November is Adoption awareness month! So I took on the A-Z challenge by birth mother, Ashley Mitchell of Big Tough Girl and Lifetime Healing, LLC to share a word pertaining to adoption from my point of view each day. Some were more challenging than others but I made it! I wanted to compile them here for my non-instagram friends and family, so I decided to share them in several separate posts for the last few days of November.
For my first post, here is Adoption From A-F:
Adoptees: Adoptees are often the least heard voices in the adoption triad. Adoptive parents? You have hear us ALL the time. But adoptees are where it’s at. I challenge you to find an adult adoptee and listen to their story. Let them be sad or happy or angry or nothing at all. Let their story be different or the same as your preconceived ideas. Do not assume, do not explain away their feelings, and do not tell them they are disillusioned or brainwashed or bitter if they don’t have the same experience or views as you. Lean in and listen.
Beliefs: Everyone has pre-existing beliefs about adoption. Please be willing to put those beliefs aside in order to make room for the individual truth of each circumstance. Maybe your beliefs come from family experiences or TV shows or from your best-friend’s-aunt’s-second-cousin. Whether you wish to adopt or are simply interacting with adoptees and their families, please be willing to put aside your beliefs about how adoption works, or how individuals and families are effected. Give up your ideas about the type of mothers who place their children for adoption, the type of loss children “should” feel or the types of special needs children “should” or should not have as a result of their life experiences or timing of adoption. Your beliefs do not make things that way simply because that is how you intuitively think it should be. Be willing to accept that there may be either DIFFICULTIES or JOYS that you do not see or understand. Maybe you can expand your beliefs about adoption to include a more holistic picture of the beauty and the loss, the redemption and the complexity.
Complexity: Adoption is incredibly complex! Traditionally, it was believed to be simple- keep it a secret and move on, especially if the child was adopted/relinquished at birth or adopted into the “perfect family and we doing “fine”. Adoption can be happy and sad, it can mend things and break things, there have been times it has been a crime and times it has been a blessing. And it is always, ALWAYS, the result of loss. It can make people feel confused, rejected, or regretful, wanted, chosen, or secure and it has been used to manipulate people as well as offer hope and grace. But just because it is one of these things, does not mean that it cannot be more than one of these things at one time! Especially if we believe in the redemptive grace of Jesus, Who can turn any ashes into the most beautiful story. It is vital to acknowledge the complexity of adoption, because denying this truth denies adoptees, first families (and sometimes even adoptive parents) the right to feel how they feel about adoption in that season.
Dossier: Basically this is just a collection of documents that you submit to the agency or country that you wish to adopt from. This includes your home assessment, medical reports, letter to first family, notarized copies if original documents such as passport and driver’s license, criminal record/intervention record checks, etc… I always say that your local paperwork takes the first six-ish months of every international adoption process, and the dossier is the sum of all that work. Doing this is exciting because so much of the season prior to an adoption is waiting, so us adoptive mama’s love when we can actually DO something.
Emotions: ALL the emotions. Wherever we are on the adoption triad and probably multiple emotions at once and flip-flopping from day to day or hour to hour sometimes. And my husband And I (who are the definition of opposites attract!) have such polar emotions at different stages sometimes! He and I have such different viewpoints for the days we met our children that it’s hilarious. Adoption is complicated and that makes for a lot of emotions about all the good, bad, ugly and beautiful about adoption.
Lanaya Graham – November 2017
