Hi Jim,  I wanted to share my story to illustrate that fact that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  Here is a comparison of the two sides.   In 1953, my father (a Caucasian WWII veteran),  was living in Michigan at the age of about 30.  He was having intimate relationships with several women and one of them, Julie, got pregnant.  At the time, legal abortion was not an option, so Julie carried the child to term and when the child was born, Julie had decided to give the baby to a loving family and tell my father that the child (a girl) was stillborn. There was no reason for my father to stay around and I’m assuming, was relieved of his obligation and carried on with his life.  Sometime after that he got another women pregnant (with a boy) and they married.  This marriage proved to be a horrible situation and they divorced within a couple of years.  The boy from this brief marriage suffered.  He was used as a pawn and beaten by his (our) father and yelled at and eventually our father got so fed up with being a father and life in Michigan that he left the state and left his son behind and moved to California where he (age 40) met and impregnated my mother (age 18).  The first baby born from my mother was my brother.  My father didn’t marry my 18 year old mother  until after I was born 1 1/2 years later.  My dad by then was 42 and my mother was 20.  They had a bad relationship for about 9 years and then my mother divorced my dad.   My mother had a drinking problem and my dad would beat her to deter her from drinking the next time.  The beatings didn’t help and she continued to drink for her entire life until she died at the age of 49 in 1996.  After my parents divorced, my dad injured himself on the job and the doctors gave him a prescription of pills that were so addictive and so relaxing that he must have confused me for my mother.  I was about 9 years old and he did things to me that no father should do to there own daughter.  He did almost everything except penetration.  I lived with my dad (he had custody) for years feeling that what he did was not right, but had no one to talk to about it.  It wasn’t until I watched a Phil Donahue show (I was around 14 years old)  that had a panel of women on the show talking about being molested by their father that I realized that what happened was wrong and I wasn’t alone.  It brought some relief but no insight as to how to deal with this burden.  I became a sexually active teen and luckily never became pregnant due to using the pill.  I thought that sex was how I found love and being wanted.  I was wanted alright, but only for sex.  I let guys use me until I met one very nice guy who introduced me to a branch of Buddhism where we chant NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO.  It is an active meditation where the sound and your desires are the focus.  In this Buddhism, desires lead to enlightenment.  I thought I’d give it a shot since I felt that I had nothing to lose.  I instantly felt more peaceful and happy and  within months I was working though my dad issues while I chanted.  I was doing an internal therapy  and a cleansing of painful memories that I needed so badly.  I had chanted (and cried) and cleansed the pain, the sadness, the self-pity away.  It wasn’t overnight, took about three to six months of chanting 15 minutes a day.  Best therapy ever!    Fast forward thirty years later,  I’m married to a very nice man, we have two very emotionally and physically healthy sons 18 and 15.  I still practice the art of chanting daily.  Last year, I did my DNA through Ancestry and I get an email from a lady claiming to be my sister and of course I didn’t know about this “stillborn” daughter that my father didn’t know about either (remember he was told she died).  Anyway, my half sister tells me this story about how she never fit in with her adopted family.  They were very loving and she adored her two parents, but she keeps saying “I never fit in”.   She longed to know her real father (my dad) and her real mother, Julie.  She had a good life and when her adoptive parents died she was there for them.  She held there hands with love and care.  They remained married and in a stable home until their deaths.  I on the other hand, I stopped talking to my father (after years of abuse and neglect),  after a violent fight with my brother, he said I deserved to be beaten and strangled by my brother because as my father stated “you were in his face”.  My dad died in 2002 or ’03, I think.  I grew up with a lot of abuse – sexual, emotional, physical and spiritual, moving eighteen times in my youth because my dad was not stable.  I,  fortunately, found a Buddhist practice that help me sort through the mud of my childhood and now I have a beautiful blooming life.  “Out of the filthiest muddy pond, blooms the most beautiful lotus blossom.”  My sister, on the other hand, had the loving father and mother every child deserves, yet she took them for granted and desired the fantasy of what life would have been like with her real mom and dad (the child abandon-er, child molester, wife beater, angry at the world, cheat you behind your back kind of person).  I know who he was so well that I truly feel sorry for how he lived his life.  He could not see himself nor his actions and therefore could not change –  A man who is blind to his actions is bound to repeat the actions that made him blind.  I can’t bring myself to tell my sister who he really was and what he did to me, to my half-brother in Michigan, to my brother in California (who is just like him – don’t know if he’s a molester, but he is everything else), and to my mother who was left with black eyes and bloody lips and died from alcoholism way too young.   Maybe one day I’ll tell my sister the truth so she can final give up on the fantasy and be grateful for what she had.  I feel it’s too soon for me to reveal the ugly truth since I just started to get to know her since January 2018.  The grass is always greener on the other side when you don’t know the truth.  Come to terms with what you had, it could have been that you are my half brother and you were lucky to have missed the bullet.  I lived with my real father and it wasn’t good, but it lead me to find a practice that changed my childhood poison into medicine for my own children and for that, I am grateful.  Your mother gave you away probably because she knew she couldn’t give you what you deserved, a loving set of parents.    She loved you so much that she endured a lifetime of pain to give you the best chance for a good life.  From my observation of your ability to write, you seem educated so I hope you can understand that life isn’t always perfect, but you are seeing it from the grass is brown on my side of the fence.  You are repeating the wrong/hurtful internal dialogue.   You are loved!  Especially by your real mother.  If you found her today, I bet she’d cry so hard with joy to hold you, her baby boy, tell you she loves you and that giving you away was the hardest thing she had ever done.  Now take a moment and imagine yourself carrying two old, heavy suitcases one in each hand.  They are so heavy with sadness, regret and longing.  Imagine in your mind’s eye, SEE yourself putting the suitcases on the ground, letting go of the handles and walking away.  Repeat and repeat again.  If that doesn’t help, then chant NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO or at least google it and read about how learning about the Law of Cause and Effect can impact your life in a positive way.  I wish for you the best from now into eternity.  This life is short, but repeating karma can be too long, but that is up to you.  And just so you know. karma is not the good or bad things that happen to us in life, it’s how we look at the things that happen in life that makes them good or bad.  That is our karma.