Tag: happiness

Being pregnant while adopted, and how the colliding worlds bring peace

Being pregnant while adopted, and how the colliding worlds bring peace

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I have been on a slight hiatus from my blog – and this is due to finding out I was expecting a wonderful new addition to my little family. My husband and I are expecting our baby at the end of the year, and we simply can’t  wait! 

For the past 5 months I have been able to reflect and enjoy the remarkable world of being pregnant. Being pregnant is wonderful, terrifying, and amazing all at the same time. There are relaxing days where you forget that at the end of the journey, you will have to push a tiny human being out. While on other days, the realization of that is quite intense and often a nap is needed. 

I am so thankful for being pregnant, for being able to get pregnant, and for having a wonderful life partner and father to be in my life. It’s not everyday you find someone so great that you want to make a person with half their genes. 

I frequently think about how life has unfolded for the both of us. My husband and I were both adopted at young ages into wonderful families. It sometimes baffles me how we found one another. Our paths crossed at just the right times and places for us, and I often think about how the timing played such a key role for us to match.

Being pregnant as an adopted child is sometimes odd. 

I get to experience and feel everything my birth mother felt with me. First flutters, kicks, and hiccups. I remember the first time I saw my baby and listened to the heart beat. I remember feeling immense joy and fear all at the same time. It was then that I also realized I was experiencing something my birth mother had, and it was something I was not prepared for. On top of that, I was experiencing something for the first time with my wonderful husband who also got to experience something his birth father may have experienced. It felt like our life tracks were paused, and a new life was truly acknowledged, and life pressed play again. 

Growing up, understanding why my parents gave me up for adoption was something that took time. I LOVE the family I have today, and everyday I am so thankful for them. But there will forever be the unanswered questions about how I got to where I am today, and why. Throughout my life, there were of course ideas of what might have happened. For example, there was a one child law in China when I was born, so maybe I was their second. A lot of times Chinese families preferred sons, so maybe I was the daughter they were willing to pass up in hopes of a boy the next time. They could have simply not been ready for a baby, or maybe they wanted to ensure that I could have a better life than they could have provided at the time. There are a million reasons I may have ended up where I am today, and the answer to those questions will forever be my own personal cliffhanger. 

Understanding those around me is a huge part of who I am,  and putting myself in others’ shoes has always been something I’ve attempted to do to accept the actions of others. Now, being pregnant myself, I imagine that for my birth parents it took a great deal of selflessness and faith to let go of someone they created and nurtured. The thought of giving up the countless hours of rubbing my belly to connect and talking to the baby is unimaginable. Though, to be honest, I feel grateful that beyond anything else I was given the chance to live the life I am living today. 

People often ask me – why not do the 23 and me test and get some answers? 

I am usually puzzled by this, only because it won’t answer any of the questions I want the answers to. My genetics won’t tell me why I was given up for adoption, it won’t tell me what my parents were like, and it won’t tell me how my life could have been different. It would tell me things that most people take for granted knowing – medical family history and family tree. Going to the doctors has always been the same routine for me. Whenever there is a family history section, I write in big letters – adopted/unknown. It’s so normal for me that sometimes I forget it’s not the norm. 

I am also finding I am more and more content with knowing what I know. My life really wouldn’t change much if I knew the answers now. I would still be the person I am today. I might have more to write on medical papers, but that’s it, and I am okay with it. 

Having unknowns is not all bad either. Our child’s family history begins with my husband and I. We get to write the story of us and our family. At the end of the day, it’s exciting to begin this amazing chapter of our lives.

Social Media, are you listening?

Social Media, are you listening?

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Social media is both a dream and a nightmare. I get to connect with people all over the world, at different parts of their lives, and I get to share mine with them. I love the fact that I am free to connect with people I haven’t spoken to or seen in 5+ years, but at the same time, I really hate it. 

