Another reason I am so happy to be making contact with M’s other family is the fear/discomfort associated with the fact that M might someday think she lived another girl’s life, Avalon’s life. Thus far, being only two months older than Avalon if she had been born at her due date, she really has been living the exact life Avalon would have. Sure, she is not at all the same person. She has her own personality and interests and quirks. I appreciate parenting more, having lost a child. But for the most part, my parenting is what it would have been, the house is the same, the bedroom, the daycare, the activities and events, the relatives. I would not trade M to have my dead baby back, as much as it pains me to say that out loud. I love Avalon, will always wonder who she would have been. But I could not knowingly trade my cherished living child for anything or anyone. It’s too late.
So today, when we go to meet M’s aunt and cousins, in a sense I feel like I am really, truly, diverging from the family I would have had and the parent I would have been had my biological daughter been here instead. And I am happy about that. I want M’s life to be her own, not the life a dead baby would have had. I want her to be a girl with four (almost five) siblings, two moms her love her, cousins and Aunts and Uncles Avalon would never had had. I want her to have experiences and relationships that would never have existed if she was not uniquely herself, born of one mom, raised by another. Loved by two families. I am a mom I never would have been as well, if my daughter was not exactly who she is, if she had not come from exactly where she did. I am now a mom who shares a title, and happily. A mom who wants to include in her family perfect strangers. A mom who feels love for a woman and family she never met, just because M exists and is wonderful.
Does that make sense?
Mother of All Things 
Totally. And it’s quite lovely.
There were many more factors to your trip to Nepal. She had some intense culture shock! The jetlag, the issues with your Nepal family, no space/time for just the two of you to connect, and the junk food. So, I think 3 months in CA with your mom there too will be very different. She can get signed up for swim lessons, make friends who speak English, eat the foods she is used to, and maybe even find a preschool. Don’t lose your confidence!
That’s all true. But I also know that I want a community. A large problem for me out here in the middle of nowhere is that we haven’t been able to find a community. Or I guess I haven’t. She has such a close-knit family feel with her teachers and classmates, and I don’t want her to lose that.
I think you will find a place that you BOTH have that feeling of community. Maybe it will be back in MI and you will decide to stay.