I wasn't necessarily jaded or angry. I just had NO IDEA what in the world we were going to encounter or what to expect, EVEN after acquiring my LMSW degree and working for a private foster agency years earlier. I just know that I wished so very badly that I had known someone who had gone before me, in both arenas. I would have LOVED to have been warned. I would have given my left foot to have had someone to process it all with, someone who truly GOT IT. My friends and my mom can love me and listen all day long, but until you have traveled these roads...You can't know. You can't understand, even if you want to.
With all of that said...My thoughts and intentions of this public blog changed. Not only was I taking myself back to incredibly raw, harsh times that I was not prepared to do, but I was telling a story that also belonged my husband and more importantly, my kids. It wasn't only mine to tell - at least not so publicly. So this blog has become more about our lives as a family with an occasional blurb here and there about Foster Care/Infertility/and or/Adoption. Because I DO still care about couples hoping to adopt, or foster, or struggling to build their family genetically. While this may not sit well with so many jaded adoptee bloggers out there, WE are people too, and we have also dealt with loss, grief, abandonment, anger and sadness. We are NOT immune to the adoption process and all of it's tragedies.
We are carefully trying to keep cautious communication with our children's birth parents, but it's not easy. Secretly, in the selfish heart of my hearts, I would love to quietly run away and never tell my kids they are adopted and live in the perfect world of a family that is created biologically. Not because I don't want my kids to know their bio families, or vice versa, but just to spare the hurt - The hurt that is bound to show it's ugly head from time to time when my kids are assigned a school project on genetics in Science class, or the dreaded day that I discipline one of them and hear the words every adoptive mom or step mom fears..."You can't tell me what to do...You're NOT MY REAL MOM!"
Because...
There is no way around it. These things WILL happen. They won't happen every day, and they won't define us as a family (I hope and pray), but they WILL happen, and IT WILL HURT.
As humans, we don't want to hurt. In fact, we do everything humanly possible to avoid painful situations. We humans, and other living beings on this earth, do one of two things - We either FIGHT or FLIGHT! We choose to battle back to avoid the suffering, OR we run like hell and try to move on pretending we aren't affected, disturbed, sad and wounded - But either way, we always are!
Hurt, Pain, Loss and Gain...
None of us are exceptions. We all fall onto the spectrum during life. It doesn't matter. You can be an adoptee, an adoptive couple, a foster child, a birth mom, a birth dad, an infertile woman, and so on... We are all victims to these hardships in life. None of us are spared.
