What We Need: A Guide

On Wednesday, September 23rd we will have been waiting two years "live" with our adoption agency The Independent Adoption Center.

Since apparently it is hard for most people to understand and relate, let me tell you what we need as far as support.

If you no longer know how to support us, just ask. 

What do we need? We need you to help us network. If it can come up organically in a conversation, tell your friends, coworkers, doctors, and plumbers about us. Tell your mail person, your hairdresser, your yoga teacher, that neighbor you only see on trash days.

If you don't know what to say to us anymore, here are some lines you can use.

"We are so excited for you to become parents through adoption."
"We love and support you."
"I don't understand what you are doing. Can you please explain?"
"Wow, waiting can really suck sometimes."
"Do you need a hug?" (yes, please)

The stuff you should probably avoid

"Wow, you have waited so long!"
"Why do you think you guys have been waiting so long?"
"What is wrong that you haven't adopted yet?"

Things you should be aware of:

Your face going blank and eyes glazing over when I say the word "adoption".
Yawning and squirming when I say anything about adoption.
Abruptly ending conversations when I say anything about adoption.

If you don't want to hear about it anymore, you should probably not hang out with me. This is my life. This is my brain on adoption.

I realize that only people who are going through it or have been through it can truly relate. I really do.

It will always be new, shiny, and exciting to us. Each day is different. Contacts, no contacts, close calls, dead silence. We learn new perspectives from birthparents who already placed babies, people who have already adopted 1,2,3 times, other waiting families and even friends and strangers who are adoptees. It's an ever evolving process. You can never learn enough from the people directly involved in the adoption triad (birthparents, adoptees, adoptive parents).

I want you to want to shop for baby stuff with me. I want you to buy the things you see and dream about buying for our baby. It wont jinx anything. I want you to bring the adoption up in casual conversation and dream about names, vacations, and holidays with me. Dream about our child's first day of kindergarten, first dance, high school graduation, our child's future children and so on.

We are okay. We are stronger than this struggle. This is an exciting time. Please celebrate with us.

At two years waiting, this is what we need: Your enthusiasm.

New Profile = New Hope

I had this long, detailed post written up about us hitting the two year mark in our adoption wait, but I really just think it's all been said before.

The summary: Waiting sucks, but it will be worth it. 

The long version is more eloquently written of course. I may edit and post it in a few days. I'd rather have a positive train of thought today.

First thing first, we had our adoption profile redone by a designer! This is the paper profile (PDF available too) that goes out when a prospective birth mother calls into our agency and does intake (basically inquiring about adoption and waiting families). If she decides she wants to look at profiles, they will send her all of the portfolios of waiting families that match her search criteria (such as married, living in the southeast etc) and of course the family's openness of their profile effects whether they go to her as well.

We are in love with the new design!

The front cover...

Featuring our cats, which we think is hilarious. The colors were inspired by a poster I have at home and a pair of shoes I saw online. I'll let you use your imagination as far as whose poster inspired me (ahem, super fan alert). If you read this blog often, you already know. I just have no shame anymore.

 The inside pages...

I love how much movement it has. Our nephew is featured heavily in this. It's not like we don't know other kids, but we always forget to take pictures with them when we hang out!

Doesn't matter, because our nephew is cute as cute can be.

The back...

More cats. Shocked? No, I'm not either. I guess if someone doesn't like cats, we are not likely to be contacted by her anyway. 

We really feel that this profile is more "us". We didn't realize over two years ago that we could push to have more of what we think represents us. Our agency really tends to edit families down until they all look alike. They say to show what makes you unique, but then all of that uniqueness gets taken away in the approval process.

Can you imagine receiving 250 profiles that more or less look the same and having to choose a family out of the stack to parent your child? Sounds next to impossible to me.

In other news, we celebrated John's birthday yesterday. There was cake and burritos, some TV, some feelings of extreme love and random exclamation of how happy I am that he was ever born and put in my life. Seriously, overwhelming feelings of love. I would like to thank John's parents for his existence. He's such an awesome husband and I have no doubt that he will be even a better dad.

I'm in full swing with grad school. I 99.9% finished my second project of the semester last night. It's a great distraction from "the wait". I had many moments of wondering why I'm putting myself through more school as I was neck deep in this project, but just like adoption, in the end it will be worth it.

