Ok, better now, but still...

Orientation was tough. One of the toughest things I have every gone through. And what made it worse was my husband wasn't there. He is not able to get the time off of work to attend the orientation and training (not happy about that - but that's another blog post). This means extra work on his end, but still, having him there would have been better. I would have had a hand to hold onto when I was upset. Seems apropos doesn't it?

The main lesson I walked away with was that these children are damaged. Damaged in such a way that, for some, no matter what you, as the adoptive parents, do you may never be enough. You may never get the child's love; you may never get a hug; you just may never... Hearing that repeated over and over again was hard. The worse part of that was knowing that these children are like this because the adults in their life have, at best, failed them. These are the children that we will be asked to bring into our home, to welcome them to our family, to raise them and love them and not expect anything in return.

There was a slide show, with audio. Children reading off the sentences on the slides. The child would start to read and then stop - mostly not reading the really graphic sentences. But in my head, the voice continued & I don't think I was alone in this. I heard all those words being said by a child. And it hurt. It hurt my heart so bad that these kids, any kid, would be put through situations like this. It certainly had a powerful effect. I just want to make sure we're doing this for the right reasons.

I also got a better sense of how the process works. That was the biggest question in my head. How do you get matched with a child? There's many layers to this process and just as many, if not more, situations for these kids. Some may need to be placed far from their place of origin, some will have siblings and other family they want to stay close to or at least get the adoptive family to agree to allow visits. Some of the kids have not had parental rights terminated and are going through the legal process. All of this occurring while the child is in a foster home. The logistics of it all, I can't imagine a more complicated system.

Re: parenting. We did get some basics on parenting an adopted, older child. From a parent of a 9 year old, I don't agree with everything that was said. But I'm not the expert and as we were told, many MANY times, these children are damaged. That means normal expectations do not apply. I want to get a better handle on the literature and go through the training before I start to analyze my reaction to this. I may be missing something. Right now, all I know is we are to expect a challenge.

How do Social Workers deal with this all the time?

Emotionally draining. Emotionally drained. I want to cry. I want to curl up into a ball and cry and not stop until I've cried for all of them. I want to buy that frat house on Ohio St. that was for sale and invite all these kids to live there. I want to keep going in this process but I don't know if I have the emotional energy to follow through. I want to stop the process now but I can't fathom not opening up my home to a child who needs it.

I want these kids to be safe and happy. Don't all kids deserve that?

And the journey begins not with little steps, but paperwork...

We've meet with our social worker. That statement alone brings me to happy tears. How much of a mess am I going to be when I get the phone call about a possible placement? Getting back on topic - we've meet with our social worker (important statements deserve to be repeated). In talking with her we've discovered that we seem to have the right mind set, we're united in our thoughts and, well, we are moving forward. Quickly. Did I mention the part about orientation is next week? No, well, a combination of hubby's lucky horse shoe and my perfect timing gave us not a whole lot of time to dwell. Which is ok, since we had talked long and hard about this prior to even calling the agency. The agency holds orientation and training during the 1st and 2nd quarter of the year. So, of course, the one this quarter starts the 25th! Which is next Monday! And in true gFam fashion - let's just move this along...

Our social worker gave us a run down on what to expect from this process. The situation we are looking at is adoption a waiting child. These are children who are older than 5 years of age, and DCFS has determined that they are available for permanent placement. Some of these children are legally free (parental rights have already been terminated) and some are going through the process (on our end, this would be called a legal risk - a risk we have to determine if we are willing to accept). She also handed us a two inch stack of paperwork with a cherry "There's more after this!"

Things that we should be prepared for:

• opening up our lives to the organization
  
• understanding what we, as parents, can be expected to deal with
  
• coming to the table not with a laundry list of options (this isn't a car we're picking out!), but with knowledge of what we know we can deal with and the courage to say we think we cannot.

Kinda vague so far. But it feels right. Yeah, so far, this feels right.

The family treats damage as a challenge & invites it home...

For several years, really as long as our 9 year old was aware of her place in our home, Boo asked for a brother or a sister. Mostly a sister, but she stated in no uncertain terms that she'd take what she could get. What she was really saying was she wanted someone to play her games with, someone to dress up, someone to keep her company and stop her from being bored. I tried, for as many years, to explain that's not what siblings do. Siblings invade your space, ruin your stuff, sit their narrow little butts between you and your boyfriend, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. They also have a tendency to spill your secrets. But our daughter was having none of that. She was persistent, she was relentless, she presented, for a 9 year, what amounted to logical arguments and counter arguments for any and all of our objections.

Finally one night, after Boo had asked The Question once again and was now on her way to dreamland, I turned to hubby, "having another child wouldn't be so bad, would it?" With that question, which was actually more of a statement, our path was being set. Discussion after discussion followed. We are so blessed, why couldn't we expand our family to a child that deserves a break? We have a lot to share, starting with ourselves. It seems logical that we should welcome a child into our home. We than came to the realization that we were of the same mindset about what type of child. I didn't want to get pregnant again. There is nothing better than holding a sleeping baby in your arms, kissing that little bald head and smelling that J&J baby smell. But really, babies weren't for us. I'm 7 years older than my sister. The two of us growing up had separate childhoods, for the most part, and we have only begun to get close. Plus there's the issue of my age and fitness. No, I don't want to say I'm old, and there are plenty of women my age that do get pregnant. God love 'em, I just don't want to be that one. Going abroad didn't make sense with our work situation, so that gave us the direction we needed. We hit upon adoption of an local (to the state) older child with the force of the light bulb going off above our heads, aka a waiting child. A tiny, LED-type that grows brighter and brighter the longer it's on.

We've gotten to the point in our discussion that we are doing something about it. Questions were tentatively asked of friends and acquaintances, calls were made, internet searches were done (& boy howdy, googling "adoption" is a blog post in and of itself), but finally we came upon a local solution. We contacted the agency and with a simple form we have started down the path to, hopefully, a conclusion of our trio turning into a quartet.

*Fingers are now crossed*