A Process of Hope

Since we've embarked on this adoption journey, there have been a LOT of questions from our friends, family, community and even those we don't know very well.  We welcome questions as it is a chance for us to talk about the process of hope and help educate people as to how we are working on making our family through adoption.  

For us, and for families like us, the process starts with questions.  Hundreds of them.  In fact, before we even begun the Home Study process (which I'll highlight in a future blog), we started with these questions:

 - Should we use an agency, a facilitator, or go it alone with self-marketing and a lawyer who specializes in adoption and family law? 

 - Should we foster to adopt? Do we fit the criteria for the type of child we want to adopt?

 - Are we interested in domestic or International adoption?

 - What does the process cost?

We chose to go with an agency that is licensed by the state to pursue domestic adoption.  We began our home study last October and finished in February of this year (and we were aggressive with our timeline).  At the end of the Home Study, many people asked us where we were on "the list" to adopt a baby.

Our answer?  There isn't really a "list" - only a process of hope.

I didn't realize before we started this journey that a prioritized "list" for adoption didn't exist.  In fact, it is possible that some adoptive parents are never chosen to parent.  An agency cannot guarantee when a family will be chosen, nor can they guarantee if they will be chosen.

While an agency counsels birth mothers, and sometimes birth fathers, these children do not always get placed for adoption.  If a birth parent needs to make an alternate plan for his or her child and place the child for adoption, they then have the option to select the adoptive family.  Through our agency, as wonderful as they are, we are just waiting to be contacted to meet a potential birth parent.  And then we'll be waiting to see if we are selected to parent a child.

This is why we augment the efforts through social education. This is why we are open to answering questions about the process and why we want to share our journey with you. This is why we write a blog, host a website, have an open Facebook page, and Tweet.  

It’s also why we ask you to share with your friends, neighbors, hairdressers, kids, doctors, parents, play groups, work colleagues, teachers and fellow Patch readers.  You are our biggest chance at having hope for this process.  If someone, somewhere stumbles across this blog or mentions us to a friend who has a friend who has a friend, we may be able to have a family. If you mention this, a birth mother who needs to make a different plan for her child, may have hope too. 

If you tell someone, you become part of our process of hope.