It's been awhile

I have not felt like writing for some time. I have not been able to blog, to journal or write letters. My emotions seem to have consumed my words, sapped my ability to express my soul. I feel lost when I do not write, though this is not the first time I have had a word drought; one episode last for years. This latest drought has been caused by a combination of exhaustion, personal conflict, a busy schedule and an attempt to avoid certain emotional issues that have been bothering me.

Since the adoption in August, school has begun and we have settled into a routine of school, swim, church and busy weekends. Construction season extended into November this year so I was working longer days and some weekends plus the occasional emergency. Every weekend I had something scheduled for two months when I just wanted to catch up on sleep. I envied my teenage son who was able to take afternoon naps after school and sleep in on Saturdays. I remember sleeping like that as a teen. I still enjoy the occasional nap, but the are rare pleasures, or in some cases, rare necessities.

Mid-November a variety of things were calming down and I was beginning to feel my emotions again, really sense them. Then my nana had a massive stroke, just three weeks after we had joyously and magnanimously celebrated her 100th birthday. She shined at her party and was what every woman dreams of being at 100 - vibrant, beautiful, active, intellectual, gracious. The stroke on November 11 was fatal, just it has not killed her yet; it is sapping her life away, one day at a time. She made enough progress to move from the hospital to the rehabilitation center where she made progress fro three days, just enough to go home. Now she is being cared for by her two dear daughters - my mom and my aunt.

Intellectually I know she has lived a long, wonderful life and it is time to let her join the angels. My heart is struggling. Some of this is a reminder that we do not know when our time to leave earth will be; we do not have an "expiration date stamped on our rears", in the words of a wonderful friend.

Also, what does this death do to my son? Our first Christmas together as a family last year started with a funeral for my husband's grandmother. Vera's Alzheimer's was so bad she did not know who we were for the past two or three years, and never knew our son. This year, we are expecting another death this holiday season, this time my son has bonded with his new great grandmother. Oh, my nana loved Junior so much. She loved to tell her friends about her new great grandson! They had a special bond that is only experienced between the very young and the very old - a woman who remembers the first Armistice Day and a child who does not remember life before September 11, 2001. Will my son begin to resent holidays with our family because we the elderly in our family die at Christmas? Do these deaths trigger emotions and memories of his grandfather's cancer and death? He wants to remember great grandma as she was at her 100th birthday; those are good memories to cherish.

Junior and I have some things in common. We both had grandmothers send us off on our first day of school. He was raised by his grandparents; I was living with mine when I started Kindergarten. Our bonds with our grandmothers is stronger than typical grandparent-grandchild bonds who just visit each other. He still has my parents and Mike's parents to spend many years with plus his biological grandmother, Mike's grandfather, and Papa Willy. Mike has a grandmother still living, but her dementia has her very confused these days. The kid has lots of family to love him, support him, help him grow into a wonderful man. In fact, I have lots of family to love me and support me. We can get through the next few weeks and succeeding months together.

Emotions of an Open Adoption

I am dealing with a slew of emotions at the moment. Excitement is pulsating through me as I await Junior's adoption finalization, day by day. We have seven days left of this phase of our journey then we begin the rest of our lives. At the same time I acknowledge the bitter sweetness experienced by Junior's biological mother as Mike and I become Junior's legal parents. She is supportive of the adoption and our roles as parents, but there is still that sense of loss for her, the might have been that will never be. She will always be his biological mother, but now I am Mom. Her pain might be similar to the emptiness I have experienced the last few years, touched with a twinge of jealousy as she watches another woman raise her son. She decided to trust us to raise her son when she made her decision to relinquish her parental rights. Relinquishing also gave her the opportunity for an open adoption. 

Our adoption is a rather open adoption which is a rarity in a foster care adoption. Typically there is some contact between the foster-adopt family and the biological family, but letters are exchanged through secured PO boxes or emails and visits are once or twice a year. We have an agreement for one exchange of photos a year and four visits, but we expect more contact than that. Even though the adoption has not been finalized, we have maintained contact with his biological mother including some supervised visits. We have open contact with his sister, grandmother, aunts and cousins. It has been beneficial for Junior for us to integrate his biological family into our family - sharing holidays together, spending time together, building memories. He is so excited to have my sisters and parents meet more of his relatives later this month to celebrate his adoption. 

With our great joy of adoption, I am supporting my best friend through in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. She and her husband have tried for several years now to conceive and this is their first IVF cycle. I have supported her every step of the way - the joy, the disappointment, and the anxiety that comes with each test, each procedure, each step of this very scientific method of creating a baby, hopefully. Now we wait for a positive pregnancy test. We are praying for joyful news when the time comes, but I will be her support should this cycle fail and her dreams are dashed once again. Due to her treatment cycle and doctor appointments and our schedules, she has not met Junior in the year he has been with us. Yes, I want my best friend to meet my son, one of the joys of my life, my sunshine. If the IVF cycle fails, I will hesitate and confirm with her she is ready to meet my sunshine while she mourns her loss as encountering my joy during her sorrow may be too much to deal with, especially since she has a surge of hormones racing through her worn out body magnifying each emotion; I pray this will not be the case. I want her to meet my son in her full joy, knowing she has a little one on the way so we can enjoy motherhood together.


