myself having a hard time putting it down!

We are reading 235 pages for next week, to the end of Part I, & will probably have much more to talk about! I'll keep you posted on how the book goes, & if anyone has any suggestions on how to run a book club, please don't hesitate to comment! Happy reading!

THE SHELF LIFE

I just have to take a couple minutes to brag about my little (well younger, maybe not so little anymore!) brother & his amazing band, The Shelf Life. They have 3 members...my brother is the lead singer & acoustic guitar player & the other guys play the banjo & mandolin & do some backup vocals. Anyway, they've been playing as a band for a while now & even though they are struggling college students & starving artists at times, they always put their music first & make sure they can scrape together the money to keep their instruments & their band going. They've been doing incredibly well with marketing themselves & getting their music heard all around Pittsburgh. Not only have they played many of the local clubs & watering holes throughout the city here, but they've even gotten air time on the radio & now they actually have out-of-state venues scheduling to have them perform! In fact they just won "Battle of the Bands" last night at a local hotspot called the Beehive & the competition was broadcast live streaming online taking votes like it was American Idol! It was really great to watch & just see their hearts & souls come out in their music which is suprisingly soulful & has such meaningful lyrics for guys their age. While most of the newer music out there is very "pop" or "punk", they are more of a throwback to legends like Neil Young, Bob Dylan & David Bowie. They have a young, unique sound but really sound like old souls when they sing...it's such REAL music!

As a big sister, I couldn't be more proud of how my brother really stuck with this & followed his heart no matter what & really made his dreams come true. I'm so excited for him & his band & all that they are accomplishing! I hope you will all take a moment to listen to some of their best work: http://www.myspace.com/derekpdysart. I think it will make you proud too!