Our 8th wedding anniversary is October 6th! So much has happened in those 8 years. I met John when I was 21 and he was 22. I feel like we have literally become adults together. Not that at 21/22 year old people aren't adults, but it's like we grew up into more adult adults- adultier adults- in the past 14 years. We did it together.

I've also started a new list of goals. I used to have this 100 things to do in 1000 days list, but some things like travel abroad probably wouldn't happen in that time frame due to adoption. Totally fine. I made a new list with no time restriction. It is everything from finish my M.Ed. to paint the dining room to remember to wear my glasses. I'm putting five out here today, so I will hold myself accountable:

1. Blog at least once a week
2. No, seriously, remember to wear my glasses!
3. Send more snail mail
4. Take infant CPR
5. Adopt (obvs)

Ok, there it is for now. Until next time!

Vacation Recap: Philadelphia!

 I am finally writing up our Philadelphia trip! I know, a couple of months late, but at least I'm doing it. After our trip to DC, we drove to Philadelphia to see our friends Katie, Anthony, and Xander. Katie was my college roommate and we have stayed close through the years. She moved to PA a couple of years ago, so we decided it was finally time to go up there and see her new Georgia-less life.

We got there in the afternoon and were greeted by the welcoming committee:

The Hounds

The first night we stayed in, tired from our extreme day of walking in DC the day before. Katie has always been a great cook, cooking for me in college and even after. She made us a nice vegetarian dish, keeping John in mind, of curried red lentils (never going back to boring old green lentils!) and poached eggs. I was nervous about this combination, but I have to say, it was delicious. Katie can make nearly anything delicious.

The next day we went into Philadelphia. Our friends live in Ridley Park, which is just a few minutes ride outside of Philly. Xander is four, so we needed to do some kid friendly things and let's face it, adults like doing the kid things too usually! We went down to the Delaware River front and tried out some hammocks....

These may have been the highlight of the day. I know that sounds weird, but the weather was perfect and our feet were a little tired from DC. The wind made the hammocks sway just the right amount. I could have slept there all afternoon!

I actually bought a hammock for John for "almost a father's day" on Father's Day this year. We haven't set it up yet, but now that Georgia is cooling off a little at night, we might have to do that.

While we were lazing around on the hammocks, Katie and Xander wondered around and....

Found some giant connect four!

Anthony had gone back to his car to get his glasses, because we were about to go explore a submarine. Prescription sunglasses will not quite cut it in the belly of a submarine.

Xander seemed to have a great time with the giant games, but was a little nervous about the steep staircases and dark parts of the submarine. He is a brave kid and toughed it out though.

This is on top of the USS Becuna, the submarine we explored. I could be wrong, but I think the ship you see in front is a restaurant.

We ate at Reading Terminal Station later in the day, but that's a story for later.

I can't even say how perfect the weather was enough times in this. Totally beautiful and breezy. Just across the Delaware River, you could see Camden, New Jersey. I considered shuttling across to add another state to my list of states visited, but we had a lot of Philadelphia to get to!

 This is a porthole window looking out of the USS Olympia, a Naval ship. Through that window is.... Camden, NJ. Be excited, I know you are!

Actually, that might have been a hole for the one of the giant guns or cannons or whatever they had on the ship. Can you tell I was paying more attention to the other stuff? Weapons are not my thing. I really liked looking at the pharmacy and surgery rooms, as well as the captains quarters and where the lower ranking officers slept. 

John, Xander and I stopped for some photos on the deck of the USS Olympia. We have a ton, but a blog post can only be so long.

Xander was such a good sport the whole time. For being barely four he was very patient and good-natured during it all.

As a side note, Xander does something called the Xander show. It's a bit of a variety show, with singing, dancing, jumping, and general kid wackiness. I admit, I miss the Xander show.

After the ship, we made our way to Elfreth's Alley which is the oldest continually inhabited street in the US.

It was a little awkward, because as the description says- people live there! We tried to be quiet tourists, but there was an older lady going around looking in people's windows. I was embarrassed for her and didn't want anyone to think she was with us. We kept our distance.

It's a short street, definitely worth a look, but also over quickly. There is a museum, but it didn't appear to be open.

We decided to walk to Reading Terminal Market for lunch. Google maps had us thinking it would be a quick walk, but it was a serious long haul. Hey, at least we earned our....

 CHOCOLATE KIDNEYS! What? Yes, one of the chocolate shops in Reading Terminal Market has chocolate internal organs. Am I in heaven? I do love anything internal organs (transplant recipient here, ya know?!). Katie bought me a new set of kidneys. I can't ever say she never gave me a kidney now.

