L-I-V-E

Over the past six months during our home-study process Andrew and I have LEARNED so much about ourselves, our strength, and our love. Since July, I have been sharing my story with you all and the words of kindness have been so wonderful. To continue to SHARE I would like to fill you in on where we are in our adoption journey.....We have spent the past two weeks working on our picture profile; sharing the story of us for the birth-mothers who come to the agency. As of tomorrow we will be officially finished home-study, dropping our last piece of papers to the agency. We LEARNED that this means we are "paper pregnant", its a term the social workers like to use. "Paper pregnant"....means that the next time we speak to the agency, will be when we are selected as the parents by a birth-mother. Regardless of how it happens, it is going to happen. Since there is no more work to do on our end through the agency.... I could sit around and twiddle my thumbs and wait, or I can LIVE.

In order to live, I need to follow my heart....Hope now exists for me in life, I want to use it to inspire those whose hope has faded. There was the time when a baby store was my enemy...a pregnant woman was my envy..... There once was a woman who use to cry at Juno, and now I don't search for my life in a movie...cause it's real.

I realize now how to begin the announcement for the group that I am starting at my parish: LIVE, LEARN & SHARE in the journey of adoption: For couples who have, who are interested in or who are hesitant to walk in this path....

Begin with Hope

On my way home from visiting a friend today, I felt compelled to stop by the Church rectory of my parish. I had not been to Church in the past two months however, I had this urge making me turn right into the parking lot. I realized that they were setting up for the annual Carnival that begins this evening. The odds of me speaking to someone, I assumed were low. Contrary to my assumption my experience couldn't have been any further from it.

When Andrew and I first decided we were going to move forward with adoption, we discovered the young priest in our parish, Father Mike, was adopted. He spoke about his experience in the spring during a mass. We reached out to Father Mike and had lunch with him one weekend in early spring. We listened to his story of how he was raised by two very loving parents and his life through adoption; his perspective was new for us. We also discovered that like Andrew, Father Mike was a surfer, and thus the spiritual connection between us became deeper.

When I opened the doors of the rectory Father Mike was standing in the lobby, almost as if he was waiting for me, unknowingly. I told father of our journey during the last five months in our adoption home-study. He was very grateful for my visit and said that he would pray that our wait would be short. I began to explain to Father Mike how empowered I felt from this experience and wanted to do more. There are couples out there like Andrew and I that want nothing more to become parents, yet they feel hopeless. They have no insurance to cover fertility, and no income to support what they assume to be the astronomical costs associated with adoption.

In what began as a two minute conversation, turned into a hour and half one. I found myself sitting in the kitchen of the rectory speaking to Father Mike, The Pastor and Pat, a friend of the family who works at the rectory. Father Mike, stood at the counter eat a banana. Monsignor Rich, spread out a handful of M&Ms on a placement and Pat and I picked at a bowl of cherries that were delicious. We began to brainstorm together on ideas of an adoption group at the parish. The Revered from the entire Diocese of our state is coming to our parish in the fall to have a meeting centered around adoption. They asked me to run it. I found myself being whisked away to a world of possibilities. How will I begin this group? Who will come? What will be the focus of our meeting. So begins my story.

My hope is to give hope to families who don't have it. There were times along my way that I could not picture our home with a child. A few years ago, I began to watch the world around me change, friends and family members becoming pregnant, moving forward with their lives...and I was not. My struggle to become a mother is going to serve a purpose, I have found my way...now its time to give my hope to those who need it most.

I am my friend....

