Gonna Throw Up

Man, Jody and Andy are in the midst of it right now. In the midst and hands of God's mercy and grace (hopefully). Today is the most critical day in their adoption todate and I am so nervous I could throw up. They have so many people praying for them, I know, but we're all human and of course I just wish there was something I could do to ensure they get their kids and get them safely. Ugh....adoption, what a messy, messy business sometimes.

I think conversations about adoption are interesting. Often times when people first announce they are adopting there is a lot of resistance. This seems to be across the board, coming at the adopters from various angles and people in their lives. No matter who it is, it's hurtful, and all the adopter wants to do is "show them". "I'll show them," we say, "that this is the best idea a person has ever had, I'll show them that we'll be the happiest family ever when this person(s) come home. I'll show them."

The reality is adoption, like any child rearing, is not always so black and white. No matter how great Tariku is, and he is pretty great, I still sometimes look at him and ask myself what we got ourselves into (and if I'm being perfectly honest, I do the same for Trysten and Dailah as well). But with adoption it's different. We don't want to express those moments of doubt because there were too many naysayers in the beginning OR because we want to be an encouragement to others who are thinking of the process. I don't want to give a voice to those thoughts in my head that perhaps we just made our lives incredibly difficult and the fault lies with me. I don't want to do that because, overall, I am so very happy we adopted. The fighting we did for this miracle was the biggest fight of my life and the reward is SOO much better than I had imagined. If I'm being honest, I maybe have 3 minutes of an entire day when I have some negative thoughts. BUT I went into this blog experience saying I would be honest about my feelings so that I would remember what it felt like and so other potential adopters would go in with their eyes wide open.

The popular part of "mommying" nowadays is to be brutally honest about things. I think this came about for a number of reasons but I basically think people just got tired of hearing about everyone else supposedly having this family with no faults. So you can hear moms talk about everything and once in awhile it starts sounding like complaining quite a bit. We know the moms love being moms, we know they wouldn't trade it for anything. But the same is not assumed for adoptive moms necessarily. We are under a different watchful eye. An eye that, for better or worse, is infinitely more judgmental and harsh (and it's only compounded if we adopt transracially or transculturally). This is why we blog. We adoptive parents blog because most of our readers are either good friends, family or other adoptive parents. We know we can be honest about being less than pleased with our lives right now. We feel comfort in our "cyber friends" because we won't have to look them in the eyes when we're telling them everything is great (and thus them seeing tears and fear in our eyes which gives us away). But they are a tremendous support anyway, aren't they?

Being an adoptive mom is hands down one of the most rewarding experiences in my entire life. I am so happy we made our decision to adopt (and probably will again) and I am so happy I'm joining the ranks of adoptive mom, the ones who mother harder and more intensly than any other moms I know (that's because I'm a past non-adoptive mom so I know the difference!) I assure you, adoptive parents, the time will come when we can be honest about our experiences and not feel like people will take our children away from us. :) Until then, I salute you!