These are dark chocolate kidneys. I ate most of one on the way back to Georgia.

We also ate tacos, whoopie pies, and homemade marshmallows dipped in chocolate. Vacations are for eating right? After that we headed back to Ridley Park to relax.

Friday, our last full day in Philadelphia, we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. Katie and Anthony have season passes, so we got to slip in as guests. The hippo was my favorite part. The wolves smell horrendous.

I felt terrible for some of the animals though. Zoo Atlanta does a much better job with their animal habitats. The polar bear made me really sad. He just didn't look happy or comfortable.

There were tons of goats, which if you know me, you know I love a good goat visit. Unfortunately, the cool part of the goat enclosure was for kids. Why must they leave those of us out who are waiting to have kids? Special section "future adoptive parent goat exhibit". Yes, please.

After the zoo, went back into the city to walk around and get some dinner.

John and I really wanted to do the cheesy tourist thing and get our picture with the love sign. FYI, it looks all calm there, but there are really a ton a of people trying to get you to pay them to take your picture. Also, a bunch of kids skateboarding and some very talented kids dancing.

I'll admit that I was a little over the walking and sweating at this point. I was hungry and I get a little "Hulk smash" when I'm hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry! (Teehee... get it?)

A lady told me I had Reba McEntire hair. Not sure that's a good thing!


We ended up at a little hole in the wall pizza place, with a basement bathroom from the depths of my nightmares. The pizza was fantastic though! It looked so unimpressive, but no, it was delish! We then

On the way back to the car to head back to Ridley Park, we came across this piece of art. It is actually an actual plane that was taken apart and put together as if it had crashed. The part John is standing in front of is a sort of greenhouse. The sign said they grow food in there for those in need. I didn't see any food growing, but there were plenty of plants.

If you look behind the plane, you can see they have another statue of a giant paintbrush (it also had a hilariously shaped dab of paint under it).

After stopping off at to see some local architecture, we headed back to Katie and Anthony's house to rest up for our 11 hour ( that turned into like 14 hours) trip home. Next time we will definitely fly! I think we needed another 3 or 5 days to see the rest of Philadelphia. We will be back someday soon. 

You can read about the Washington D.C. part of our trip here: DC TRIP!

John has a bonspiel in Charlotte coming up in early October. I have plenty of homework from my grad class and some other distractions in the works. Hopefully our next vacation will include us as a family of three. Here's hoping, right? 

Any Time Now, Universe!

This post was inspired by a friend I met through our agency. This morning she shared a post from a year ago.

Shared with permission.

Just last night John and I had a conversation about Christmas. How its four months away, but it seems like there is no hope for us to adopt before then. It was a 30 second conversation, yet it felt so heavy.

We are basing our view of the future based on the past, but no one can really know what the next four months hold for us. 

Our last adoption situation that fell through happened so fast. It went from watching TV, not expecting to do anything but sleep that night, to calling the after hours answering service for our agency in mere minutes. I certainly didn't sleep that night! Of course, that situation didn't work out and that's fine. It did in fact give us hope and remind us how quickly life can change.

But it's so easy to lose sight of that. When day after day goes by with no inquiries about us- no emails, texts Facebook messages, nothing. No calls from our agency asking "Can you get to (insert town/hospital here) ASAP?" Not a peep. Unless you count "Lung" who wants to "do a project with us". Real email. That was all it said. Thanks, but no thanks Lung.

But look at what a difference a year can make for a fellow waiting adoptive family (now a family of three!). Weeks before they were matched with their daughter's birth mom, Chelsea and I were messaging each other wondering if it would ever happen for either of use. Wondering what we could do to move this along. She didn't have to wonder much longer.

There is hope. At any time, that could be us. 

This has not been my favorite part of life. The waiting, the longing, the ups and downs- it's all just so incredibly stressful. Talking to friends and remembering how life was before this undying urge to be a mom kicked in, it makes you long for those days. When your biggest worry was who you are going to hang out with that weekend or what coworker is giving you grief at work.

It's not easy, but I can't help but think it will be worth it. When adoption friends post pictures of their longed after children, or relay stories of how they met the children's birth parents, or "firsts" of everything being parents- it's all giving me the energy to keep at it. Yes, your stories of diaper blow-outs somehow still encourage me to stay the course.