Joy, loss, excitement, sorrow - all swirling around to create our mosaic - Open Adoption. It is one of those many lessons that adoption teaches families, emotions are messy, there are no right or wrong emotions to feel when adopting.





Our adoption process:
2010

• July 2010 - first call to DSHS about becoming foster-adopt parents
• October 2010 - began foster care classes
• December 2010 - finished foster care classes and began paperwork

2011

• January 2011 - began fingerprints and background check process
• February 2011 - had fingerprints redone
• March 2011 - fingerprints lost in system then finally found, completed paperwork
• April 2011 - background checks completed/passed and foster licensor retires
• May 2011 - a different licensor re-assigned; first home study review with licensor
• June 2011 - second interview with licensor
• July 2011 - counselor talks with licensor, home study on hold while licensor is on vacation
• September 2011 - licensed foster parents; and begin adoption home study
• December 2011 - adoption home study approved!

2012

• January 2012 - try registering with adoption websites, begin struggle with state
• February 2012 - forced by state to transfer case to private agency in order to adopt; our regional DCFS office will not place foster children in our home or work with us because we want to adopt
• March 2012 - begin adoption home study process all over again with Bethany Christian Services
• May 2012 - begin home study interviews and inspection
• June 2012 - fingerprinted twice, complete home study interviews
• July 2012 - adoption home study complete and foster license transferred to private agency
• August 2012 - we learn about Junior in another region of the state, plan is adoption
• August 18, 2012 - first foster placement - Junior moves in
• November 2012 - state changes plan from adoption to concurrent adoption and reunification

2013

• March 2013 - biological mother agrees to relinquish her parental rights
• April 2013 - biological father's parental rights terminated; biological mother's relinquishment signed
• May 2013 - biological mother's relinquishment filed with court and rights terminated; Open Adoption Agreement between us and biological mother filed with court; post-placement report sent to adoption lawyer and DCFS
• June 2013 - Junior becomes legally free; adoption paperwork processed
• July 2013 - we sign adoption papers and court date assigned for finalization
• August 2013 - state signs adoption papers and sends them to our lawyer
• August 23, 2013 - adoption finalized!!!!!!

Infertility and Choices

I recently met with my best friend whom I have not seen in nearly a year. Between our adoption paperwork last year and her and her husband's infertility testings last year, we both were dealing with a lot. When Mike and I were blessed with Junior later in the year, they backed off even from phone calls as it was difficult to for them to be happy for us while they continued to struggle with their empty arms. We knew this would happen as we had discussed this scenario before we were matched with Junior. Roles would have been reversed had she given birth before we received an adoptive placement. I am still infertile, but we now have a child in our family; adoption does not negate my infertility, it is an alternative for growing our family. They are still infertile and are pursuing IVF in hopes of a child. After spending several hours catching up with my best friend, one thing she said stuck with me, she said that while they have been trying fertility treatments for two years, she and her husband have been trying to conceive for four years and it has taken its emotional toll. This statement got me thinking about her journey and about my journey.

Mike and I have had years, almost decades, of emotions regarding my fertility and other health issues. I actually found out at age 15 (20 years ago), a year before meeting Mike, that I would not be birthing children. At the time, I readily accepted adoption as my only path to motherhood. I was okay with this decision for years. After we were married for 10 years and were looking at adoption options, I also explored surrogacy, but realized we would have to go through adoption even in this case since we would be using a surrogate with at least donated egg, possibly donated embryo. Regardless of our path to parenthood, our choices were: adoption or childlessness. That does not really seem like options, but thinking more about it, I realize most people do not even think about how they are going to form their family. They have sex, the woman gets pregnant, carries a health baby to term and they raise the child. That is supposed to be the standard, no-thought process. We actually had to think about how we wanted to become parents, so did my best friend and her husband. They discussed fertility treatments and adoption. They already tried IUI and are moving on to IVF. Even with IVF there are a variety of choices which the non-infertile person is not aware even exist. With adoption we have choices of: foster-adopt, domestic infant or international. We started an international adoption process but moved to foster-adopt. Even with foster-adopt, we had to choose a private agency (see A Side Step in Our Journey for previous blog post), but our choices were limited due to our location and desired age of child.