As I drove in my car today, I listened to a song that seemed to make the cars and trees move in harmony; it was as if the world around me was dancing. I came across the Simon and Garfunkel song…. The Boxer. Instead of driving in solemnity thinking about what list I had to do today, or mindless thoughts that I sometimes wander upon, I began to listen to this song, so deeply that I felt an overpowering feeling of strength. Where was that strength that I felt coming from? I asked myself to follow that feeling that I had from this song…..
For years I found myself searching for the answer of who I am from those around me, from my job, from every external identity that I could claim. I was searching for the answers of my life. The answers to the struggles that have taken place along my way. I reached for the infamous question we all ask…"Why?" I thought if I knew the meaning to all of the “why” questions, I would find strength to handle my life. In the song, The Boxer, the music takes your mind on a journey, searching with every note something new. The song describes a story of a poor man’s struggle for life. The words are spoken…“I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.” I could feel those words digging deep into my soul. Those quiet moments which felt like I was on a desert island with no one around but myself to make sense of life. No one ever answered those questions, and yet now I don’t need to know. That feeling of strength that I had throughout this song was within me, it was my own voice. The years of asking "why" to the world around me to find the answers are fading. The only strength I needed all along was to believe in myself, and I do. That inner voice that kept questioning life for so many years is now filled with only one answer that is necessary to live. The answer is me. This is how I came to adopting a new way of life, which is why I can to see beyond the adoption and into who I am, and that is the answer.

It’s a belief in who you are, and no one or nothing else can give you that but yourself.

“Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.”

Old and New....

Over the weekend we had my cousin Nikki's two boys overnight on Saturday for a sleep-over party. We picked up the boys at their home Saturday afternoon in our SUV that we got four years ago. When we purchased the car we had hopes of filling up the extra space with a child of our own someday. Before their dad Shaun had the bags in the car the boys were in the backseat setting up. Justin is four and is still using the older kids car-seat that I had just registered for a week ago. Colin is six and only needed a small booster seat. Seconds after they piled into our now older SUV, they realized we had dvd player in the back. The excitement in their faces made all the years that we have not been able to use the dvd player, seem to fade away fast. Wow, can we watch a movie! Kung Fu Panda was chosen, and off we went on our weekend adventure... As we drove to and from our destinations over the next two days Andrew and I got to experience life with kids in the back. The boys faces only minutes after we started the movie were priceless. They stared in awe at the screen, it was the best. Later on as we drove home from the aquarium, Justin fell asleep in the back with his thumb in his mouth and his head dangling down moving with every turn, while Colin laughed to himself watching the last half of Kung Fu Panda. Andrew and I held hands as I glanced into the back every so often. He would check in the mirror at stops and look over at me and smile. In those moments in our older SUV we began to feel something new that Andrew and I had so desperately wanted for so long. We are about to be "in waiting" for our own child, and this weekend we had these two boys that we love as much as humanly possible give us a gift that we have wanted for years. It is a gift that comes with no price tag attached, a moment in our lives that was so hard to picture at one point, and now someday soon it will be our reality. So thank you both so very much Justin and Colin, for giving us those moments, letting our hearts feel, something that we tried not to for so long.

Imperfect

Our last class was yesterday. It was a beautiful day. I started off by seeing beauty in someone that I would not have noticed in the past. I was sitting in a doctors office waiting to speak to the doctor, I was probably the only person in the entire room under the age of 70 years old. There was a half a dozen patients waiting to see the doctor... and in walks a woman who was most likely in her mid seventies. She had khaki baggy linen pants on with tan sandles and a matching tan leather bag. The woman stood out because she had this pretty teal blue shirt that caught my eye, I could not take my eyes off the color of her shirt. She walked into the office alone. As she approached the front desk she pulled out a gadget underneath her pretty teal shirt and put it in her hand and raised it to her throat. It was an electrolarynx, a voice machine that made her voice sound like a computer. She just had her larynx removed most likely due to cancer. I was startled by the noise at first and could not take my eyes off of her like most others in the room. I could not understand every word she was saying however I began to notice something that brought tears to my eyes. She was smiling, she was making jokes and laughing..... This older woman went from having a beautiful teal shirt to radiating beauty from within her. This woman was alone, she had just gone through a major life change, and she was accepting of her way. And so it was her imperfection that made her beautiful. I went into our meeting with the image of this woman yesterday and looked around at all the other couples who would soon be in waiting for their child too. Some couples were young, some were older, some were straight and others were gay. Every couple in this meeting was embracing their way, the life that they were carving out for themselves. Each person there yesterday had not gotten to this point by imitating someone else's life, they saw the beauty in their own, and so began their own adoption story.