Here we sit, still waiting, still trying to pass the time. I'm back in grad school, trying to make something more of myself and John is about to start curling again. John is also looking forward to football season. It's not really my thing (I know, don't judge me!). We will hit two years live with our agency next month, many more years than that trying to become parents. We will mourn it, even though it will appear to just be a day like any other. You have to mourn things to get past them.

Here's hoping our lives change in an instant too, preferably tomorrow? next week? Universe, are you listening? 

All The Feelings: The Feeldoption Process

Who know one person could experience such a range of emotions in such a short time? I'm not even talking about the waking up positive and immediately opening an email from an adoption scammer in Cameroon promising BABIES NOW (really?! so scammy).

I am talking about the emotions you experience throughout the entire adoption wait. It goes like this:

You decide to adopt. There is likely relief that your battle with trying (and failing) to get pregnant is over. You mourn a little, because who doesn't mourn the loss of a part of your body not functioning as it should? You cry, but it honestly feels pretty good. You throw out all of the ovulation tests and pregnancy tests in the house (you think- but somehow those show up on bad days, whilst you are cleaning out the bathroom cabinets). Good timing pee tests...

You go to the weekend intensive session at the agency and it just.feels.so.right. You leave so hopeful, so excited, you are FINALLY going to be a parent.

You start the paperwork for the home study. You might buy one teeny little blanket, because your heart is so full of hope that a baby will be bundled up in it soon. You tear up a little, the good kind of tears, as you pay for the little ducky blanket. Man, you can practically smell the baby poop, that's how close you think you are!

Every step of the home study you complete, you feel accomplished. One step closer to holding that sweet baby. Paperwork..it feels orderly and so very doable. You get to make lists and cross things off- so so satisfying!

Your home study gets completed. Interviews went well, a little nerve wracking, you wonder how that other person's name slipped in and why no matter how much you said you loved your aunts, why it says you aren't close to family... but these things get corrected immediately. A lovely letter and certificate come in the mail proving that both the state and the country find you fit to parent. Party on.

The letter writing process makes you literally roll around on the floor crying out of frustration. Picture after picture is declined. "Smile with your teeth", "Have one of your cats with kids" hahahaha, if they only knew...our cats disappear if a kid is within hearing distance. Trade "our home" for "our house", cut 23 more words. The excited parent-to-be inside you is screaming "please, please, please, just approve it and let us go live".

The letter is done, your official profile is online. With great excitement and fear, you sit with your significant other and write up a Facebook post to announce to your friends that "Yes, we will finally be parents... through adoption!!!!". Your friends offer words of congrats and support. They start spreading the news, eager to help out. It's a love fest. We love them, they love us, we feel warm and safe and determined.

Three months of dead silence. Worries arising, but spirits up. But then a close call. A very sick baby, too many unknowns, and baby's mom wants a closed adoption. Low Apgar scores and some googling and talking to doctor friends. Heartsick, we pass on the situation. The hardest thing ever... so we thought. If we only knew then what we know now.

Boot straps pulled up, you find peace that the sick baby wasn't your baby. Your baby is has yet to be born. Positivity and excitement find you yet again.

Scammy email after scammy email. Even some scammy phone calls. Someone pretending to choose you. Someone you got close to and cared for. Someone who had you picking up the phone to check on them even after the truth came out. Someone who wants to pray for your soul (and also sell you embryos?). At first you laugh it off, saying "people are so weird". Then you cry it off "people are so terrible". Then you get past it "I feel sorry for her that she has the psychological problem that causes her to lie so much".

Drama. Miscarriages, house fires, car fires, drug raids, deaths... or so they say. Your emotions get all wrapped into their lives, but it's all made up. You want to help, but you can't, because it was all made up. You feel for them, but you shouldn't, because it was just someone messing with you. Your faith in the process dwindles. Your faith in humanity wavers. Another hopeful contact turns bad and you are exhausted. You cry, you get mad, you shut down, then you pick yourself up again and move along.

All this time, you have to tell friends and family... "yes, we are still waiting, no there is nothing wrong with us, yes, we could still use your help spreading the word, please don't make me beg for help.. it's just too hard"

The shares on social media slow down. People start avoiding the topic all together at dinners with friends. People have lost interest.

A near match... a neardoption . You were at the top of the world, but then it failed. You got too many hearts involved and therefore too many hearts broke when he wasn't your baby. Not our baby. You swear to never tell another soul about a possible situation again until baby is home for good. So many hearts to protect, but who is protecting yours?

