The adoption information night gave us hope that we will move forward on our journey to parenthood and that we will become a Mommy & a Daddy.

Why you ask?  Because we could see it happening from what we are learning.  We have talked and decided the best path for us is through domestic open adoption.  Not only did we attend the info night then we went on to sign up and attend an 8-week education support group about adoption.  Again through Resolve.  Through this group we met other families who had adopted and were living in open adoptions with their children and their families.  We met adult adoptees who longed to know their birth families and how important it was/is for them to connect and we met birth parents who had made the choices to place their child for adoption.

It was through these meetings and subsequently working with a well-known facilitator in open adoptions, that we knew this was how we would become a family.

Along the way we were recommended books that we found very helpful to us in our process.  First and foremost we were told we needed to look at ourselves and see where we were with our own grief and loss for not having a genetically tied child.  One of the books recommended to us and that we both read was “Adopting after Infertility” written by Patricia Irwin Johnston.  It helped us find a place to allow our grief to happen but to move forward without forgetting where we came from.

Other books recommended to us and we thoughtfully read were

• “Dear Birthmother” written by Kathleen Silber
• “The Open Adoption Experience” written by Sharon Kaplan Roszia
• “Lifegivers” written by James Gritter
• “Hospitious Adoption” written by James Gritter
• “The Children of Open Adoption” written by Kathleen Silber
• “Attaching in adoption” written by Deborah Gray
• “The Third Choice” written by Leslie Foge
• we subscribed to Adoptive Families magazine right away too!

These books unfortunately are not readily available in your local bookstore.  Through Amazon Books and Tapestry Books  we were able to find them and more!

These are books that helped us to develop our sense of what being a family through adoption and having an open adoption might be.

Reading and finding a community of support helped us to feel we were making the right decisions along the way…and so we began moving forward on our journey to parenthood through adoption.