Post #100. A Day In The Life.

This is our 100th blog post! That is crazytown.

I'm finding it really hard to blog lately. I have this new theory about adoption. Well, our adoption. I am starting to think that this is some social/psychological experiment to see how long it takes two perfectly sane people to crack. Like really crack.

How much can two happily married, middle class, suburban (only by location, not mindset!) people take before losing it? A lot. We can take a lot. Adoption, you are trying to break us down, but you can't win.

Can we talk about the day to day of adoption? A day in the life. Note: I am leaving out some of the stuff that can happen day to day that are adoption related for privacy reasons. And for optimism reasons.

Alarm goes off. A moment of peace in my warm bed. Restroom, put coffee on, feed the cats. I pick up my phone (admit it, you all do about this time) and my email begins to update. Eight new emails in my personal account. Smyna Vinings Patch with their vague headlines. A coupon from World Market, nice! Updates from my grad class. A thought pops into my head "Sarah, don't think it, if you think it, it won't happen". But I think it anyway "I hope this is the morning"....

I nervously (this feeling doesn't get better. Always nerves firing) look to see if there is a 1 or 2 or 3 next to sarahandjohnadopt@gmail.com . The number 2 appears. "Sarah, you thought it, so it's going to be junk mail", but hope sticks around as I hit the account...

"Dearest Pleasant One" oh yay. A scam email. "Hello I am emailing of the baby Saint Bart's Orphanage. We have all the blondest haired, bluest eyed babies in Cameroon (personal note, this is not important to us.We are open to all races and ethnicities). Of the sincerest email us. Baby waiting for you sincerely". Two scam emails. Hooray. I close it, disappointed I drink my coffee. I force myself to get dressed. One mismatching article of clothing at a time. I mean who cares right? It's not like today will be the day. Besides, maybe if I'm horribly unprepared and look a mess it will happen.

I park quite far from work, so I have a nice calm walk in to the office. It's early, the elementary school is just opening, so I'm surrounded by little kids, holding hands, chattering about recess and who is friends with who. It hits me again. Warm heart feelies. Maybe I should refresh the email. Maybe I should check google voice in case we got a text and google didn't email me. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

I park my rear at my desk and refresh my email, check google voice, triple check our adoption Facebook page. Nada. A deep sigh.

Meanwhile on Facebook another couple from our agency has adopted. They announce it on their page with such joy and relief. They waited 7 months. We hit 28 months two days ago. My chest hurts for a minute. The underlying grief of our wait rears it's ugly head.

Grief. It's a theme of a long adoption wait. People you meet and love adopt before you. People you love have failed adoptions. You feel grief for both. Your own adoption fails. Grief. Babies being abandoned in woods, dumpsters, high schools on the local news. Grief. If they had known about us, would they have chosen us? If they had known about our agency, would they still have abandoned their babies? So much grief.

The rest of my day is distracted mostly by work. The thoughts pop into my head between students "Check your email. Check adoptimist. Check it, check it check it". more thoughts "What if our lives change tonight? Ugh no Sarah, you thought it, it's not going to happen now".

I know I am not that powerful. I can't think us into or out of an adoption.

The drive home is full of music that triggers emotions. Life gives you demons, but I made friends with the devil, so I am invincible. Revved up, yes Frank, I am invincible. Adoption, you can't crack me.

At home, evenings are my favorite. John and I watching whatever we recorded while we have dinner. We talk about our day, an undertone of "it didn't happen today". I refresh my email. My chest hurts again. More TV, homework, bedtime.

I wake up at 1am in panic, a dream that we had a baby. A girl, 4 months old, chubby as can be. It takes a full 3 minutes to orient myself to realize it was a dream. Back to sleep hoping to be stronger tomorrow.

It's tomorrow and I feel stronger.


Working on a new Q&A since we are getting a lot of the same questions. For now you can review the first three Part 1 Part 2 Part 3


Some Monday tunes. 

I Am Skinless. I Am Raw.

I am in love with a child I've yet to meet. I am in love with the idea of a child I may never meet. I am terrified of that thought. 

These are the words I tell myself when either someone else we know adopts or a possible match for us falls through:

You are not good enough. You are not pretty, fun, smart, thin, ANYTHING enough. Not enough.

But this is not okay. This is not what teenage me overcame self-esteem issues for, or what a functional adult tells herself. The adoption wait is hard. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. It’s not you! It’s not me or John or anyone for that matter, it just is. 

I hate the word “just”. In our battle with infertility people would often say “just adopt” or “just hire a surrogate”. There is nothing “just” about any of these paths. They are filled with trials, grief, and financial hardship. In this case, I think the word just is acceptable. It just is what it is. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It doesn't make it okay or more tolerable.

