What good, hard work you're doing, Mouse! Good news though; your bio mother (and father) will come back to you stronger; your genes are there and there are ways you are "like" them, not just in looks but personality attributes and other characteristics. I study genealogy because of the "rooted" feeling it gives me; I'm not really alone, there's all those women (and men) who have gone before me. I have a picture of my a great grandfather and I see my brother's eyes, my great grandmother (with whom I feel a strong connection but I never met her) I have found several similarities in our lives and she died 10+ years before I was born, etc.

I have a book where the author was talking about being a Jewish woman (I'm not Jewish) and preparing the Passover meal the way the women in her family had (with handed down special china too) for hundreds and thousands of years and feeling a connection and I didn't understand that feeling, was kind of jealous. But now I do understand and feel it. We don't really "start over." My daughter-in-law is adopted and you can see looks and traits of hers in the grandbabies, I'm sure you've seen yourself in your children. It works the other way too. Even though we haven't met these earlier women, we are "part" of them and they've been through some of the same things we have, etc.