"Open Adoption Roundtable #25 The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption."
I have a few adoption related blogs that I read from different perspectives of adoption that are linked to the blog I keep ... when this topic came up ... I read it, re-read it, and started to read the others responses ... I've never participated before but have always read what others have to say ...
until today ...
Our daughters were both placed with us as newborns and their adoptions finalized while there were still very young. We have very open relationships with both of their birth mother's and extended family ... our girls are currently 4-1/2 and 2-1/2 years old and although they do not yet fully understood our family ~~ they just know that they are loved!
So this brings me to the topic ... Have our open adoptions every felt like too much? Have I ever wanted to walk away? Yes and no is the short answer ... the long answer is:
Recently there has been some stretching and growing in each of our relationships with each of our girl's birth mothers ... I think the timing of each challenge being so close together made me feel "If we could have had a baby we wouldn't be going through this!" That's the ugly infertility nag raising its head as it does occasionally ... but that is not how we have our family and that really is not the way I feel all of the time!
We chose this path to parenthood knowing that for our future children they will know all who love them, have answers to their questions about why ~ directly from those who made these decisions, and not have them ever question their identities and who they look like and why they may like this or that ... but that sounds like a very saintly decision ... in reality it was really about us ... we just wanted to be a mommy and daddy and couldn't do it the conventional way.
So now back to the have you ever wanted to walk away? .... when I was feeling hurt and misunderstood and not feeling the love it seemed like it would be so much easier to walk away but in reality it would not be ... because it's not about me, nor my husband ... and as I shared with each girl's birth mother we must remember that as a Family there can and will be misunderstandings and that as a Family we will work through them and learn from them and no matter what, it is not just about us but our children and so as a Family we will get through it!
So would we walk away? NO WAY! ... We are blessed in ways we had no idea about when we began our journey to parenthood ... our family became extended so easily and seamlessly when our children were placed with us that it would never be anything that we would do or really think about doing!
For more on this topic, please feel free to see how others shared their thoughts and feelings: http://www.productionnotreproduction.com/2011/04/open-adoption-roundtable-25.html#comments
I love this.
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