So I say today what I heard on the film Tuesday something that resonated deep within...."Tis better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's life perfectly." That imperfection is what led us to this amazing journey....

Eat Pray Love.....And.....

I went tonight to see the movie Eat Pray Love, with my mother. I walked out with a feeling of hope. Unlike the many critics of this movie, I had not read the book yet. It was in many ways a typical Hollywood movie, however, I could feel the authors emotions in the script. I understood her quest to become who she could be. And to lose the parts of her that she thought she needed, most of all fear. I am sure that many women who read this book connected with her on so many different levels. Letting go of love, letting go of those extra fifteen pounds, letting go of the life she thought she was "supposed" to have someday. In the film they say "To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life."

When we made our choice to move forward with our adoption plan, things around me started to change. I began to find love in unexpected places in life. Places that Andrew has always shown me, like the gophers that he always finds on the edge of the road....the red tail hawks....the small road near our busy street full of thirty or so deer at sunset. I began to see what he has helped me see for so many years...the world around me. Andrew is a surfer. He is connected to life in a way that has brought me peace and imagination. His way of life has allowed me the possibility to dream more, to see the world around me differently and most of all to love.

This year when we decided our path together in adoption I lost balance because our decision was out of such a strong love....for each other...for our child...and for our dreams. I did lose balance this year for love, and I see now what that has given me. In the movie a friend tells Elizabeth to take the noise out of her head and let the love come in....I know that to be true. It's possible for us all to do when we let go of the fear. Love is all around us...

Schooling....

I went to work with a purpose today, to purchase my first book on parenting after work, the one that the pediatrician recommended. It was a busy ride home, lots of people driving fast, passing, tailgating and all the usual commotion that comes along with a commute. The speed of which life moves on the road is the opposite of that in a bookstore. The Borders that I went into near home is like any other chain bookstore. Stepping into the store, you feel a sense of calmness and serenity, like looking out to the ocean. The smell of the bookstore was distinct, and the music playing was a singer/songrwriter style. The people in the store looked like they were walking in slow motion up and down the aisles taking it all in.

That's why I was looking forward to my trip to the bookstore, to take it all in. Just like the car seat, buying a book on parenting is a connection to our story. As I did a quick glance around the store I found the "Parenting" Section. It was an aisle of five high bookshelves, hundreds of colorful books. The first two tall bookshelves were full of pregnancy guides, there was actually a whole section on "What to Expect"...there were books on breastfeeding, books on labor, there must have been a total of two hundred books. Then I began to search through the usual parenting books, guides on infancy, help with the sensitive baby, how to have a happy baby....you name it they were all there. Then we got to the books on dads and grandparents section, and how to deal with a teenage girl..."Dummie Guides" on everything you can think of...Oh and Chicken Soup for the Soul for almost every topic...almost.

At the very bottom right hand corner of the last bookshelf was a little tag that said "Adoption"....Above that tag were two books..."Guide on Adoption"...and "Twenty Things Adoptive Kids Wish their Parents Knew". So I began to think about what this meant to me as I looked at the barren single shelf. I began to feel that the word isn't out, that this unique story has a purpose. There are families out there like us, that have a beautiful beginning through adoption, it's our "What to Expect". It's a story that is centered around love. I believe that a child who is raised through adoption has a life of love planned from their beginning. The love for our child that has grown in our hearts as parents. The love for our child that their birth-mother will give to them, by the life that she wants for him or her. And the love that those around us have that get to bear witness to this amazing journey. So this love, that so many adoptive parents, birth-parents, friends and family get to experience is the what needs to be told.

Remember the woman who worked in the baby store, and the owner of the furniture store....they too thought I was pregnant. They did not consider adoption at first. Walking out of the bookstore today made me realize that adoption is a beautiful journey that can be shared...instead of keeping it in the bottom right hand corner shelf of the Parenting section. So I ask everyone that is reading this entry to send this blog to someone you know, so that just maybe some of the busy people driving on the road today will slow down and read....


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