After two months of discussions, online searches, research, and more, we're putting some skin in the game and officially getting things rolling.
The above is part of a post left by Chris on his blog 150 Steps...an Adoption Journey.
While we have been discussing and planning and worrying and breathing and not breathing and laughing...now we're getting serious. We're moving ahead. Committing to action.
We're sending in the application for our Home Study!
This all suddenly feels real. It's going to happen. An application completed, references sought, a check written....
And awwwaaaaaayyyyy we go...
This is what I wrote to Chris:
ReplyDeleteDear Chris,
As the friend of someone who was torn apart by the lack of information on her birth family (and as someone who has known and counseled many other adoptees to feel this way) I strongly encourage you to have some kind of birth parent contact possibility for the Plus One once she reaches 18. My friend adored her adoptive parents (they were her "real" parents). She her younger brother were both adopted and neither child felt that their family and parents were anything but their "real" family and parents. However my friend desperately needed to know about her birth family. Until she finally found them in her late 30s she was very sad and unquiet. Her birthday was the day "my birth mother gave me away." Now that she know the story of her birth parents and has some contact with them it is as if she is at peace and whole. Her adoptive parents are her parents, but she now knows that other (formerly missing) piece that is her.
I don't share this to scare you, but to encourage you to be confident that your Plus One will be your very own child and adore you and that she will very likely also need that other piece of info on who she is. (In the same vein, I usually recommend waiting until 18 for this contact to be made - it's an emotionally complex experience.)
No matter what I know that you and Jenn will love and help your Plus One on this exciting path called growing up, called life. A path that is complicated whether one is adopted or not!
~G2 from Washington state