It has come to my attention that I come across as perhaps just a touch holier-than-thou at times on this here blog in regards to adoption. I don’t mean to (honest) but having come across some, shall we say, snarkiness on other blogs directed towards myself and other adoptive families of my acquaintances I heaved a sigh and decided on another entry.

Because I’m lazy and tired, I’m just going to make these bullet-points instead of trying to actually string this all together with a beginning, middle and end.

  • I am horribly, miserably uncomfortable when people tell me how “good” I am or (in the case of family) how “proud” they are of our open adoption. I am not all that good. As far as I’m concerned, gushing over our relationship with Jessica is a bit like gushing over my relationship with Brett. Sure, I think we have a nice marriage but it’s not the BEST marriage (at least nobody has come along and given us an award yet) or better than YOUR marriage, which likely looks different than our marriage does. There are lots of ways to have a good marriage and lots of ways to have a good adoption. Besides which having a nice marriage is a lot of dumb luck because I might have married someone else by mistake. So when people perhaps assuming I’m gunning for approval, this would be a wrong assumption. Approval I like, I’ll admit, but I don’t make my life-decisions to try to get it. (If I did I wouldn’t be homeschooling. Heh.)
  • Also focusing on what I’ve done in our adoption kinda leaves out JESSICA who deserves way more credit than I do. More than you know I’ve just followed her lead in all of this. (Some of you may recall this story of Jessica speaking at a training for our agency. I think it’s a good illustration of her open-minded strength, confidence, and expectations for adoptive families.)
  • And may I add that the first time we met her we were open to talking about openness and at one point I said, “I know some families meet in some neutral place like, I don’t know, a mall or something.” (I was talking about a family who told me that they met their child’s first mom at an outlet mall located between their two towns.) And Jessica gave me this look and said incredulously, “A mall?!” And I hurridly said, “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it really much…” She could have dropped us right there but she agreed to talking with us more about all of that.
  • More on that: Jessica gave us her last name right away (she gave us copies of Madison’s ultrasound and her name was on them) but we (and when I say we, I mean Brett) were nervous about sharing ours. One of her friends asked, “What pregnancy magazine do you write for?” And I hesitated because then they could look at the masthead and figure out my last name so I leaned over to Brett and asked if I could share it before I told them. Also Jessica gave us her phone number and I had to check with Brett again before I gave her ours. (I hissed, “She’s talking about giving us her baby so the least we could do is share a number!”) We were very nervous and Jessica was more respectful of our nervousness than I think I could have been if I were her. See how much credit she deserves????
  • Had we done an adoption with another woman who’s to say what would have happened? Jessica is Jessica and I love her. If I were fifteen years younger, we’d probably hang out together. We have a lot in common (similar backgrounds, similar interests, similar likes & dislikes) and that makes these 1001 times easier. Like she and her boyfriend are into cleansing fasts and raw foods. When we were around the same age Brett and I were going on juice fasts. Sounds small but it’s not — think about it. Our values are really similar (although Jessica says she would likely be stricter as a parent than I am). It’s easy for us to find things to talk about because we find the same things funny and we like the same kinds of music and then she tolerates my tendency to put my foot in my mouth pretty much constantly.

    (You guys have no idea what an idiot I am pretty much all the time. I forget other people have boundaries because my own are so loose and am constantly bringing up issues that might make people feel uncomfortable. Like the time I said to Jessica’s current boyfriend, “I remember you calling Jessica on her cell phone and you were saying XYZ! You’re so crazy!” and there was dead silence then Jessica calmly said, “Dawn, that was my boyfriend before this” and I just sat there and turned pink before she patted me on the knee and said, “It’s ok.”)

  • If I had read my own blog way back when it would have freaked me out. I wasn’t ready to think about any of this yet — I just wanted a baby. I read some other waiting-to-adopt blogs and I admire them so much because they are way WAY ahead of where I was at that same point in our adoption journey. It would have terrified me to read about all the openness, all the adoption talk, pictures of Jessica up in our house — eek! I wasn’t ready to consider any of that. Really, it’s a good thing our wait (from when we contacted the agency on) was long because it gave me time to figure this stuff out.
  • Also, I don’t think our adoption is better than anyone else’s adoption. (I’ve said this before; it bears repeating.) A great adoption can look a lot of ways and I don’t think more openness is a sign of moral superiority because there are lots of good reasons people have less openness, whether it’s by preference or a concern for safety or what-have-you. Adoptive parents, first parents — we’re all human beings goodness knows and our needs, wants and wishes are all different.
  • The qualities that I think make for a moral and ethical adoption are honesty — on both sides — and flexibility — on both sides and willingness to revisit things as the child gets older and needs change — on both sides. A friend of mine has several children with a variety of adoption stories: One has lots of openness, one has none (and her child’s first mom will not consider opening it further), yet another has been carefully opened because of some first family issues that are a safety risk for her child. She has managed to balance three very different situations with the needs of her children and the wishes of birth parents with terrific respect and thougthfulness. Her adoptions don’t look like mine either but they are great adoptions. If any of us were to follow the blueprint of any other adoption, we wouldn’t be following the trajectory that is meant to lead us through our own situations.
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