So blessed

Yesterday was Mother's Day and for years I wished and wished I would be able to celebrate that day. So having our little man and getting little handmade cards from him and daddy is all the more special since it was such a long time coming.

Because our little guy is adopted I have the added bonus of sharing messages with his birth mother on Mother's Day. Yesterday she sent me the most amazing message of love and gratitude. It is such a gift as an adoptive mom to have the blessing of our son's birth parents. They see how happy we are and how much love we share in our family. Knowing that they feel good about their choice and whole heartedly feel that everything is as it should be gives me more comfort than I can fully describe. I am so thankful to be Kai's mom, he is the greatest gift I will ever receive.

I was also blessed to take part in a wonderful brunch with fellow kindred souls and share in some meaningful conversation and connection. It was a great day and I feel refreshed and loved - what more could a mama ask for?

Adoption assumptions

There is something that happens sometimes and boy does it annoy me. Every once in awhile someone comes along and makes assumptions about my son because he is adopted. For example that he will have emotional baggage or deep feelings of loss and grief. Now I'm not saying it's not possible he will have these feelings, but I will say it annoys the crap out of me when people assume he will no matter what, that it's just agiven because he was adopted. 

I don't know if it stems from a person wanting to feel like they are right or maybe they have their own experience they are referencing, but I'd just like to say "keep your assumptions off my son." He will be whoever he is, he will grow into whoever he is meant to be and adoption will play as large or as small of a role in his self identity as he chooses. We (his adoptive family and his birth family) will be there with him along the journey supporting him in whatever comes up. If he has feelings around being adopted, we will talk about it and do our best to help guide him through just like we will for anything else that he may struggle with, but don't assume that just because he is adopted he has suffered some kind of irreprable damage to his emotional wellbeing. That's just not fair and last time I checked - you're not him so you can never know what his truth will be.

How do I feel after a visit?

The next The latest Open Adoption Roundtable Question is up and this time the topic is how do you feel after a visit with your child's birthfamily?

For me every visit has been a little bitter sweet. I always feel a little nervous leading up to any visit hoping everything will go well and then a little relieved when it's over. It has been great to see them, or even in the case of our son's birth grandparents meet them for the first time. It is wonderful to see how much they love our son, to hear their stories and watch them interact. It is also sad because I know there is something lost in the experience for them. It will never be like it would have been had our son not been placed for adoption. They are free of the responsibility of caring for him and raising him into who he will be, which allows them to move ahead with the lives they had dreamed, but they are also missing out on the everyday magic of who our son is becoming. We do our best to share about our lives and his adventures on our family blog through pictures and stories, but that is still just a small snapshot into our everyday experience. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to be my son's mother and for now to be the guardian of the special relationships he will develop with his birth family as he grows older. I look forward to the day when he can tell me his answer to this question and we can talk about how lucky he is to have so many people who love him.

Happy Spring!

I LOVE this time of year and I especially love this beautiful tree just outside our house that gets the most amazing pink flowers. We call it the candy tree.

Grandparents and adoption

The latest Open Adoption Roundtable Question is up and so I thought I would join in again. I am enjoying thinking about and sharing my thoughts on our experience of adoption so far.

The topic is: Grandparents and adoption

At the end of last year we we met our sons paternal birth grandparents for the first time. We had heard from our sons birth father that they were supportive of his choice to place Kai for adoption, but we didn't know if they would ever want to meet us. When we got the email from P, our sons birthfather, that he wanted to get together and his parents wanted to come, we were super excited. We didn't know exactly what to expect but we planned a time to meet up at a park for lunch. When we got there P came out to meet us and took us over to his parents. It was really neat to see them in person and see them interact with Kai. P's mom kept saying how much Kai looked like P when he was a baby. We spent a few hours together in that park, sharing stories and watching Kai play/run around. It was a really nice visit. We felt like they will want to be a part of Kai's life in some way moving forward. Although I did get the sense when we were leaving that it was a bit hard on P's mom, overall the visit went great and we really enjoyed meeting them. As we drove away from the park I thought about how the relationships formed through adoption are truly unlike anything else. You could see they felt an innate connection to Kai and at the same time he doesn't really know them. There seems to be this delicate balance between respecting each others space and doing what we can to foster a relationship that is meaningful. We are still early in our adoption journey so who knows how things will develop in the future, but we are happy to have met our sons birth grandparents and look forward to whatever relationship unfolds in the future.

And just to celebrate all the other grandparents in Kai's life, here's a picture from Christmas of Kai and all his adoptive grandparents! You can't tell by his face in this shot (this was probably about the 10th one we had taken and he was OVER it), but he thinks his grandmas and grandpas are pretty awesome.

Re-Do?

I'm brainstorming some changes to my blog, am thinking it may be time for a new look soon, but in the mean time check out my cute new widget over there >>>> links right up to my etsy shop and it was FREE! How cool is that?!

TGIF, have a great weekend everyone!

Spread the word to end the word

I want to share something with you. It's a post written by a new friend of mine who also happens to be the mother to a son with Down syndrome. I absolutely LOVE this post she wrote on her blog today. I agree so much that the words we use matter and have experienced first hand how insensitive and unaware people can be. Being the mom of an adopted son I've had people say the strangest things to me. An example: Do you know his actual parents? - um yes, I happen to be one of them, oh wait you mean his birthparents...

After the words have left their mouths they have exposed themselves as so horribly ignorant that it's difficult to respond in anyway that doesn't involve eye rolls, scrunched up faces of disgust or just straight out condescension. I try to do my best and gently educate when possible because it's true getting angry doesn't help the cause and what's most important to me is that people understand the words they chose matter and that thinking something through before you say it could mean the difference between someone feeling loved and accepted or cast off and out of place. Your words hold power, please spread the word to end the word.