Catching up 4: The power of YES

This blog post originally appeared on http://www.alcoates.co.uk/2016/02/the-power-of-yes.html in February. Mr. C aka the flesh and brain behind Misadventures of An Adoptive Father has asked me for a guest post on his widely successful site, which I considered a great honour.

Now, hubby and I are approved adopters and if all goes well we will have a Matching Panel in a couple of weeks. I feel the time is right to dip my proverbial pen into the ink and start my own blog.

They said,

Yes, we need you...

Yes, we like you...

Yes, tell us all about yourselves...

Yes, we will train you...

Yes, we are happy to assess you...

Yes, we approved you...

Yes, you have a lot to offer...

Yes, you will be great adoptive parents...

Yes, that's a good book to read...

Yes, now we wait...

Yes, we know it's hard to wait...

Yes, we understand...

Yes, it's the climate...

Yes, we found a child...

Yes, you would be a good match...

Yes, you understand the needs of the child...

Yes, you are not the only family they look at...

Yes, we might know more in a month...

Yes, we know it's disappointing...

Yes, we are back to the drawing board...

Yes, we can continue looking again when you are ready...

Yes, you think you are ready...

Yes, we found a new child...

Yes, he looks just like you...

Yes, it's very promising...

Yes, they come to do a home visit...

Yes, there is another child who needs you...

Yes, they really want you...

Yes, it is hard to choose which child to pursue...

Yes, you need to decide now...

Yes, you are playing God...

No, you don't get to do that without consequences!

Catching up 3: What if the time is now?

This blog post originally appeared on http://www.alcoates.co.uk/2015/06/what-if-time-is-now.html in last June. Mr. C aka the flesh and brain behind Misadventures of An Adoptive Father has asked me for a guest post on his widely successful site, which I considered a great honour.

Now, almost a year later, hubby and I are approved adopters and if all goes well we will have a Matching Panel in a couple of weeks. I feel the time is right to dip my proverbial pen into the ink and start my own blog.

Mr C found out we have been approved a few weeks ago as adopters and asked me to jot down my feelings. Hope you can make sense of these ramblings now...

Friends were cheering for us, some prayed, others crossed fingers and they worked! We were recommended by Panel and 2 weeks later the single most important letter arrived confirming that we are indeed approved and Family Finding can start. Yay! Exciting times ahead! We were ecstatic...relieved... and scared. 

Then this emotional turmoil turned into a loop. Excited-happy-afraid, what a combo!

Yesterday our SW came to formally sign the Family Finding papers and encouraged us to look at websites dedicated to ‘Children shopping’. Suddenly a whole new world opened up in front of our very eyes. It took about 10 minutes of browsing to become overwhelmed. It reminded us of compiling our weekly Tesco shopping; inviting photos of the ‘products’ with a description and a way to enquire further.

Thank God we both knew exactly the kind of children we were hoping to receive into our family so it didn't take long to draw up a short list. In fact, we finished sooner than with our Tesco list, but boy, was it million times harder!!!

Naturally the Saviour complex kicked in and we wanted to rescue ALL the short-listed siblings in the system. Then we started to read their profiles. Hubby is smarter as he purposefully didn't look at the photos first. I couldn't ignore the pictures and with pretty much all the children I noticed something familiar: a smile; that mischievous look; those adventurous feet; the longing to be loved and cherished.

Not fully understanding the system just yet we clicked on ‘enquire further’ a few times. Then we went to bed still feeling enveloped by the excited-happy-scared loop.  

Today at work my phone dinged. The message read ‘a link was made’.

 A LINK WAS MADE!

We were told family finding can take a long time. All the way from day one everybody in the know told us to prepare for a long wait and we were. Deep down I was happy with it as I still think I am not ready to become a mummy. I have come to terms with the fact that I will never feel ready so I could overcome this nagging feeling of ‘not being there yet’. I even drew up a long list of reasons why it is good not to have the children just yet, although hubs doesn't share my views; he chose to drop the ‘scared’ bit from his loop and wishes the children were placed yesterday. All our friends encourage us with ‘it will happen in God’s time.’ Right... But! What if this time is NOW?

As I type this 2 SW are exchanging our PAR and the children’s CPR and I feel a level of panic creeping up in my heart. OMG! This is really happening!!

Realistically this might not lead to anywhere. This was just the very first step. So many unknowns, so many variables, so many potential outcomes... One of those might just change my life forever! Not like getting married; it will be much-much bigger! That I am sure of! What I am unsure of is how will I react if this progresses in the right direction??? 

So, for now, a link is made. And I am choosing to drop the ‘scared’ bit of the loop and just embrace this truly exciting moment in time and not worry about the next steps!

Catching up 2: Adoption: Is it happy ever after?

This blog post originally appeared on http://www.alcoates.co.uk/2015/05/adoption-is-it-happy-ever-after.html in last May. Mr. C aka the flesh and brain behind Misadventures of An Adoptive Father has asked me for a guest post on his widely successful site, which I considered a great honour.

Now, almost a year later, hubby and I are approved adopters and if all goes well we will have a Matching Panel in a couple of weeks. I feel the time is right to dip my proverbial pen into the ink and start my own blog.


Let me start by saying we are neither naive nor ignorant about the harsh reality of adoption; the ‘trying to raise somebody else’s child’ bits; the ‘trying to make the most of a less-than-ideal situation’ bits; the ‘trying to correct, re-train and manage damage control constantly’ bits... I do get it!

