I dont believe in blood ties.I will explain myself better,i don’t believe that they necessarily and naturally come with family.An aunt of mine once said:”i am a teacher for too long to believe in blood ties”.I totally agreed and still do.What does infuriate me is when my opinion is dismissed on the base that i am an only child and will never be able to understand the tie between siblings, for example.I apologise in advance to impose this opinion of mine and to sound may be too harsh but i strongly believe that blood ties exist only where there is fertile ground,a sensible nurturing personality able to develop them.They don’t come automatically only because there is a genetical connection.Giving birth doesn’t make a woman a mother necessarily,otherwise there wouldn’t be neglected,abused kids or abandoned babies.How many estranged brothers and sisters we know?!!where is their blood tie ?.How many sons or daughters turning their back to their elderly parents we see?Where is their blood tie?The fact that we might feel the connection with our siblings,our parents or our offspring cannot cloud our judgement.We have it .It is inside us but this is us.We are only a part of humanity,there is a big other part who doesn’t have it.Not only this but,if an universal innate blood tie would exist,then there would always be a “category A love” and a “category B love”.Brotherly or sisterly friendship would lose their value and even worst all the adopted children would never be loved like a blood child.Children who grew up with stepfathers or stepmothers will never find their way to totally connect to these persons .My personal experience sure affects my point of view.Arrogantly i believe my personal experience throw more light on the subject actually.Even if I am an only child,in fact,i am a mother and a daughter too,a biological and adopted daughter.As a mother i honestly never really question if the love I feel for my kids is due to blood or not.I love them,that is it.Would i love them the same if I didn’t give them birth myself?Instinctively I would say yes,but i can’t be sure as i never been in the situation. I might actually love them even more as I wouldn’t have had to go to weight watcher for 6 months after both.Now you all know because I didn’t have a third child:the only idea of another 6 months of weight watcher was unbearable for me and for my husband,passive victim of 6 months of bad mood due to hanger.Bottom line,I can’t say if my love would be different with an adopted child but I can say that I don’t see any difference between the way I love my kids and the way some of my friends, who are adoptive parents, love their ones.Once ,I heard someone saying that blood ties are undisputable and a kid who is not born from you will never be completely like your own .Now,beside the lack of sensitiveness of this person who didn’t even bother to check if among her audience there was some adoptive parent or adopted kid;what captured my attention was the words that she used”your/our own”.What does it mean exactly?We all use it daily to refer to someone close to us or related in some way to us and that is ok but, the way she empathized those words,the use of the possessive adjective was wrong.We don’t own our kids ,in the same way they don’t own us.We love them but we don’t own them,not even if they come from us.we can be ready to give our life for them but we dont live our life for them.We are separate entities forever united by the love we feel for each other. I remember i thought that a big confusion was made between love and need ,love and possession,love and control.Too often I have seen parents hiding behind their love for their offspring only a impulse to control it,to not let it go.This ,I am afraid ,happens when we consider our kids our property,”our own”kids.May be, if we accept that they are a “persona”,independent individuals,(whether they are blood related or not),then we will be ready to accept the idea of an unconditional love that has nothing to do with blood ties .Of course there is a genetic heritage but that it is only a starter point.At the end it is the surrounding environment where we live and the experiences we make that shape our personality.Summing up, as a mother I can only say i think my love for an adopted child would be exactly the same then the one I feel for the children i born but as a daughter,things change.I can speak by personal experience.Usually when this subject is brought up I always say that even if i wanted it, considering my experience I couldn’t believe in blood ties.A parent is the one who raise you not the one who conceived you.Overrated populistic statement that, is also deeply true.Despite the fact my “real” father has always been in the picture,my stepfather was the one always there for me,he still is and will always be,i know it.He is the paternal figure i look at.He is the grandfather of my daughters.My father was not estranged but we never really did bond.He was not born to be a father. The blood call never arrived to him.IT is possible ,it was nobody’s fault.It sacked when i was little but i am also been extremely lucky that someone, who was instead cut out to be a father,arrived in my life.I proudly share with this man an history of happenings and feelings,without any blood tie.I proudly let him adopt me in adult age.Families don’t necessarily needs blood ties.Blood ties don’t necessarily come with families.