Our life in pictures  

We’ve been absolutely immersed in photos and memories lately as we develop our profile book. It felt daunting at first, but having devoted so much time and energy to the effort lately, I can say that this is really an experience I would recommend to anyone. Certainly, there have been late nights spent struggling with how to tell a story that is so personal and that has so many unmissable moments. And of course there have been periods of writer’s block and plenty of those “okay-I-just-hit-a-wall” moments and the occasional “what-was-this-page-supposed-to-be-about-again”. But despite the obvious challenge of it, we’ve shared so many smiles and laughter over the last few weeks that it has been completely worth it. Besides, lack of sleep and mental exhaustion are things we should be getting prepared for, right? But this is all very easy for me to say. Credit must be given where it’s actually due, to the scrapbook artist herself. While I’ve certainly made my contributions, Tiffany deserves all the mint chocolate chip ice cream and foot rubs in the world for bringing our love story to life on the pages she created for our book. And considering how this family takes pictures, it has been a truly colossal undertaking to compile all those snapshots and piece together all the right words to fit into one neat little package. She’s my hero for doing it so well and for doing it in a way that is so unique to us.

I can imagine few experiences as intimate as devoting time to the act of really looking back together and witnessing those moments again. I’m not sure that we would have ever felt compelled to do it without some sort of deadline, however self-imposed, and so I’m grateful for it. Looking at these pictures of our life together has reminded me how far we’ve come and how our hearts have been stitched together over the years. Not to exhaust the wildness metaphor, but at a certain point it really is worth pausing along the way to look back from a high vantage point and gaze out at all the ground you’ve covered. It’s easy to get lost in the rhythm of simply putting one foot in front of the other without looking up or looking back. But pausing to take this breath together has been a really unexpected gift. We have come an amazingly long way together, and it’s astounding to see.

As we collect ourselves from our exhaustion and lean forward together to what lies ahead, we gather the strength to continue on our way. And I have a sense that someday we’ll look back at the steps we’re taking now in this time and place and remember every exhilarating wave of emotion, every rush of anticipation and every hope we have for what our family will be.

Mather Pass on the JMT, a view I'll never forget, in 2002.

What a Wonderful Weekend of "We-ness Wellness"...Wow, Wow, Wow!

It's a strange feeling to be done with our required training. I thought I'd be so happy to have another step taken care of. I intended to just check it off of a list. Clearly, I was acting from my head. My emotions feel differently about it. On the way home last night, I felt a little sad, a little apprehensive and a lot excited.

To recap, we did some serious work in preparing our souls for this new adventure on weekend one. On weekend two, we moved beyond the focus on ourselves and our fellow group members and into the world of our birth mothers and the experience of being adopted from our kids' point of view. This weekend brought it all together to fold the lessons we've learned into the fabric of all three perspectives. We learned to focus on the "we" instead of the "I" or the "you". We acquired skills to make sure we're creating wellness for the whole and that led to the aptly dubbed concept of We-ness Wellness! (Say it out loud. If you don't giggle, you'll know you had to be there.)

We learned about parenting a newborn and the next steps in our journey to welcoming those little ones home. It was extremely inspiring to be shown how to swaddle, books that we might read to our kids about their story, tools to teach our family principles to each other and the kiddos. It was all so practical. It was all so real. It was all so confirming. We had to clap at one point when Tammy, one of the agency's birth mother counselors, started her next teaching with "You're all going to have a baby." What a proclamation!

We wrote letters again this weekend, but there was a much different tone. This time, they were welcome letters to our anticipated little ones. We each shared our unique version of our hopes and dreams about what kind of lives we'll offer them. I wrote to ours about what a fantastic set of grandparents and friends await them. I lost it when I was reading aloud how awesome their daddy is and how much we look forward to meeting them. Josh shared a similar vision and that they should take their time in finding us, but to hurry up! :-)

What hit me was that as I watched each person read their welcome letter, I know that each of these sets of parents are going to be just awesome. I can't wait for each of us to begin our families and I feel as excited for them as I do for the two of us...and all of you waiting with us!

One session was led by a family that adopted their baby six weeks ago and we got to see that it really does happen. Then, as if on queue, we were visited by another family just dropping by with their kids on their way to the birthday party of one of the kids in their adoptive parent group. Also, a text came in with the picture of a three-year-old's birthday cake face letting the agency ladies know they were still in the family's heart three years later. All of this served to assuage any concerns our group had about the genuineness of the agency's promise that we've made lifelong friends with our group members. There was a bittersweet sentiment in the air as we all realized that the safety of being understood each weekend among these other people sharing in our journey was no longer going to be scheduled for us. As we left, the plans for our first monthly potluck were already underway. Thank goodness.