Now there are some choices we did not get to make about our child - name, age and past experiences. For many parents, picking a name for their child before birth is a wonderful thing. Since we were adopting an older child, we knew our child would come with a name; we would work with our child should he/she desires to change his/her name at the time of adoption, but the child would already be named upon arrival. As for age, we only knew our child would be over age 5, then age 8, then we moved it to age 10 and older. And past experiences, we would have no idea until we were matched.

In ways infertile couples have more choices for family planning than fertile couples, but these choices are thrust upon us because we cannot achieve parenthood in the traditional way. Since we are forced to make various choices on our path to parenthood, it elicits a variety of emotions along the way. A common emotion during these choices is anger - anger due to frustration from having to make the choices, anger at our failed bodies, anger at having to expose our lives including finances to adoption workers or infertility clinic employees, anger due to exhaustion of going through the process(es) we chose, anger at other people's ability to get pregnant or adopt quicker. So often we feel alone when we need the greatest support, we feel we are either forgotten or misunderstood by our loved ones. Our fertile family and friends may not understand our decisions or about infertility so they may avoid us or say very crass things including identifying the cause (blame) of our infertility (see Creating A Family Blog: Playing Blame Game Infertility) which only causes us more pain and anger. My best friend and I are open about our infertility and our choices with others - her fertility treatments and me adoption - so we can let other infertile couples know they are not alone; we are not alone. When we started our adoption journey, I did not expect to become so knowledgeable about the various ways to adopt, fertility treatment, surrogacy and everything else related to infertility. I am in no way an expert, but I know way more than I knew existed before we started this journey. With my friend going through IVF I am learning more about the choices she faces. Maybe, some day, by talking openly about our struggles and choices, when the next generation faces infertility, it will not be the shameful, lonely, anger-filled dark place it still remains for many of us. Hopefully each of us dealing with infertility, couples and individuals, can find peace with the decisions we have made along the way.

Anger to Actions

I have spent several evenings wallowing in despair and anger while our foster-adopt process stalls and we wait for the next step in the Jamaican adoption. Yesterday reminded me there are worse things in life. A friend's 20-year old sister was told her cancer has returned after being a 2-year survivor. There is no fairness in this wonderful young woman having to battle cancer again. She was just beginning to feel healthy, was working and she is in her last quarter of junior college. She has such dreams to pursue! This week she will find out what the plan of attack will be this time around.

It angers me greatly that this young woman has to fight for her life while drug runners are living off the lives of others. It angers me that we have been told by the state they really need foster parents, but our process is taking many more months than others who began the process with us. It angers me that orphan teens in Jamaica do not have a proper boundary around their facility to protect them from sexual predators.

While I cannot fix any of these problems, with God's help and motivation, I can make small differences. I can support my friend and her family while her sister fights cancer. I can support legislators who support cancer research. I can help other parents wanting to become foster parents and I can help children in the foster care system. I can support Embracing Orphans as they improve the lives of Jamaica's orphaned. I can support the concrete wall to be built at Windsor Girls' Home in Jamaica. Support is through advocation, prayer and financial giving. Through the anger and actions, the Lord provides me with patience to deal with the unfairness of life. At times the the actions overwhlem the anger, but other times the anger overwhelms the patience and actions. When the anger is overwhelming, my punching bag is quite useful.

If there is a situation that angers you, I ask you to take action to correct the situation in any small way.
If cancer angers you - raise funds for the cancer society Relay For Life, comfort a cancer patient and their family, volunteer in a cnacer ward.
If the foster care system angers you - become a foster parent, become a guardian ad litum, mentor and support a foster child, advocate for changes in the law and funding to get children out of foster care sooner.
If orphans in substandard living conditions or being preyed upon - support an organization like Embracing Orphans that support orphans, sponsor an orphan, volunteer in another country to help orphans, provide financial support for the wall around Windsor Girls' Home.

Embracing Orphans and Windsor's Girls' Home Wall: http://www.embracingorphans.org/index.html

Frustrating Delays

Got a phone call I did not want to receive. Our contact at DSHS is retiring as of April 20 and the State does not know who will fill his spot. Our home study is delayed until the State decides if they will wait for the replacement to get up to speed or have a contract licensor do our home study. We will be lucky to start our home study in May. I was told we will only have one interview on the day of our inspection with the whole appointment lasting 3.5 hours. If any type of delay exists, it seems to happen to us. There are other foster parents who began the process with us in October, had their background checks processed in January and February and already have their licenses. So we wait nad have to be patient. I am doubting at this time we will have a child placed with us by the end of the year. Mother's Day will be difficult this year. Just hearing that strangers are pregnant upsets me. A dear friend begins fertility treatments this month. While I will be happy for her if she becomes pregnant, it will not be easy for me while I wait for my child. We have shared the tears and pain of infertility together and this is the year we hope to fulfill our dreams of becoming mothers. We continue to pray and wait. There will be more tears, more anger and more frustration to come, all with the hope that our dreams will come true.