open adoption

the last few days

Leave a comment

a lot has happened in our family over the last few days/week.  Our beloved Cody Bear passed.  He was nearly 14 years old.  Our girls are sad as we are too. They did find a shiny penny over the weekend and are sure it’s from our Cody up there running around over the rainbow bridge with our Molly.

My oldest daughter’s 3rd grade teacher shared that she too is an adoptee. This turned into a wonderful discussion learning about her life, her reunion with birth family and how an adult adoptee feels.  I love that she shared this knowing our two girls were adopted as well.  My daughter was there in the room during this conversation at the end of the school day.  It was one that I followed up with her in our car as she, her sister and I headed home.  How did they feel knowing a beloved teacher was like them, adopted at birth?  Hearing her life and love for the family that raised her and the relationships she now has later in her life with her birth family.  Without over prodding my girls, I wanted to see what they understood, heard and thought about learning this information about an adult they know. I think we will need a few more days or weeks to process.

Adoption seems to be the “it” subject of our week.  Yesterday we learned a classmate of my older daughter’s was adopted as well.  She from China.  I again followed up the conversation with my daughters in the car on the way home from school.  Wasn’t it interesting to learn a classmate came to her family in a similar way?  This girl’s mom recently became a friend of mine on facebook and had read my posted links of this blog learning about our family’s story.  I don’t want to overdue the conversation with my girls, but how great is it to learn more about the people in our lives through school that have similar family stories!

Adoption is a part of our lives and it is our family story.  It’s something that comes up in conversation within our family often, sometimes just our two girls talking with each other about their families and our family.  Sometimes it’s their planning out their future lives.  They’ve shared with me they too want to adopt a baby into their lives when they are older.  I think is wonderful and shows me how normal our family lives are that they want to have a family in a similar way.

Time and again I realize you never know when or who you will meet that will have a similar story and share it with you.  I appreciate the honesty of people sharing their stories with us. It give us more to talk about and appreciate the life we have and for our girls to have others in their lives with families just like ours.

What makes a Real Family?

5 Comments

the definition of real From the Free Dictionary:
re·al 1 (rē′əl, rēl)
adj.

a. Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence: real objects; a real illness.
b. True and actual; not imaginary, alleged, or ideal: real people, not ghosts; a film based on real life.

what-is-real4 (1)

The question what makes a REAL family? seems to infer that we are not actually REAL in our children’s lives.  Our daughter’s each have two REAL families that are part of their lives and love them.

Why do people ask REAL? I’ve been approached and asked in conversation when it is known our family was built through adoption if our girls know their REAL mom? My first thought is that I am as REAL as it gets and then I reply yes in fact they do know and have a relationship with their birth moms and their families. Another question that comes up often is asking if they are REAL sisters? Yes they are, not by blood but through our family they are sisters.

This is when you can decide to educate or walk away. I usually take the effort to educate. I’m not offended when asked this question, it is not asked with malice but more of ignorance on how a family lives in an open adoption. Not everyone is experienced in this. They don’t necessarily know the terminology or quite frankly how it all works. As common as I think our family is in our world, not everyone knows a family like ours.

We are a REAL family ALL of us, we are as REAL as it gets and I am thankful that we are all intertwined as family together with our girls. From our girls’ great grandparents through their siblings from their birth family through to each of our families and each other. The love that surrounds our girls is REAL too and that’s how we like it!

Ask our girls, we, my husband and I, are REAL REAL too!

This my 10th post for National Blog Posting Month, please click #NaBloPoMo to read posts from the many other bloggers participating, Enjoy!

Thankful for emotional comfort

Leave a comment

Thankful for the emotional space we have given both of our girls to talk about and share anything that comes to mind … recently our youngest told my husband how much she loves him, loves her family, her birth mother and all and how she was so thankful that S chose us to be her Mommy & Daddy, made us both teary.

IMG_1959

Each of our girl’s adoption is a part of our conversation whether spoken or thought.  It is something we have been telling our girls since the day they each were born.  My husband wrote a song/lullaby for each girl that tells their story.  Extending our family with each of their family keeps the story of how our family came to be a present part of our everyday lives.

It can be something as simple when our girls were younger as they’re holding a baby doll and telling us they had adopted him or her.  Telling us when they get older they will adopt children to their family.

As our girls have grown their understanding of our family’s story has grown.  Since it is part of our normal family dialogue it is not unusual for a conversation to start from nowhere, usually while driving somewhere in the car.

There have been times when spending a day or trip with their family that the emotions boil up near the end of the visit/trip.  We have allowed this emotion to start a conversation to give them words to the feelings they are having.  Are you sad because C is leaving?  Are you upset because our time together is over for today?  It’s okay to feel sad or be upset, when we love someone and our time together ends it’s okay to feel sad or even mad.

We know for all of us it is important to let the conversation be had whether it’s one that is sad or happy.

This is my Day 8 for National Blog Posting Month, please click NaBloPoMo to read the many other bloggers participating in this BlogHer event, Enjoy!

The discussion of nature and nurture

3 Comments

From Wikipedia free encyclopedia
Nature versus nurture:
 The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities (“nature,” i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences (“nurture,” i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

There is a continuous discussion in the adoption community of which nature vs nurture is observed from a child who was adopted as they grow into adulthood.

We joke around with each of our girl’s birth mothers when we all witness an action and no one wants to take responsibility whether it is an effect of our parenting-nurture or their genetics nature.  In the end we all agree there is so much intermixed nature with our nurture that somehow we all should take responsibility.

With that said, nature does play a significant role in our girls lives … we look at them daily and see the strong resemblance to each of their birth mothers’ and birth fathers’ … although out in the world people try to make us fit and always comment on the resemblance of our girls to us … some of them coming from well-meaning strangers who do not know our family’s history, we do know who they look like and appreciate that. I look forward to the day when my girls and I can share a look knowing our history and their deciding if they want to share the story or not. In most cases now, our standard response is yes it runs in the family ~ not completely untrue, right?

family 2011

Nature not only plays a part in appearance, but it does play a role in the girls mannerisms, we sometimes see/hear it … in our older daughter’s  giggle which is an exact duplicate to C and we have pointed this out to her which makes her smile even more! These days we see our younger daughter shares a passion for dance that S has and with that she is a natural to it too!

Because we chose to pursue open adoptions when we were on our journey to parenthood it is easy for us to recognize the nature part of our girls lives … we can see the resemblance to their birth families and they can too! We can compare their mannerisms, giggles or whatever to their birth families. Even more importantly as our girls begin to understand our family story, they too will see independently that they share these qualities and looks too.

We do see the nurture side in the equation too… we see the way we nurture our girls in their stories, the openness we have created for them with each of their birth families, the way we feel that it is normal, the way they can always ask questions of us and we can sit and listen to their point of view, it can also be the way my husband or  I say something and they say it back, we nurture them in what they give and participate in with our family; whether it is helping set the table or feeding our dogs, or the manners we are raising them with … there are other things we do together and the memories we have created, the way we are as a family …but then there are times like taking our girls to music together classes … is their appreciation and singing along to music just our influence? or does it come from a deeper source?

We see no matter what, Nurture and Nature are intertwined … no matter what they get from their genetics we will have an influence on them in our daily lives and this is intertwined in influencing them as they grow to be independent strong courageous women … both sides influencing who they will become and we embrace that!!

Day 6 sharing a post that means a lot to me as part of #NaBloPoMo, please read many of the other bloggers participating at BlogHer NaBloPoMo, Enjoy!