We have done all we can outside of hiring a facilitator who will charge us thousands for who knows what level of ethical behavior. We have accounts on just about all social media, I keep this blog, we have networking cards, we redid our letter with a professional designer. Our letter goes out often from IAC due to how open our profile is. Despite our efforts, here we sit two plus years later, waiting.

Wondering if we will ever be parents. 

I know there is nothing wrong with us. (I wrote that and felt a twinge of “but is there?”) No Sarah, stop it. We are young, healthy, fun, educated people. We are ideal for this. We have more love in our pinky fingers for our future child than there is love in the rest of the entire world. 

My heart hurts. Literally. There is a heavy deep ache in my heart where our child belongs. It’s been there since May. I can remember the first moment I felt it- after the nearadoption fell apart. I miss feeling lighthearted. I miss being my goofy self. I’m now serious and solemn. There is a darkness following me around. I miss the person I used to be before I knew this level of grief. My chest hurts and my guts are in a constant state of being twisted. 

I want to call up our agency and beg them for the answers. Tell us what we are missing! Tell us what we can do to make this happen! Tell us the secret to it all! I'm not surviving this and I need answers. (FYI, there are no answers). 

Friends and family don’t know what to say to us anymore. See: What We Need: A Guide if you have that problem. Invitations to events with our friend’s kids are dwindling, because no one wants to hurt us. Honestly, sometimes that’s a good thing. There are days I could snuggle my friend’s kids for hours and then there are days that the thought of being around children makes my entire body ache in longing to be a mom. Nephew excluded- nephew time welcome all day, every day. He makes my heart feel joy and love and all things light and wonderful about the world.

The problem is no one, not even myself knows what version of my adoption world I will wake up to each day. A Facebook post from a friend about her successful adoption (Yay...and cue to the self criticism). It's not under my control. I feel selfish, but it happens without my permission.

I am skinless. I am raw. My nerves are exposed and the world is poking at them with sharp fingernails. I wear my grief on the outside of my body these days. I have cried until I just don’t have any water left in my body to cry.  It’s apparent and ugly and drives people away. Please stay strong for us, please understand it’s not intentional. Please stick around for the end of this, as I believe the finale will be remarkable.

Until you have walked in our shoes, you just don’t know. Until you have wanted something this bad and had it dangled just out of reach, you can’t judge. There is no grief like feeling like you have a hole in your soul that may never be filled.   

This is the point in the daily adoption emotional roller coaster that I feel a little better. I got some stress out by writing this post. Some steam has been let out, I'm letting myself fantasize about "what if". Feeling a little exposed for what all I wrote, but I'll probably publish it anyway, because my goal is to be completely transparent. I'll blast my headphones as I work to drown out my own judgments of myself.  I'll stress about any judgments that may be flung my way and then scream away those judgments to music or maybe just a nice long stress relieving scream in the car. Yes, that would feel good.  

The Bouncy Ball Theory

 I’ve been giving a lot of thought to human interaction lately. The simple contact we make with other people, either in passing or long term. How I met most of my friends through school or jobs, or in adoption support group. How much impact they have on my life. But also, how much impact a few seconds with another human can change your life.

I know people who make me constantly strive to be the best version of myself. I've met people in passing who have blown my mind and changed the way I feel about or how I do something.

When I was a kid- maybe beginning around age 11- I had this idea about how people and their interactions are like letting a ton on bouncy balls (you know, the ones from the grocery store coin machines) loose with great force in a giant room- except the room is earth or universe sized and the balls are billions of souls. The balls are like people bouncing off one another, sometimes lightly, sometimes hard enough to send a ball across the room, bouncing into another ball. Sometimes that same ball bounces again and again and again indefinitely off of many other balls. Sometimes the bouncy balls hit each other and come to rest together in their own little place. 

I’m wondering when we will "bounce" into our future baby’s first mom. Wondering if it is as random as it all seems or are our bouncy balls on some sort of predetermined path. It looks like chaos, like it’s all up to chance. I think as humans we always look for a reason for things that happen, especially the less favorable things like dead silence in an adoption wait, while others around you adopt. In a process that seems to have no rhyme or reason, I search. 

I’m so guilty of just saying “everything that happens is meant to be”. It’s something I’ve had to believe to make sense of a life with challenge after challenge. Maybe everything does happen for a reason or maybe it’s all random. Perhaps it really is all arbitrary events that lead souls together. 

At this very moment, events, decisions, actions are taking place that will lead a woman to us - who will choose us to raise her child. Events, decisions and actions that took and are taking place alongside each event, decision, and action that John and I have made and are still making. We are all spinning through this life, in a collision course with each other. 

What completely seemingly random or absolutely meant to be life events will lead us to our baby? How absolutely fascinating a thought!