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.