In my blog posts, there are two things that I really want to be… upbeat and real. Real about the challenges we deal with, but upbeat about them. I think it is important for me to be honest, for other families who have adopted or are adopting. But, I also think it is important to be upbeat, to keep myself upbeat about and to see the best in our situation.

You know how they always say marriage is work? Adoption, attachment, it’s work. The good kind of work, like marriage, but sometimes it just feels like WORK. Fortunately, it’s a job that is hard to get fired from, ’cause there are days when I most certainly think I’d get fired. Like when Lena burst into major tears TWICE this morning for no obvious reason. Or when Ilya put his hands in the toilet the other day, for no obvious reason. No, no one else was playing in the bathroom at the time.

There are three blog posts, which if you are recently home or in the process, are worth reading. There are so many emotions at play with adoption, the children’s, but also the parents. I think we conveniently ignore the parents’ emotions a lot, because they are typically not as intense as the child’s. And because they’re not pretty. They’re really not something people want to talk about. Fortunately there are a few people who are brave enough to be transparent (I totally just ripped that word off from Kelly). Some of my biggest comfort these days is reading other people’s blogs, people who are going or have been through it.

Why Can’t I Love My Adopted Child? I want to write something about this post, but I just can’t find the words. The first comment, by tereasa, just makes me want to cry. “Perhaps the most painful part is knowing that everyone else loves that child because they don’t see the behaviors or because they only get it in small doses. It is a very lonely place.” 


You Can Fall in Love. This post is so good that when I read it nearly two years, before we ever seriously considered adoption, a year before we committed, I remembered some of the exact words she uses. While this post does not apply to us entirely, a lot of what she says applies on a small scale. Sometimes the little things really, really drive me nuts and get in the way of MY bonding. I feel so guilty about that. Like the world’s worst parent. But, I read this when I need a reminder that I am not the only one dealing with it and it is MY CHOICE.


Change, Change, Change. A few days ago, I sent an email which was more open that I’d blog to my friend Melissa. I was talking about how it is such an adjustment for ME, and that is hard for me. It makes me feel guilty that there are things about childless life that I miss. Knowing that I am not the only one who misses sleeping in late makes me feel so much better. I also love how she wrote, “ Change is hard and discouraging and depressing. If you aren’t careful, it can blind you to the beautiful transformation that God has planned for you.”


I feel it is so important for us to an adoption community.  To have other people going through the same things. To feel that it is okay to have these emotions.