One year ago today

On November 15th of last year, we spent the day at our adoption agency for our pre-adoption class. How can it have been a year already?

We were a mixed crowd, with three couples pursuing international adoption, and three couples in the domestic adoption program. Some of us already had children at home, others would be waiting for their first child. One couple was actually expecting their first child through birth at that time.

What stayed with me, even after a year, is the amazing experience of realizing that adoption feels like the right way to build our family. This event is also when I learned to always bring tissues to adoption events. Our group discussed issues of fertility (or rather lack thereof), race, raising a child from a different culture, and incorporating the first family into our lives, and at some point or another every woman in the room was in tears.

The most important part of the day were our speakers. They included a first mother who made an adoption plan for her daughter (for an open adoption), an adoptee who is now in reunion with her first family, and adoptive parents who brought their son home from Korea a few months earlier. Especially having the birth mother and adoptee there to speak to us was such an important experience. When in real life would we ever be able to ask such personal questions and actually have them answered?

Unfortunately we lost touch with most of the couples, but I did meet a good friend that day who is also waiting for her child from Korea. I do know that one of the couples in the domestic program was matched with their son this year and I am so happy for them.