I think this year is out to kill me. Not even two months in and so far my cat died, my camera broke, I’ve been sick for two solid weeks with a cold/sinus infection/bronchitis, we went through lengthy testing that threatened to label my child as mentally disabled, and now what I am about to tell you. To say that I am on a bad run is just not even close to accurate.
So along with all of those stresses, as well as big pressure deadlines for the charity I’m working with, there has been something going on behind the scenes over here that I haven’t been able to talk about.
We’ve been trying to adopt.
For the last ten years I haven’t been interested in adopting. People, in their well meaning ignorance, would tell us that we should “just” adopt as if the only barrier to being a parent was pride and a quick run to the orphanage. Having no stinking clue about the tremendous financial and emotional costs, having every fact of your life judged including, depending on the route you choose for adoption, your height and weight, making yourself as vulnerable as possible as you beg people to allow you to love them, and opening up your life and family to an unknown influence – gambling that the birth parents could be a beautiful union of families instead of a chaotic drain of toxicity.
Being a member of the infertility club as long as I have been, I know many many adoptive families and they are miracles. Every one of them. But I think it’s something you have to feel called to do to make it through all of the obstacles and I never felt called to it.
Until I met this one birth mother. She and I were friendly before I discovered she was considering placing her baby, but as we started going down this path, everything felt right and we both knew that we would be very important to each other. We dropped everything to visit her last month and it was beautiful. We clicked completely. Kindred spirits. From our end of things it felt like a miracle.
We just heard on Saturday that she chose another family.
I’ve been thinking and thinking how I would address this publicly. Chances are pretty great that she’ll read this post and I don’t want to say anything that would hurt her. I want to move forward in friendship with her. I don’t think that was a mistake. I do think that we’ll be important friends to each other. But I also can’t deny what I’m feeling.
But what I’m feeling is just a complicated mess of heartbreak and respect and humiliation and understanding and disappointment and support. How can I even begin to make sense of all this in my own head let alone on the page. I don’t know.
The birth mother is a singularly compassionate and sensitive person. I could never have asked her to take the decision more seriously or to have been more honest with us. I trust her to be able to make the right choice for her and her baby. I don’t doubt her.
And I can’t really be mad at God. There’s no reason why we’re more special than the other family hoping to adopt this baby. Why would this sorrow go to them and not us? Why should our dreams come true and not theirs?
No, there’s nobody to be mad at.
It feels a little indulgent to be so upset about a baby that was never pretended to be mine. I feel like I’ve had a miscarriage, but of course I didn’t. There were no promises, not even hints of promises. Just plenty of hope. And nowhere left to put it.
I don’t know what our next step will be. The caseworker promised me that as she has seen this happen over and over again these disappointments always lead you to where you are supposed to be. Right now I really can’t imagine going through this again, but I desperately want Atti to have a sibling before he gets too much older. And I want a larger family. I just wish I could make God want that for me too.