Your adoption friends start getting matched with expectant moms, some adopt practically overnight. The weird feeling of yaaaay....no....yes...no overwhelms you. You sob for the babies that aren't yours. You sob about the expectant moms who chose other waiting adoptive parents over you. You sob until you are heaving, can't see straight, can't hold your eyes open anymore. Then you go out and buy your friend's new baby cute little onesies and hats, because that's what you do right?

And it's healing. Positivity finds you again. If the process worked for them, it will work for us too. They waited longer or almost as long, they had scams, they broke down too- over and over again. They often asked "Why not us?"

You get up the courage to start asking friends to share your adoption info again and it's just dead silence. They've moved on. Your friends are tired of hearing it, their friends are tired of hearing it. Waiting to adopt is so isolating.

Just so isolating.

I'm finding a new normal in this adoption wait. One where I feel like I can't tell my friends and family about how it's going. Good or bad. Good, you risk breaking their hearts when it goes bad. Bad, you just sound like a downer all the time and start alienating everyone.

These days we cope with making ourselves busy. I'm working on my book more, albeit mostly in my head or in jotted down notes. I'm getting these feelings out by singing as loud as possible along to music in the car or shower or even in front of the cats (they love it. so weird). John has curling stuff that keeps him distracted.

We are up, we are down, we are up, we are down. We will be parents one day.

 I'd love to say I'm not posting another Frank Turner song, but I am. For those who care to listen, the man wrote yet another song that is better at expressing how I feel than I am. I know, I'm soooo emo.

Vacation Recap 2015: Washington D.C.

Back in July, we decided to take "real" vacation. I say real, because since we have been waiting to adopt, we always try to do things on the cheap and conserve leave time from work. We do this because there is always a possibility that we will end up adopting our baby from another state. If that happens, we would have to stay in that state for approximately two weeks while some legal stuff takes place, allowing us to cross state lines with the baby. But you can't live your life based on what ifs!

We are lucky that our friends live in Philadelphia and invited us to stay with them for a few nights. We decided to drive and stop in Washington D.C. for two nights beforehand, since neither of us had done the whole tourist thing there since we were kids. This post will focus on the DC part of our trip.

Edit: Philadelphia recap up here: Philly!

Washington D.C. 

First we went to the Capitol and did a free tour. Tourist tip: they give out free tickets at 9am. Enter through the visitor center.

Our tour guide was probably an intern with high aspirations, because she was less than thrilled about her job! Everyone in our group was laughing about her lackluster tour guide skills.

As you can see, they are doing some restoration on the building, inside and out. It was still amazing to see all of the detail that was still exposed. 

More restoration.

From what I understand, the painting on the inside of the dome was painted directly onto the plaster, which can chip off, so they have to more or less constantly restore the ceiling.

I would have asked but, our tour guide extraordinaire was a bit snarly at this point in the tour. Wouldn't want to make her have to work!

That is lady liberty up there looking over everyone (including many statues of important people in America's history).

This room was built in a way that it was very difficult to keep secrets (secrets in politics? never!). You could stand on one end of the room and hear someone on the other end whisper! Our very unenthusiastic tour guide begrudgingly demonstrated it. Again, laughter from our tour group erupted over our guide.

Next up, we went to the Botanic Garden.
 We had been walking outside for a while, so we were happy to find some air conditioning. We have the Atlanta Botanical Gardens by us, which is impressive to say the least, but this was a really cool experience.

You can't tell, but we were up fairly high in this picture in a large atrium. 

Shelob! Had to take a picture of the Tolkien inspired plant name. Nerdin' it up on vacay. 

Next up was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. This was #1 on my list, since I remember really loving it as a kid.

We spent a couple of hours there and watched a planetarium movie called Our Dark Universe. They have a newly redone planetarium and it was amazing. Totally worth it- both for the movie and to sit down for a little while!







And of course we bought astronaut ice cream. It was...uh... chalky and then slimy. No thanks!

Next up, we headed over the Natural History Museum. We were really looking forward to this, but it was really, really crowded. We had already walked about 7 miles at this point, so we might have rushed this one a bit.

We found the cafeteria and had some ice cream and then decided to head to the American History Museum, which was next door. It was less crowded and I think overall we enjoyed the exhibits more.

But we couldn't leave without some sort of goofy picture.