We received a bag of gifts from the agency that are already in use in our home. Each couple received a soft, cuddly teddy bear, a journal and a gorgeous candle. We all lit our candles and the light that was shared with seven couples' hope is sure to reach our babies' souls and let them know that we're ready. We placed our candle in the nursery at home. We'll focus on drawing our baby to us through this light of hope often. In the journal, we'll write love letters to bring them to us. We're sharing openly about the dream of our family and our kids will get to read all about it when they are growing up.

Appropriately, we ended the training with an ice cream bar, complete with waffle cones...my favorite!

For us, the next step is a meeting with the agency to discuss our openness to an open adoption, children of other races, special needs, sex of the baby, and we don't know what else. As we understand it, after that time, we'll be waiting for a connection to be made and our love story to begin.

The Heartbeat

There are some things in life that cannot be compared to any other. For the guys out there, you'll just have to trust me on this one. There is absolutely nothing any human can experience that compares to the understanding that there are two hearts beating inside of you. Nothing.

This photo is from our first visit to the doctor after we learned we were pregnant last year. I had been warned that it was pretty special, but no one could prepare me for the flood of emotions as we began to hear that consistent "shh, shh, shh" of the heart beat represented by the numbers and doctor garbledegook on the monitor screen. It was unreal, but so real. Of course so little else was developed, but that heart beat was there and strong and let me know that a connection had been formed.

And then, it stopped. Just disappeared. We went in for the next visit and it couldn't be found. Our doctor searched and searched, for our benefit I'm sure, but it was just silent. I'm convinced that ours stopped too for a split second as the realization came over us and we saw our baby just laying there motionless on the screen.

The heart is a funny thing. It's sometimes represented as a cartoon figure of the love emotion. Sometimes, there's a scientific understanding of its vital function to keep us all going. Ancient Egyptians believed we thought with our hearts, and so discarded the brains, but kept the heart organ to bury with the deceased. It's probably still true, some of us do think with our hearts...thank goodness.

A connection through the heart beat is one of those first things that a baby begins to understand about their environment. After that tumultuous experience of being squeezed out of its comfort zone, it seeks that constant beat it has come to know and love in the womb, its mama's heart. In an adoption story, that heartbeat changes into a new sound at placement and even the very thing our baby relies on to be familiar will be different.

Grandparents beware...this next part is going to be hard to read!

We learned this weekend just how important it will be to introduce our heart beat to our babies. Our babies will have had 9 months in the womb (we hope) to establish a familiar connection to their mama's heartbeat. That will be what they're seeking when we bring them home with us and everything is new and different. We'll then begin introducing them to the pounding love in our hearts and making sure they are familiar with us as they begin their new lives.

As expectant adoptive parents, we agree with the agency that it is very important that we're the only ones holding the babies and connecting with them. They need to first come to know us intimately as we have a lot to catch up on in establishing that connection. We'll be very focused on our little family of mommy, daddy and babies. The recommendation is that we're the only ones to hold them for the first 8-12 weeks. We ask for your understanding and respect in that effort. We KNOW this will be hard. I asked the agency if we could give you all their number when the complaints come rolling in. :-)

As an expectant adoptive mother, I feel a need to establish that two-way connection that I'll be getting a late start on. After our experience last year, it is important to me to learn our babies' heartbeats as well and introduce them to ours. They are going to be our babies and I want to make sure they know us as their safe place, mommy and daddy.

Hippity Hoppity Easter - A Time for New Life and Meeting Birthmothers!

We just completed our training on an introduction to the perspective of the birth mothers with whom our agency works. What an incredible group of women! The agency does quite a thorough job of making sure that we, as adoptive parents, are who they want to place babies with. If we didn't seem like a good fit, they'd have no problem recommending other agencies a couple might be better suited to go through to adopt. They do not, however, turn away a birth mother looking for guidance on placing her baby for adoption. They welcome and are supportive of all. While each one brings her own story to the agency, we've picked up on a few commonalities.

1. They all love their babies very, very much!

2. No one gets pregnant in order to place their baby for adoption. It is a decision that these women arrive at after much consideration and contemplation about the best life for their child.

3. They are predominantly grateful for the adoptive parents to raise their child in a home that is loving and can provide a stability they do not feel that they have in their own lives.

4. They are often interested in keeping informed about the child initially and then the path that connection takes later on varies greatly.

We have been open to "open" adoption from the beginning. We don't know exactly how our personal situation will define "open", but we do know that we want our kids to have all the answers they need to understand their own multidimensional backgrounds. Our hope is that we can experience a connection with the birth family and keep them involved enough that the kids know they are loved by many people.

