Because I am a 52 year old, retired (school teacher) mother of many adopted children I sometimes feel, possibly erroneously, as if I could blog on any number of subjects. When one has 39 children, the range of issues and events is widespread.

I’ve been a teenage mother and an older mother, an adoptive mother, a grandmother, a mother-in-law and I have one birth child. I’ve been a married mom and a single mom and, probably most of all, I’m so dadgum opinionated about everything, right or wrong, doesn’t matter to me, I just feel so strongly about absolutely everything.

I read this very interesting article from a woman, once powerful in Hollywood, now claims she can’t get arrested there so to speak, her kids have grown, and she’s mid-life searching at age 58 for what to do now.

An interesting precept, she writes about, “This was the beginning of a period I later came to call "the narrows," the rough passage to the next part of life. In the narrows, you're in the dark, stripped of what you thought was your identity, and must grapple with questions like: What do you really want to do with the time left? What will make you feel most alive? That your being here has mattered?”

And me, being a one note wonder, and seeing other women around me, in their fifties, friends of mine in much the same position, well I can’t help wondering aloud.

I shudder to think of the misadventures I might have participated in were it not for my children to hold me back and to give me a Great Purpose in life.

The need for either foster or adoptive moms is massive; mentors are needed in schools and in social service situations such as CASA workers for example. I think we all need to get outside of ourselves to find ourselves; the answers don’t seem to dwell within the confines of meeting our own needs.

Or simply help a foster or adoptive mom. I have a friend who’s taken nearly every single one of my school age children to the Georgia Aquarium, something that would be difficult, at best, for me to do since it is expensive and an hour and a half away from my house. Another friend of mine has in-laws that often seem to round up a great deal of food for us, and other women bring us clothes.

I wish I had more free time to help others, I believe I’d be a happier camper. I plan, when the kids are grown, to plant a row of food to give away, or to participate in Second Harvest.
Just as I believe busy kids are happy kids, not over-scheduled, but having just enough to keep them active, I think we older women need to stay busy as well. It behooves us to exercise, to participate in life, and to give back to society in order to be happy.

I’m sunny by nature anyway, but truly I’m all the happier for having found a huge need that needed filling, by providing a family for siblings groups, my children, and raising them with love and commitment. I’ve been the most blessed by it all, the happiest and the most satisfied with life.