We had our first adoption training a few days ago. I walked away with two main points:
-All adoption starts with some losses. Own them, grieve them, celebrate the wins.
-As parents it is our responsibility to advocate for our children.
So, I'm starting my preparing the environment our baby will be brought into. Preparing by educating myself and educating those around us. Because while it might temporarily hurt my feelings when someone calls my baby's birth mother his/her "Real Mother" I'm more concerned about what impact that title might have on my developing, precious, child.
Please take the time to read this beautiful article by Becca. Here are some of my highlights:
"Another small difference in wording can be heard when I say that my son was adopted. Not is adopted, but was adopted. That may seem like a minor detail, but small words carry great meaning. Adoption shapes a child and a family, but it does not define them entirely. It is simply a way of forming a family. Just like your child was born in 2005, my son was adopted that year.
So if we want to, we will explain that James was adopted. Like all other families, we love to tell the story of the day that our son joined our family. More often, though, I don’t mention it at all. It is rarely relevant to the conversation at hand. When you introduce your child, you don’t say, “this-is-my-conceived-by-invitro-son” or my “oops-she-was-an-accident daughter.” The method by which you became a family is simply not important in most conversations. The same is true of our family. Yes, James joined our family through adoption. Yes, we are very proud of that detail. But there is rarely a need to distinguish our family from others."
Comments