Oh, Happy Day! or Let's Talk About Adoption, Part 1

Dear Reader: I meant to post this on Friday, but I was unable to finish it. Let’s just say that this topic is “To be Continued”.

I haven’t written about adoption since I began my blog in October. Psychic forces are pointing me in that direction. It’s not that I don’t want to write about it. Adoption is a beautiful and meaningful way to build a family. There are just times when life moves forward and not a terrible amount of thought is paid to how your family got started, expanded or completed. I’m sure that this is true of all families – biological, adoptive, foster, etc.

The first push to writing about adoption came in my email yesterday. It was from Adoptive Family magazine. We’ve had a subscription to this magazine since Emma was born. They submitted a request for input from couples who adopted newborns domestically. They wanted to know if we had been worried about how we would bond with our adoptive children, what parenting techniques we used to form this attachment and what advice we’d give expecting adoptive parents.

The second push came about this morning while I was dropping Emma and Allison off at daycare. There was another car in the parking lot with a sticker that caught my attention. It was a simple heart with the caption, “Touched by Adoption.” I immediately felt a connection to the family that owes that vehicle. I was hoping to run into that parent on the way out, but they had left before I returned to the parking lot. I’m hoping that one day I will.

The final push came as I turned my daily calendar from December 1 to December 2. I read the note I’d written on this date at the beginning of the year. Today is the third anniversary of the day that our At Risk placement with Emma ended. Although her adoption wasn’t finalized by the state until the following September, we were considered Emma’s legal guardians from that day forward. This was a momentous day for our family, but it is bittersweet. For that day to happen, the parental rights of Emma’s birth parents had officially terminated. In order to cement the connections of our family, others had to be broken.

To be continued...