A Fight Worth Fighting

I know I always say I love a good challenge, but this is intense! It is has been seventeen emotionally and psychologically challenging months since we went live with our adoption agency. Seventeen months of highs and lows and all that comes between.There are days that I love adoption with such intensity, after all it will bring our baby to us. There are days that I cannot even utter the word. I find myself calling it "the A word" or "shmershmoption" or "that thing I just can't bring myself to talk about right now".

I guess in the scheme of things, seventeen months isn't so long. If you add in all the time we spent getting me healthy, then infertility and then the home study, we have been waiting like-  oh I don't know 8ish years to have kids. What's another day right? (FYI another day feels like hell sometimes!)

So many good things are happening right now that it's hard to feel down about it all. I'm driving to Greensboro on my birthday to see my favorite singer Frank Turner. Frank...on my birthday. The only thing better would be hanging with our newborn on my birthday. If that isn't going to happen, then  singing my face off in the front row of a Frank Turner show will have to do. I pre-apologize to all of the people I am going to mow over to get front and center. It's probably best that I am going to the show alone. No one needs to see me in that state!

How I feel at a Frank Turner show!

How I look at a Frank Turner show (screaming internally)

Seconds before I met the man himself!

 It probably sounds really cheesy, but I don't think I would have gotten this far in the adoption wait without his music. Even though it often makes me want to throw my entire life into one backpack and take off across the world, it also has kept me motivated in my little suburban Atlanta life. Motivated to keep working for what I really want, decide who I really want to be in this life and take charge of that. I don't want to ever have any regrets or think of my life as wasted time. Raising our child to be a good human being is a life goal of mine so I, along with John, find the strength through whatever motivates us to move forward.

The two days following the Frank Turner show, I will be on a trip to Asheville with my mom. We decided this year to celebrate our same day birthday with a getaway. My mom and I have that sort of relationship where we can hang out and chat, do fun things. I fully expect to eat too much. We could both use some time away from every day life. Of course I am not so secretly thinking Asheville is close enough that I can get back to Atlanta if we have a last minute call for baby. Or some serendipitous event will happen that our baby just so happens to be born in Asheville while we are there. Then John would be hustling to get up there as fast as he can. Oh, stop it daydreams!

I really wish I could ignore those thoughts and just have fun away from home. It lingers in the back of my brain at all times. The phone rings- I see an unknown number and I get a bit of an electric shock through my chest. Ooh, this could be it! Nope, just the American Heart Association with a public service announcement or a wrong number asking for Booba. Buba? (true story, like a million times over). 

We are going to a little informal gathering of people we met through our agency support group on Saturday. It always feels good to surround yourself with like minded people. These are people who know exactly how this waiting to adopt deal feels. No one is going to offer up suggestions to find a surrogate or to adopt a baby who has been given days to live (sad, but people do send me this stuff). They all just get it. They are our peeps if you will. We meet up every so often outside of official support group and have dinner and drinks, talk about where we are in the process, and let each other know that whatever feelings we may be having are justified. Sometimes that is all it takes... knowing that your feelings are both acceptable and shared by others.

John is busy working on the Atlanta Curling Club's first bonspiel ever.  Aloha Y'all! If you are a curler and want to eat off of an entire pig, now is your chance! I'll be there volunteering as much as they need me. Or put on your best (warm!) Hawaiian gear and come down to watch. Details linked above.

In adoption news, it is almost time for us to start our home study renewal AGAIN. Ohmygod. I really was hoping it wouldn't come to this. I think we have to start most of the paperwork and fingerprints at the end of March or early April. The FBI background check takes the longest of all of the processes. We have to go to the police station, get our prints done and then snail mail them to a government agency. Then we wait an average of 8-12 weeks for the results- though I hear it is taking longer lately.

We also have to be cleared by the GBI, our doctors, a lot of state agencies, and a social worker who will come to our house for a new home visit. The only thing good about a home study renewal is that there are actual steps to take, rather than just having that uneventful waiting we normally face each day. Oh man, the stress. I am sure hoping someone contacts us before we have to go through all of this.

Maybe all of you readers could help out by sharing our information on whatever social media you use? Or mention to every face you see that this fantastic couple in Georgia are just bursting baby love from their hearts and are waiting to adopt? No, like my heart does at times feel like it could burst!

Share our Facebook page or this blog or our official adoption profile . Tell them we are committed to having an open adoption with the birth family. Letters, phone calls, visits, whatever we can work out. We are waiting to adopt a newborn in the USA. We are not approved for other countries or older children (children over 12 months).

I'm signing off as hopeful tonight. Hopeful, because we have so many people cheering us on and helping spread the word that we are waiting to adopt. I am hopeful, because perfect strangers are rooting for us. I am hopeful, because adoption is love.