ADOPT workshops 1 & 2

COMPLETE!

This Thursday and Friday we had to attend a two full day adoption workshop. Isaak got off work, and Sydaleigh and Marvelly spent the last two days with Holly and the girls. It was from 8-4 on Thursday and 9-4 on Friday, which sounds like a lot...and it was. I kept thinking going into this...why are they making us go to these workshops, I hope this is worth it....and oh my gosh...it was definitely worth it! And I'm so glad they made us go! The wealth of information they provided us with was astounding.

We heard from a panel of adoptive parents, a panel of birth mothers, and a panel of adoptive parents with the birth mother. We were talked to by experts dealing with trans-racial adoptions, grief and depression, all the legal manners behind adoption, post adoption. We were briefed on everything under the sun concerning the case workers role, expectations, false expectations, and not to mention the countless resources they provided us with....it was so awesome.

I love.this.agency! It was truly a God-thing finding them because even though me and Isaak were certain we wanted to adopt, we didn't know what to do next. But I know that this is where we need to be and these are the people we need to get us through this.

Some things I was exposed to the past two days.....

...how emotionally raw birth mothers are. They are not some nameless faceless abstract woman. They are real. They have feelings. And this is very very hard for them. And I saw that today. I was given a glimpse of the hurt. The broken dreams. The less than ideal circumstances. The acceptance of those broken dreams. The joy in knowing they made the right decision. The gratefulness in receiving pictures, letters, and phone calls. How healing takes time. For some, a lifetime....

.....the ins-and-outs of what a trans-racial adoption looks like. The everyday things that families face, the children face, the struggles, the questions, the techniques in parenting a child with a different ethnicity than yours, the support available to you....(this was one of my favorite parts of the workshop!)

.....the whole legality behind adoption. The birth mother's rights, the biological father's rights, the adoptive parents rights, getting all those rights, what can hold up the process, what the courts require...it had my head spinning at times.

I don't know the requirements with all the different adoption agencies across the country and around the world. I do know our agencies. And our agency requires all prospective adoption parents to attend this two day workshop prior to starting their home study. I thought this was absurd at first. But these past two days I've found out the importance. You want to be as well equipped as you possibly can be when considering adoption. It's complicated. So you want to be well informed. You want to be well educated. You need to be able to ask questions. You need to be able to talk with experts who do this for a living. Experts who live and breathe this everyday. Experts who've been though this a hundred times and back and can talk you through it. You need to know what adoption is all about from every perspective...most importantly, the childs, so that you can be the best parent to them possible.

Now, our next step is being assigned a case worker and beginning our home study. And then that's all that lay between us and being placed on a waiting list. Let the process continue!