Run away imagination
The phone rings and it’s the adoption agency.
“Ummm, Ms. Friedman? Listen, we’ve never had to do this before but, well, your bio is just so … so … so unworkable.”
“Do you need us to rewrite it? I can do that. Is it the pics? I know that one of me is kind of blurry but I don’t really have a lot of photos of myself and…”
“No, Ms. Friedman, frankly it isn’t the bios. It’s, well, it’s you. You and your family. Our birth parents pick up your bio and they start laughing.”
“Laughing? Well, I did try to be witty…”
“They’re laughing at you. They think your bio is an agency joke or something. I just don’t think anyone is going to want to place with you. We’re going to have to return all your money and just let this go.”
“Let this go? But we’ve only been in the pool for a few months! Can’t we wait a little longer.”
“The truth is that my boss never wanted us to accept you in the first place but I thought we need to divirsify our adoptive parent pool. Unfortunately, the inclusion of your bio is making our agency a laughingstock. In fact, other agencies got a hold of your bio and it’s making the email rounds. It even showed up on Snopes and you made the top ten list on Letterman last night. So I think you need to let go of your adoption plans and get on with your lives. I’m so sorry we couldn’t help.
OK, OK, my self-esteem isn’t (quite) that low. When I was in high school, I thought my life was going to be like a make-up commercial: If only I could find the right shade of lipstick, everyone would fall in love with me. I’d get out of my car and sweep into the trendy restaurant, catching the doorman and taxi driver up in my sensual aura. I’d flash my eyes at the waiter and he’d drop his tray. My date would propose on the spot.
Sadly, I never found that lipstick.
Getting my feelings hurt when a birthmom doesn’t choose us is the exact same thing. I no longer expect every man I meet to fall in love with me, so why do I let myself get upset because a couple of birthmoms don’t want us? I used to think I’d never get a nice boyfriend either and then I got Brett (and I wasn’t even wearing lipstick). I’m sure a nice baby will come our way. And I bet it’ll be nicer than those other babies we didn’t get anyway. So there.
Hang in there… and try not to take it personally (I know how much easier said than done that is). It’s not that they rejected your bio, but that they found something in some other bio that spoke to them. At our adoption group earlier today and one of the moms told me their birth mom picked them because of a little caterpillar graphic on the border of their bio. Sometimes it’s just that random. The right birth mom will pick you when the time is right.
If it makes you feel any better, I find myself sometimes coming up with similar “disaster scenarios” in my head when things go wrong in my life. Not as much as I once did, but it still happens from time to time. (I just handed in my tenure packet, and you can imagine the things that woke me up at night while I was preparing it)