It's not joint custody we're after, they will be our kids and we'll have the tasks of diapers, discipline, bedtime stories and curfews. It's knowledge of another set of their roots. It's more love. Every child deserves to know in their heart that they are loved without a doubt and we are confident that we can share with our kids the many loving reasons their birth mother relinquished her rights to parent them. They will likely have questions about why they were "given up", but they will be reassured that love was at the core of her decision.

The birth mother will have a say in how open she wants the relationship to be. So will we. We believe that our story will play out the way it is meant to. We think we'll be matched with a woman who understands all of our roles in helping the children feel complete in their understanding of who they are and where they're from. We're excited to meet her!

The Making of a Personality

We learned a lot about our children's development this weekend. We studied Erik Erikson's Theory of Personality and the life-stage virtues acquired through 8 stages of development. It was a useful session in Parenting 101. Two friends have already tapped my brain about the phase their child is in now. I do think it's insightful information for all parents.

However, we got the extra special version. Our kids will need to experience these developmental phases with their peers for sure. They'll need to learn to make decisions and develop some self confidence about their place in this world. They will also have an additional adoption component sitting on their shoulders.

Always eager for the "instructions" or "rules to follow" on how to do things in life, I was all over this. I thought this was going to be the making of a how-to guide to make sure that being adopted doesn't stamp "I have issues" all over our kids' little foreheads. We learned that when our little ones go through the phase of "I can do this myself!" when they're two years old, they'll have a little birdie on their shoulder reminding them to test just how far we'll walk away from them as they try. Will we relinquish them all over again if they push us away? And, when they're in that teenage phase of trying to identify just who they are, they'll have an additional set of questions about their biological roots as well.

But what I really took away from this session was that ever-present reminder that we're all different. That our life events will affect us differently and that our environments to handle those challenges will help shape how we move through them. Our role as parents isn't to teach our kids that they should be testing us to know that we won't relinquish them, but to be aware that they might be doing that subconsciously. There is not one right way that we can answer a set list of questions they'll have about adoption, but we had better be ready for the curve balls that their curious minds will throw our way. With the discussion around their experience from the point of view of three adoptees in the group, I feel better prepared for that eventuality. It provided a well-rounded perspective about what it is like to be adopted and how a compassionate environment is key to supporting our kids' inevitable need to know.

Brokenness and the Love that Surrounds It

This weekend did not have the same high emotional intensity for all of us as the first weekend, but the bonds created with the other couples have only deepened through more sharing. It's really such an amazing environment that we surround ourselves in for two days at a time.

The first weekend of training was about us, the adoptive couples. We shared our stories, tears and hopes. It was a way to open our hearts to understanding the grief of others and feeling compassion for them as their journey takes them over bumps in the road. It was to prepare us for our trainings of week two.

We now have the beginnings of the capacity to understand the place from which our kids' experience began. The weekend began with a beautiful ceremony that symbolized the "brokenness" we all feel from traumatic life events.

Consider a broken ceramic plate. We've broken a treasured keepsake from Niger, a necklace from Tanzania, a tiny little doll from Ukraine among countless other special tokens of our memories together. Josh has been successful at gluing them back together so that their general shape is again intact. However, if you look closely, you can still see those cracks. You can still see the thickness of the glue trying to keep the memory together. You still feel the pang of remorse at having it broken in the first place.

Now consider a major life event that changed your make up forever. Something that will sit with you always, though you'll move through it and beyond the daily suffering from it. There's no denying it's impact on your character, though you're pretty well glued back together and making it through this crazy lifetime. When our children are relinquished by their birth mothers to live their lives with us, there's likely to be a part of them that is broken in some way. It might not surface for some, it might be a driving force in how others establish relationships in their lives. But somehow, all of our kids will begin life with this significant event of being adopted.

Saturday we witnessed the breaking of a lovely ceramic plate. When the plate hit the stone, I felt it reverberate through me to the core. It represented every step of grief that I've experienced so far and I recognized myself in the pattern that the plate took when the pieces were again placed roughly back together. We then began the process of surrounding that brokenness with love. We each placed rose petals on a crack. We sent the rose around and around our circle until you couldn't really even see the plate for all the "love" covering it.

Taking the time to truly reflect on the affect of our babies' beginnings feels like the most responsible way to begin our relationship with them. They've already had quite a journey by the time our love pours over them. We can't erase that journey, or the potential hurt resulting from it, but we can surround them with love and a safe place to move through the emotions.

Thoughts on a Nursery

We made that all-important leap into babydome last night when we found a great deal on a crib on craigslist! It has transformed the nursery from that "extra room", that "storage space", that "meditation space" to an all out "baby-watching-changing-feeding-reading-rocking-playing-cuddling-loving room".

In this photo, you can get a glimpse of Tiffany's interpretation of the grass in the Savannah of Africa. The sky is just beginning to turn blue and there is a lot more to come. We've toyed with different ideas for what to paint and settled on a couple of Banyan family trees and some animals. We figure as "the wait" lags on, we'll paint a new animal each time we're antsy. It will either be a full jungle in there or we'll get through half of an elephant and get that call!

