If you could change one thing from the past...

I wish I had taken more care of my health - done more regular exercise and eaten better (or less!) over the years. I may not have got the health problems I now have and worry about all the time.

Yes we are in contact now - mainly because I sent a letter to social Services where she was adopted and also registered with the Brutush Adoption Society as an intermediary if she ever made contact. So that worked - she knew I was looking for her if she ever went to look at her file. But it was 30 years before we made contact briefly and now she lives on the other side of the world with three children and a busy lifestyle - after 30 years apart how do you pick up those pieces. We are just strangers - we have no memories together. I drive three hours to see her for an afternoon when she comes over to visit her other family every two years and she has never met her half brothers - I don't think she feels the need to. but I do write constantly. At least she knows who her natural' mother was and is. I was worried that she hadnt had a happy life but she seems to have been ok and certainly is now. So I have to be happy with what I have - if she had been still in England I would have been able to include her in our family lives. Her adoptive Mother is not happy that we are in contact and had to have counselling !! our meetings have to be brief and secret when she comes here.

Some of it has been very bad but If I could only change one thing it would be my son NOT getting cancer at 44. He is remission now thanks heavens.

nothing I could do about it - but it would have been nice to stop my friend wrapping her car around a tree with me in the middle! 7 months in hospital, 1 leg much shorter than the other, 2 years to go back to (sort of) normal - and 46 years later a knee replacement due to consequences of - and a half knee replacement next year.

And yet - perhaps I've learnt more from having to deal with this than anything else in my life ... so perhaps not.

I wish I could start again and be braver - I am nervous of so many things. It makes me dread any day that I have to step out of my comfort zone.

I would have joined the Wrens in the 60's

How sad Bebe. I had a cousin who like you had a baby in the 60s. She was forced to have him adopted and grieved for him until she died.

Oh - that is sad. Has she ever made contact?

I wish I had never let my first born and only daughter be adopted in the 60's when I Was an unmarried mother at 17.

Shyness and my Dyslexia which held me back so much at school.
(Or the dyslexia and poor writing etc added to the shyness lack of confidence.)

Learning I was dyslexic via the OU in my 50s did wonders for my self confidence. I knew then I was really quite intelligent and the failures were not my fault.

You can still do it DaphneBroon - some pools have lessons for swimmers who are afraid of the water; your teacher shouldn't have made you do that so soon.
Apparently Adam Peaty was so afraid of the water when he was young that he refused to sit in the bath, his mother had to wash him standing up!

So may as well accept the way things are.

One thing would not be enough! I would have to go back to about age 5 and keep changing things constantly.

My one regret was that my Mum who was a championship level swimmer in her youth never taught me to swim. Or took me swimming. OK I had lessons at Secondary school (once a week, Summer term) and just about managed a breadth of the pool, but to this day I am scared of water, would never go into a pool for pleasure, am petrified of being out of my depth and basically avoid it at all costs
I even tried adult swimming lessons at my gym a few years ago which went well for about 4 weeks then our teacher said he was taking us to bigger and deeper pool to learn how to tread water and I just didn't go back.

AlieOxon I wish I could say somthing to help, oh the longing in your short sentence. My regrets are nothing in comparison.

No regrets. The first 18 years were crap but from then on ( with a few blips) I've had a wonderful life. Being selfish, I wish that my daughter had had her children earlier ( first at 35) but as I say, that's me being selfish.
Re self confidence: I have it in spades, I could give some to some of you I passed this on to my daughter and she passed it on to her daughter. Now we have ended up with a force of nature. She is 6. Yesterday she walked up to a woman in the changing area of the swimming pool and told her that she couldn't wear shoes in this area.

Thanks Kitty

To have had the foresight when I was young to have known that I was going to take a keen interest in genealogy one day. I could have then asked my grandparents innumberable questions about their lives and their grandparents, particularly why some emigrated here, the frustration of knowing I will never get the answer to some of the things I would love to know.

Taking more care of my health and fitness. I'm sure I would feel more energetic and active now, and happier with my appearance. This sounds self-centred, as compared with other posters' contributions, but I would then have more energy to devote to others, as well as being more cheerful and a good mood is catching.

(((hugs))) Alie, doesn't help, I expect, but have one nevertheless.

Bring my daughter back.

Ooh - so much that I can relate to here. I thought I had only a few regrets but now I am reminded of many, many more. Still, what's the point of regrets? We can't change anything and we probably made the best choice we could at the time so let's just get on with our lives. No-one's perfect.

I wish I hadn't been adopted.

I wish I had been born into a normal family.

Another shy, lacking in confidence person here