I appreciate the best intentions of adoption trainings where they only try to prepare you for the worst, while they tell you to ‘feel free to hope for the best’, but their knowing smile and sad face speaks louder and we both know better... or do I, really?

We are still waiting to be approved. In the meantime we take part in regular trainings like all adopters do. Recently the topics turned darker with titles like ‘Managing challenging behaviour and the use of restraint’ or ‘Attachment problems and Trauma management’ and these to reinforce this growing feeling inside me that we have signed up for 20+ stormy years with only occasional sunny minutes that are few and far in between.

We were encouraged to join online and offline support groups, subscribe to adoption related magazines, read books, socialise with adopters, hear their stories, follow blogs of funny/experienced/honest/REAL DEAL adopters who have seen it all and willing to share their stories...etc. We jumped onto the bandwagon eagerly realising that we have soooo much to learn! Now my social media feeds, my inbox, my post box is full of stories, full of how-to-avoid articles, and I do get one message loud and clear:

There are no happy ever afters! Ever!

It is well worth it, sure,

rewarding even, 

occasionally fun, 

sometimes OK, 

but never happy, or 

not for long anyway!

At the moment I am feeling overwhelmed with all the negativity that I read on Twitter/Facebook/online forums, all that I hear when I ask adopters direct questions or just listen to their ranting about ‘another terrible weekend’, ‘another epic fail’, ‘another bruise’, ‘another fight’... Suddenly I understand abbreviations like CPV (if you know this, well, I am truly sorry; if you don’t, be happy!) all too well.

Even the stock photos of happy people (the ones that are used in adoption advertisements) were condemned as ‘giving false hope and not showing the real side of adoption’. Another person told me once I adopt a child they will become invisible and can never be seen on photos ever again!

I do understand where all these comments come from. I understand that it is hard, that it can be painful. What I don’t understand is where the happy endings hide??? I refuse to believe there are none! I, for one, am tired of reading only about complaints, challenges and bad days and long for a more balanced representation of this crazy calling.

I am being encouraged ONLY by friends who are not part of the Adoption Triangle; those who don’t have first-hand experience; those who only know somebody who knows somebody who is involved in adoption and sadly I am beginning to believe that their positivism is rooted in blissful ignorance. But even so, they try to do the right thing by lifting my spirit up, bringing my vision back to the positive direction, help me to focus on the bright side and most importantly: don’t crush my hopes and dreams!

So, on behalf of every person who contemplates adoption:

I BEG YOU, ADOPTERS

Please please please post the happy memories too! Encourage prospective adopters with positive messages!

And share happy endings!

Catching up 1: Rocking the boat

This blog post originally appeared on http://www.alcoates.co.uk/2015/04/rocking-boat.html in last April. Mr. C aka the flesh and brain behind Misadventures of An Adoptive Father has asked me for a guest post on his widely successful site, which I considered a great honour.

Now, a year later, hubby and I are approved adopters and if all goes well we will have a Matching Panel in a couple of weeks. I feel the time is right to dip my proverbial pen into the ink and start my own blog.

How dare a SW judge the sincerity and communicational depth of my relatively short marriage when she claims to become an expert in knowing me in and out after meeting me only 6 times before her report (and my future happiness) is set in stone?

To be fair our SW is a well seasoned professional and a lovely person who is very able to assess me / us as a couple and write up a fair and true report, but my question is still valid...

In all honesty we are a V-E-R-Y unusual couple. Unusual is good – the SW said. Panel likes unusual – the SW said. But do they, really?

When they have to sit all day in a small room with familiar faces around the table; when they have to comment on each case for the minutes; when they have to read hundreds of pages to come prepared for the panel meeting; when they already know who will have a problem with which couple; when all they want is to approve a couple... do they really want unusual cases? Or do they rather wish for simple, straight forward, clean cut or (heaven forbid) textbook cases?

We could have children. We are 35+ young professionals from safe and stable families who C-H-O-S-E not to become birth parents themselves. We could fill pages (oh, wait, we did! On countless occasions!) with the reasons, but for now let’s just forget the many reasons and focus on the choice we made. If pro-choice is so widely popular; if abortion is so acceptable; if nobody is allowed to tell a young or old / drug addict or alcohol addict / severe mental health / abusive... etc or just simply a very nice ‘perfect’ person the sentence ‘you must not have birth children of your own’ or ‘ok, lady, you had enough, maybe a dozen will do’ and all these people and their choices are and should be respected then why do I feel I am the bad person here?

Why do I have to keep defending my view? Why am I labelled ‘unfit to be a parent’ if I am not desperate to become one (in other words: I need a child, any child would do really, just so that I can be a parent)? We have a happy marriage and life, we feel our family is complete, we do not yearn for a non-existent hole to be filled by somebody else’s child. We simply put our own needs aside and choose to adopt siblings already in the system who do not have a safe and loving home where they can just be children and then grow up to be happy and supported adults. We could provide all that and much more for these children. Yet, somehow we find ourselves time and time again judged, questioned, condemned even for the choices we made in our lives.

Other that this we tick all the boxes. House, car, income, support network, stay home parent...whatever you need. Why would then our chances of being approved tripled if we said we C-O-U-L-D not have children? I fail to see how any of the above mentioned factors would change and still, somehow we would fit the ‘usual’ box and would be approved in no time...

But I do want to become a parent...
I do want to get approved...
I do want to bless those children...

So I don’t rock the boat. Just keep quiet. And I keep answering the same questions on and on again. With a smile. As usual.