We dream of re-purposing a table in the corner to be our changing table and another fresh coat of paint on that old dresser has made a home for those cute little onesies. We need a soft rug and some cushion on the rocker that will get many nights of use. Josh is trying to find the right spot for a guitar and has already recorded some tracks of white noise - the wind rustling through a pine forest and owls hooting through the night. Tiffany has stacks of books in mind and a bookshelf all drawn up in her imagination.

We spend all night talking and dreaming about how to decorate, live in and love the baby's room.

Then, in the morning, we sluggishly wake up about an hour after we intended to and talk about how much harder it is gonna be to be lazy with a little one (or two) in that room across the hall.

How to compete between couples? - Nah, it's just Metta that we're learning


"Training" AKA: Introducing us to amazing people and ensuring that we're all 100% supportive of each other as we fully expose parts of our lives that no one else on earth knows about. Whew! What a weekend.

We've completed our first full weekend of the agency's training program. We met the rest of our group. We are 7 couples in all and we spent all day Saturday and Sunday getting to know very personal aspects of these strangers' lives. It was an amazing experience and we left feeling supported, exhausted, grateful and filled with certainty that we picked the right agency. There is not a sense of competition among us, as some have suggested and I even feared. We are a new group of friends with a collective hope.

This is exactly why we selected this team of women to guide our kids our way. When we met with Jude in January, we immediately valued the approach of a group of adoptive parents going through this together. I think it came from a place of feeling alone in our experience. We know people are there for us and we cherish that support. But, there's nothing like experiencing these highs and lows first hand. This group of people understands that. We were stripped down to our rawest emotions about how we came to make the decision to adopt and we're all so excited to see the dream come to reality for each other.

The beauty of these trainings is that we'll learn the practice of Metta, or loving kindness, in the Buddhist philosophy. "Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through metta one refuses to be offensive and renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness and benevolence which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True metta is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. Metta is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love.

Metta makes one a pure font of well-being and safety for others. To promote one's own interest is a primordial motivation of human nature. When this urge is transformed into the desire to promote the interest and happiness of others, not only is the basic urge of self-seeking overcome, but the mind becomes universal by identifying its own interest with the interest of all. By making this change one also promotes one's own well-being in the best possible manner."

The way that our counselor, Jude, explained Metta has stayed with me since I first heard it. She said to consider that light rainfall that drizzles through an aspen grove and touches every single thing with the rain. It's all around and embraces everyone.

Now, if you think we've just drunk the koolaid, you're right! We're okay with that. It tastes good and it feels so great to be supportive of others. They're supporting us too. To channel our experience into something that creates a safe space for others to share is so rewarding. We spent time on Saturday learning names, professions, interests and reasons for choosing this agency. After lunch, we dove right into groups of the guys and the gals and shared a little about our darkest point in this journey and how we saw our way out of it. Yeah, that was a lot of fun...not. But again, it felt safe.

Sunday, we all started the day sharing how great we felt to be back with the group and it was a generally upbeat mood. Then our birth mother counselor, Joanne, informed us that this was the hardest day of the training. I don't know what is to come, but I'm hoping that this was in fact the hardest day. As a group, we took turns sharing our full story of how we arrived at this point. It was heartrending and hopeful all at the same time. Each one of our stories is different and that was unexpected for me. I thought that ours was common, but we're all at this point for different reasons. As an empathic person, I absorbed every one's tale and it wrecked my emotions. That there is so much pain in all of our lives (you all included) completely tears me up. It was enlightening to learn about the ways that we've all made it through.

At the end of the weekend, we were asked to write a letter to that imagined biological child that we won't know in this form. We're making room in our hearts for our adoptive family and it was therapeutic, but was more than any of us could handle. We had to read those letters out loud to our partners with the full witness of the group to help us through the choked up thoughts.

Josh and I fully appreciate this agency's focus on making sure we're all as ready as possible for the uniqueness of our path. Each couple talked about the other agencies we'd met with that made this joyful experience feel like a business deal, devoid of the important emotions that surround it. This is what we asked for, for sure. But, Oh. My. God. was is hard.

We both worked from home today, at the recommendation of the agency, and that was very helpful. Exhausted is a very accurate way to describe how we're feeling. I keep telling myself that Sunday was the hardest day. I'm gonna hold them to that! :-)

Hints at what is to come in the training sessions....we've heard mention of meeting birth mothers and what their experience is like next weekend and, of all things, breastfeeding. By the way, we're not doing that. Josh isn't getting out of those 3:00 am feedings.

Metta to you all. Thanks for sharing the journey.