Wonderful Women Carnival - in praise of female friends

I am going to continue with the Blog Hop on Wonderful Women that I started last week as it led me to some inspiring stories about women and also some great new blogs. This blog hop is simple to join in. Here is what you can do should you wish to do so and with over 200 followers and many pageviews per day, hopefully I can help drive some new traffic to your blog whilst we all rave about women too.

Please link up by midnight on Monday 21st March 2011.

So this Wonderful Women Wednesday, I am going to talk about my half-sister.

The "rules" of this blog hop is that you link up a post from your blog (new or old) that talks about a woman who you think is great in small or big ways. It might be your Mum, your sister, you friend, a blogger, your colleague, a charity campaigner or even a celebrity. Up to you - it is all about celebrating women!

Happy to answer any questions if I am not making things clear.

I want to talk about J. She is my half-sister but she did not come into my life until a few years ago.

J is the daughter of my birth mother. She was born about 14 years after my birth mother gave me up for adoption. J never knew of my existence when growing up but did sense that there was something amiss with her Mum in some way that she could not quite put her finger on.

When I was in my thirties, I decided to track J down. I had my full adoption file by then and had letter contact with my birth mother. I used the dubious power of the Internet and social networking to find J. Judge me as you will and maybe with just cause. I did what my gut told me to.

J was very shocked when she found out about me and more so when she discovered that her mother had given more than one child up for adoption. I can imagine that it rocked her world and reality for a while.

J is wonderful because even when she found it difficult she welcomed contact with me and we are in regular touch via Facebook and so on. I am so appreciative of her for giving this mad unknown woman a chance and I value my relationship with her although we have yet to meet in the flesh.

J is also fabulous as she is a great midwife bringing babies and joy into the world every day. This whilst she struggles to conceive herself - that must be so painful a situation to be in. Yet she remains friendly and warm and caring for others.

J has asked me to go to meet her this year and I think I would like to do so. Daunting but how can it go wrong when she is such a wonderful woman?

Right, over to you to tell me about the special women/ladies/females in your world.

Please take part by adding your link below.

Please do try and check out the other stories that feature too as I think we can learn so much from other women's stories and celebrate our differences and our similarities.