Yes, it has been a while since I've posted. In that span of time, we've received the final version of the home study, worked on our adoption profile book (which is challenging, as I hate being in photos!), went on vacation. But we haven't stopped hoping for our little one to come along.
I have been doing some reading on adoption, and have been taking books out from our public library.
The library in the little Ontario town where I grew up in had a great kids section. I remember leafing through the magazine Owl sitting on tiny chairs and tiny tables. There was an huge ostrich egg in a glass dome on a shelf that always piqued my curiosity. I would secretly hope that while watching, a little beak would peck its way through and imprint on me so that I would be forced to take it home and make it my pet. I would read everything I could get my hands on, so much so that in Grade 1 I was working from the Grade 3 reader and assignments.
Fast forward to today, and I will admit, my literary appetite has lessened considerably. Sadly, my reading is usually work documentation, and books that TV shows and movies based on books. I am currently reading the Game of Thrones series. I gleefully read all of the Harry Potter books.
Every so often, I do get into a "I need to read everything I can about <blah>". The last subject was international human rights. Lately, it's all been about adoption and I suspect this will go on for some time, expanding to various parenting books that swear that one method is the tried and true solution to all of a child's problems.
So on to the adoption reading. One of the pages I follow on Facebook is Portrait of an Adoption. The 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days on the right hand side of their web site is a fantastic read, exploring adoption from all angles - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
J and I have been taking turns reading out loud to one another from The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade. How times have changed. My voice may have quivered a bit as I read the stories out loud to my husband. Somehow, it made me feel better to read out loud... these women, whose stories may have never been told before out of shame, out of guilt. By reading out loud, I felt like I was giving them their voice. It was a recognition of what they went through. It might have been a heavy read, but cemented the fact that should a birth mother want an open adoption, we would be all for it.
The other book on the coffee table right now is Attaching in adoption: practical tools for today's parents. I will admit that I have not started this one yet. I think this is one for this weekend in the hammock!
I'll end off this post with a quote from a book that I haven't read yet but might also pick it up this weekend... Nia Vardlos's Instant Mom:
“Anyone who ever wondered how much they could love a child who did not
spring from their own loins, know this: it is the same. The feeling of
love is so profound, it's incredible and surprising.”
I cannot wait!
