questions,answers

The last post brought a series of questions from an anonymous poster. They were some great questions. I did not take offense at anything that was asked as it was asked in a respectful manner. I think is poster just simply wanted to understand. I will attempt to answer them here as opposed to in the comments section since I think they will offer some clarity to my issues and our adoption.

Our adoption journey did not start out as one. My husband and I simply wanted to provide a child with a home who needed one at the moment. We became foster parents to provide a home to children who still had parents. We were well aware that they could go home to their parents and welcome reunification if that home was their best option. We did not let our foster kids call us mom and dad because I thought that was disrespectful to their parents. My oldest came to us while we were fostering. We had no intention of adopting this child. He had a mom who was working her plan. She was however quite mentally ill and moderately handicapped herself. The state did terminate her rights and he became available for adoption. We did not plan on adopting him and he was not even made readily available to us. He was labeled "non adoptable". We were told he was likely to be institutionalized. We committed to being his home until they knew what his "final placement" was.

At this point we had just had our own biological child. With the addition to our family came a newfound understanding of a parent's love. I mourned the lost of the oldest childhood and all the hurt and trauma he had gone through in a new way. I could not fathom how a other could do that/allow that to happen to her own flesh and blood. As a new mother myself, I wondered how that was even possible to live with one's self in that situation. My oldest was definitely loved in my home prior to this, but I loved him in a much deeper way after becoming a mother myself. My husband voiced the very same feelings one evening without ever having heard my feelings on the subject.

It was the next day that we put in an intent to adopt. I never looked at my oldest as a way to further our family, as though we were giving him the gift of a family, or as he was fullfilling a need in my life. I simply loved him with everything in my being and wanted him to be a part of a famil, our family, forever. The alternative turned my stomach.

I still feel that way today. We will keep on loving and supporting him forever. Just becasue I get angry and have some resentment at certain behaviors does not mean that I plan on doing anything different than what we do everyday. We keep on keeping on. We love. We support. And we do what families do.

The remainder of the questions dealt with my own mental illness and why I would choose to bring a child into that be it through adoption or biologically. . . . I will deal with that in another post.