Adoption part 5 – choosing a family part 1
Week 5 of adoption talks, and as you can tell by now, I choose what I want to talk about. My topics are based on what I can talk about, or what is the easiest at the time. It can take me about a week to pick a topic and write about it. This week I wanted to about the family and the reason I choose them. There will be several parts to this, dealing with the types of choices I was offered , from open to close , to the type of family, ( from their looks, background and other children) This part of the adoption was the hardest and it made it real for me. It was the first actual step in my adoption process. And I felt the pressure of picking the perfect family, and I took this very seriously and put a lot of thought into it.
For my adoption, I went through Catholic Social services ( I was referred to them by my employer at the time) I started counseling through them ( which was done weekly) we would talk about everything from what was happening that day to how I felt. I think the goal was to insure that this is what I wanted and that I wouldn’t back out at the end ( I know it sounds bad in that sense but it was more like to confirm that this is what I wanted, and if I wanted to keep the child they would still help in any way they could)
During our talks, we started to discuss what type of adoption I wanted and did I have any thought on the type of family. To be honest at that time I didn’t have a thought process at the time, nor did I know that you could have options. My counselor talked them through with me and gave me about 20 or so packets of parents to choose from. Since I didn’t know what I wanted she gave me a little of each.
I went back to work with the packets and started going through with them and started making a pro and cons list. At that time I worked with my mother (yes this is how I got the job, not ashamed in saying that) I decided that I wanted to do an open adoption so we separated the packets from open to close. And read through all the open ones. I was surprised how many different Idea of what adoption there were. Some only wanted photo others were okay with meetings, somewhere find for the 1st years, and then a nothing after. Others wanted the full on open, birthdays, and holidays. To be honest it seemed weird at that time to have such openness but it also seemed somewhat cruel to say, here’s some pics and be with you. Either way I didn’t know what I wanted or what I could handle. I didn’t want to interfere but I didn’t want to be left in the dark and I thought that it seemed odd to make such extreme conditions without actually talking it through with each other or meeting the person.
I guess it’s similar to an employer looking at job resumes , I was searching for the perfect candidate and the hard part was even though I knew what job was up I just didn’t know what type of person / family I wanted to fill it.
My life as I know it 