Hello all! I come to you with a very clouded view of life right now and there are many reasons for this…
First off let me say that my health was my biggest concern over most of the summer. I am still not out of the woods but this has quickly become the least of my worries! I really appreciate all the warm and great thoughts you have all shared with me and I continue to take some medicine and my diet has been greatly improved 
Ok, on to life ~ this year was my company’s contract year. I left an 11 year good paying job to come to this company. I am a facility Regional Manager. I manage commercial properties, the suppliers who handle all aspects of those buildings including Fiber optics, 911, telephone service to literally millions of people, and thousands of personal! Each site has a budget and I feel like an accountant at times, but it is a great job; I travel some and enjoy the team I work with. I handle about 7 million SQ FT of properties. Ton of work, but overall the pay, benefits etc are all very good! This career while over three years in the making, seemed doomed. We had no contract as of this year on 12/31/10. Well, after many bumps and bruises we signed the deal last week and secured our company for 3-5 years. The contract value is around $28 million, for 22 states of facilities management. Whew! Ohh, then they lay off 3 employees, promoted me and made the contract very bittersweet, as I lost some good people…: cry:
On to the good stuff.
Many of you know me; my wife and some of you have met or know of my daughter Racheal. She just turned 19 8/31/10. She lives with her mother but we have a decent relationship but I am always trying to get her to follow a different path than what her mother has… Either way, I love her to death, and she means the world to me!!!
Flashback 17 years ago, I met Danielle, my wife! Well, we had a child 1 year after we met and we made a very important decision…Adoption. I already had a 2.5 year old child that I was learning to raise and an ex girlfriend that was worried about taking me to court every few months for more money… Anyhow, we made that choice to go through an open adoption and that process was very VERY intense.
The family we hand picked was from Boston, they had already had a child they adopted from Minnesota, and they were a successful family. They were also Jewish, (I have no issues with it, but it is an interesting thing when you look at it from our side) but religion was an afterthought, as they were such a good family. We picked them and gave them our daughter in 1994, on 6/22!
We kept in touch for the first few years but we fell out of touch and made a choice to focus on our marriage, Racheal and life. You know, things we controlled directly and had say in. Flash forward to 6/22/10…My wife looked at me and said, “Do you know what day it is today?”… Well it was our daughter’s sweet 16! I went online, found her adoptive father (A big time lawyer in Boston) and called his phone. The next day he called me back and I about lost it, they were so happy to hear from us again and the ball started rolling.
After many calls, emails, texts etc - Anna Michelle (our daughter) wanted to come see us. She has kept a photo of us after her birth by her bed for 16 years. She has known since she can remember that she was adopted and she has very open to every thing!!! They planned a trip for some family deal here in MN and added a few extra days to spend with us! This has just wrapped up and is over with now… She was here in Minnesota for 1 week and we spent three days with her! Dinner, State Fair, Guthrie Play etc… She was able to meet my other daughter Racheal for her birthday on 8/29/10!!! 
To be honest, I was not sure if I wanted to share this with the world, or keep it personal and have it be ‘ours’, you know? My wife and I are both very emotional people and while I might seem different on the interwebz, I have a story about life that will blow most away and I keep most of that close to the vest. Anyhow, we got to meet our daughter for the first time since 6/22/94! The emotions, the joy, the love, the acceptance etc - was and is overwhelming and I have this huge void now that she is gone, but knowing her a bit more and having ‘closed’ this loop on life so to speak, is so awesome!
The real kicker here? My Daughter Anna is an actress. She has been on Law and Order SVU, The Legend of Lucy Keyes movie and in many other movies! She is currently going to be on another TV show (Body of Proof - Oct 2010) and has a second call back for a Jim Carrey movie!!! She is a very talented beautiful young lady and we are so proud.
So yeah, adoption is a powerful thing no matter what side you are on and in our case the start of a brand new life! I have anguished over this for years and these past few days have changed my life forever and I look to our future and growing old with her in our life in any form!!! I can honestly say that I was not sure how I would handle this and I have cried a bunch, second guessed many things and wondered what if, but you cannot live in the past and what we did gave our daughter a chance of a lifetime and even she at age 16 recognizes that! She made me so proud!
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I give you this OKP and thank you for your time and love! This place never ceases to amaze me and I love you all!
~Ryan aka phishinsky
My Family -
Danielle, Anna, Ryan and Racheal 8/29/10
I always thought it would be cool to see what they look like though. My parents adopted 5 kids and when I was younger I wished I looked like my brothers and sisters. Having 2 Korean sisters meant I had to tell my life story all the time. Not really a bad thing but not something you want to explain a million and one times.