If you really think about it, it’s a blessing and curse to know that someone you went to school with has their dream life. You root for them, you’re happy for them, it even proves it’s possible, but it also makes you review your life, and do the dreaded comparison. You immediately feel that you are way behind in life or might have messed up along the way somehow.  The question: Why aren’t I living my dream life yet? sashays across your train of thought, and it’s a huge bummer!  

Do you know the song “High School Never Ends”,  by Bowling for Soup? I remember hearing it for the first time on my sister’s iPod shuffle while at the airport on our February break trip – and I thought – this song has got to be wrong. I was beginning high school and all the academic stress, student body hierarchy, and all around competition was in full swing. I remember thinking, there’s no way the highschool mentality continues into adulthood! I felt confident that high school was gonna be great, maybe even just like the movies. But it wasn’t.

While movies show all the cliques in high school, most of them generally focus on the person that a lot of us strive to be. The popular/mysterious, beautiful, and smart girls or guys – who always get the guy or girl they want in the end. They always seem to manage to learn some grand lesson at the end of the movie too – wouldn’t that be nice? Most of the time, this isn’t the case, and we go through bouts of depression, anxiety, bullying, eating disorders, and years later we might learn something from it. Movies don’t show all that – just like social media doesn’t show all of it. Everyone shows the highlights, the things we hope others will see and think about us, even if it’s not entirely our reality. 

While all these platforms have the power to connect us all, they also have the power to destroy us. Destroy our feelings of accomplishment, happiness, and sometimes even love. I have started an unwind process, and I detach from platforms for certain periods of the day. It has helped me be present and proud of my life, undocumented and in real time. 

Has anyone else found this to be true and/or do this too? Let me know if the comments below! 

Game or real life, the humorous life of a gamers wife

Game or real life, the humorous life of a gamers wife

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 0 Leave a Comment


My husband is a gamer, and I have to tell you, it’s sometimes really impressive. His attention span for these games and all the action items are insane and never ending. I have tried to play video games with him (Legos), but there must be some disconnect for me, because I am the worst with my visual and remote control reaction times. I once tried to play a game where I drove a car, and I crashed a lot, it was really hard! During this fail, I looked over at my husband, and he’d already found the special hidden item and was onto the next level. Umm, how did that even happen?

He mostly plays FPS (first person shooter), RPG (role playing game), and puzzle/ strategy games. And sometimes, I’ll try and follow and watch for a small amount of time. Some of the games even include storylines that I can follow for a bit, but most of the time I am at a loss. I can’t seem to follow the map layouts or even the small icons in all the corners of the screen, they are just too darn small! In fact, a lot of times the music tracks to his games became my study soundtracks or lullabies. This randomly developed since most of the time he played his games late at night. We even tested it out, if I can’t fall asleep, we will turn on a soundtrack or he will tell me his future game play strategy and I am out like a light! 

Throughout the years, I have semi watched him beat a bunch of games, like Doom, Wolfenstein, Fallout 4, Red Dead Redemption II, GTA V, and most recently Cyberpunk 2077(to name a few). When I say he beat these games, I mean that he successfully finished them, watched all the credits to the end, and then RESTARTED them from the very beginning. He does this to see where he might have missed anything during game play. Talk about dedication and patience! He easily spots things on the screen that I don’t even notice, or register as holding any importance whatsoever. Gaming is intense, and as crazy as it may sound, it’s a skill. 

Let me be clear though, this kind of eagle eye attention is reserved for the games. In real life, he can’t find simple things in the house or he doesn’t remember a conversation we had. I grumble and mumble when this happens, but it’s pretty entertaining.  Many times we are sitting down for a meal or cooking in the kitchen and he will start talking about a car, a person, or a strategy, and I will have to say “wait, is this game or real life?”. These little instances never fail to make us chuckle.  I love that even though I don’t have much interest in that part of his world, he manages to include me by sharing little stories about it and asking my advice. Finding the humor in small, everyday things is our strong suit, and to tell you the truth, it’s one of my favorites.