Some teenager asked me if I was scared right about when this photo was taken. That was super weird...

Nope, not scared of a stuffed bear.

We walked and walked and walked. Came upon the Washington Monument. The line to go inside was really long and we still wanted to do a few more things before we ran out of time. Cue monumental selfie! Get it? I know, I'm mostly only funny to myself.

I misjudged the aim of the picture, so enjoy my face along with a small portion of the monument!

This is the World War II Memorial. It was beautiful. There was a great breeze and we had a much needed rest on a nearby bench.

My grandfather, or Pawpaw as we called him (you can blame that on my oldest cousin) fought in WW2. I made sure to visit the Georgia pillar to honor him. Pawpaw passed away in 2004 and is very missed to this day.

Both of John's grandfathers fought in WW2. Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting either one of them, but have heard many stories from John. It was great to be able to stop and honor them.

This is the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial. I heard a number of people talking about that scene from Forrest Gump, where he is reunited with Jenny. All I could think about was that I was standing where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" speech.

Is it just me, or do Americans often miss the point of their experiences? I try to make an effort not to dismiss the true purpose of places and events, even though pop culture is so pervasive in our society.

Oops, I cut ole' Abe's forehead off. Well, This was the only one with John in it, that didn't have some girl doing stretches behind him.

I never claimed to be a good photographer.

- Not pictured: the kid in the Nirvana shirt who really did not want to be there. If you want to laugh, I'll show you the pictures of him in the background expressing his dislike of the experience.

We were around mile 10 of walking here. Still had the Whitehouse on the to-do list. I think we both has a bit of a uptick in energy heading to our last destination. That lasted like 10 minutes. so.much.walking.

From atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

It was a beautiful day. Just enough breeze to get us through the heat. I love how the Washington Monument looks like a stick with a cotton candy cloud at the top. Yum.

Our last stop of the day was the Whitehouse. It looks like we are pretty close here, but they actually have a wide barrier and police officers keeping you away from the main fence.

Too many fence jumpers lately! People are nuts.

 The illusion of calm

The reality!








We really loved D.C. We loved the ease of walking around the city, the access to public transportation (we even rode the Metro at rush hour!), we loved the history on every corner. I loved Union Station, because they had cold brew coffee and cupcakes... it's so easy to earn my love. Coffee, chocolate, I'm yours.

We hope to go back when we aren't so rushed. Two nights is not enough to see everything. We talked about how nice it would be to take our kid one day, but once they are older and can appreciate the history and politics more.

Stay tuned for a picture post about Philly!

The Beginning Of Something Good

I have been dealing with quite the dilemma.

You see, I truly believe that you get back what you put out into the world. It's a real issue, because I think I've mainly been sending out frustration and grief. I'm so frustrated with the adoption process and I know John and I have had to grieve for many situations that fell through or were revealed to be fake. It's so easy to let those feelings dominate your life.

Quite honestly though, isn't it easier to be happy and positive than to wallow in anger and self pity? Isn't it more fun to laugh than to cry? Isn't life too short to let stuff get you this down?

Now to figure out how to push the positive to the forefront.

First off, more distraction. More concerts, movies, museums please. More nights out with friends, more playing with our nephew. More food truck evenings and lazy strolls around the neighborhood.

This is hanging on our fridge to remind us:

I have people say all the time that I need to be more positive, or I need to put on a front of happiness for prospective birth mothers who might read this blog. To those people I want to tell them that they haven't experienced the things we have in this process. That the adoption wait can steal the light right out of you if you let it. Well, I let it. I let it steal my light, my optimism, my self confidence. Ridiculous.

Nothing and no one should be able to steal the light from within you. So here it is: I'm on a mission to get myself back. I'm sending love and light and confidence into this world of ours. I'm taking back control of this situation and no emotional scammer or failed placement will stop me. It's time to look at these things as learning opportunities, as steps to creating our family.

It's not that things wont be hard. It's not that we wont still feel some level of defeat if we speak with another emotional scammer or have another close call. It really is just a matter of re-framing it all in our heads. We are at 22 months waiting and counting. In the scheme of things, 22 months or even two years isn't all that long. People wait much much longer than that.

We also have to remember that we are not the only ones struggling with adoption. It is likely that the woman who chooses us to parent her child is facing much more than we are. It's important to remember that. It's all perspective. The best thing we can do is to stay strong for her, our future child and ourselves.

I'm going to find the light in all of this.

There is hope again.