Patricia Dischler is the author of "Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption", a speaker, child care professional and birthmother. Read more from Patricia here.

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This article was originally written a couple of years ago. This is a follow-up to the story.

I recently asked my nine year old daughter how she felt about Joe being her brother. Here's what she said:

He's nice, he has a pretty fiancé. I don't understand why you placed him for adoption, he's a great kid, why would you want to do that? I wish he lived with us. I wish we could visit him more."

Patricia Dischler is the author of "Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption", a speaker, child care professional and birthmother. Read more from Patricia here.

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When she got the chance she grabbed his hand and pulled him down to the sandbox at the campground to play. Joe happily obliged. About a half hour later, I stood on my parents’ deck watching Joe walk towards the house with a giddy, wild haired girl riding his shoulders with absolute joy on her face.

When they reached the house, Rachel hopped clumsily off and ran over to tell me the story she would hold dear to her heart for the rest of her life: at the sandbox, a boy had been mean to her and Joe had told him to stop and scooped her up on his shoulders and whisked her away - he was her hero. I smiled, knowing that he not only exceeded her expectations, but that from that moment on, "my brudder" would not just be words she practiced, but they would be real.

Patricia Dischler is the author of "Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption", a speaker, child care professional and birthmother. Read more from Patricia here.

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Some birthmothers have tight, supportive families, some have families that pressure them to keep their child, some have families that pressure them to place their child, some have no family at all. Some adoptive parents want to adopt to bring a new dimension to their families, some have been trying to get pregnant for years and are coming from a place of pain and have very low thresholds for any more, some have families that support adoption, some don't, some embrace openness, some feel forced into it, some are so scared of it they don't know if they can even try. Some adoptees are brought up knowing all about their adoption, some are told when they are preschoolers, some are told when they are in high school, some are never told and find out by accident. Some counselors support open adoption, some do not. Some adoptive parents receive great counseling and guidance, some never receive any. Some birthmothers receive great counseling and are helped to look closely at both options in order to ensure there will be no regrets, some are only pushed towards adoption, some receive no counseling at all. We all have a story to tell. We often make assumptions about how others think and feel even within our own stories. Let's change that.

Patricia Dischler is the author of "Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption", a speaker, child care professional and birthmother. Read more from Patricia here.

I recently read a draft of an adoption book a friend of mine is writing; it is a wonderful story from an adoptee's point of view on how she went searching for her birth family. What she found reminded me of the fact that everyone has a story. So often, we see the world through our own point of view and tell ourselves that these are the truths. But we must remember that what we see and what we know is only a part of the truth: it is our truth, but not necessarily that of others. In her story, her birthmother spent decades believing something was true about the birthfather. For his part, he spent decades thinking something was true about the birthmother. Yet, as my friend discovers, each was missing important information that would have completely changed what they thought to be true.