Tonight we will order some pizza, sit down to fill out our initial paperwork for the adoption agency, and make an evening of it. Mr. Ladd’s brilliant idea was to document each little step of the adoption process with a video log in addition to blogging about it, so we will have a sweet reminder of how our family grew and something to share with our kids in the future. So that’s what we’ll be starting tonight!
We are learning so much about adoption, and sometimes when you’re in the middle of something you see it from a different perspective. My goal in blogging about our experience is to simply share our perspective and all that we are learning. Hopefully along the way we can help to make our little corner of the world a more understanding place. We have received so much support and many kind words already in sharing our news, but one word in particular has me thinking. That word is lucky. Usually it’s said something like this, “Those kids will be so lucky to be in your family,” or “Oh what lucky kids you’ll have.” When people say things like that they mean to tell us we’ll be good parents, or that our kids will have such a great life with us. I’ve never been offended by it, and if you’ve told me how lucky my kids will be, please know that I take it in the way it was intended, as a compliment. But, I have to tell you, that lucky is just not exactly how I would describe my future kids.
No matter what, adoption involves pain and loss, and in painful situations a sensitivity to the words used to describe them matters. Domestic infant adoption involves the painful separation of a child from their biological mother, and the pain of that birth mom in her very real loss of the child she lovingly chose for someone else to parent. International adoption involves the pain of the circumstances that have orphaned that child, or rendered their family unable to care for them, and the very real pain of a child leaving all that is familiar to him or her culturally, linguistically, and placed in a completely foreign environment.
Adopting from foster care, as we are doing, involves its own painful set of circumstances, and kids in the foster care system are anything but lucky. It’s not lucky to be born into a situation where your biological parents are unable or unwilling to take care of you. It’s not lucky to be abused or neglected. It’s not lucky to be taken from everything familiar to you, and moved to one or more foster homes while you wait for a permanent family. It’s not lucky to possibly be separated from your siblings. Most likely, my kids will not feel lucky to be eventually placed in our home, with unfamiliar everything, and told that we are their new family. They will be scared, angry, confused, and probably feel anything but lucky.
To say that they are so lucky implies that they should feel grateful for something that is quite possibly terrifying for them at the moment, or that they got some sort of special experience, when in reality they have likely gone through things many of us can’t even imagine. Every child deserves a family, and that is what we’re hoping to provide. If anyone is lucky in this scenario it’s us as parents. We are the lucky ones to play a part in the rest of our kids’ story, that we'll get to call them son or daughter, and we are lucky to have so many friends and family supporting us along the way.
I read a quote recently that sums up how I feel about adoption perfectly...
”A child born to another woman calls me mommy. The magnitude of that tragedy & the depth of that privilege are not lost on me.” - Jody Landers
photo credit: cloud_nine via photopin cc
