A 23 Year Dream
Guest writer and adoptive mom, Britt, shares her adoption experience.
Adopting my daughter was a 23 year long process, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. You see, I’ve known adoption would be part of my life since I was 10 years old. I never wanted to experience pregnancy and I was not keen on the idea of babies. I also grew up with just my immediate family around me: mom, dad, and a brother. Extended family lived in other states and countries at that time so any ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ were made up of the friends my parents invited into our lives. The elderly couple that lived next door? Grandparents. My dads best friend? Uncle. My best friends? Siblings and cousins. It became clear to me that family is not only blood…but rather the people you carry in your heart.
My wife and I knew we wanted to have kids pretty early in our relationship but starting a family is a nerve wracking thing to do, no matter how you begin. For us, it started in 2019 when we signed up for the mandatory classes required to adopt from foster care. 9 weeks of trauma-informed parenting, various home studies, background checks, fingerprints, and emergency escape routes in case of fire and we still walked away feeling completely unprepared and overwhelmed.
We began inquiring on profiles we saw online. A weirdly impersonal process, (much like browsing for a shelter dog) but in this day and age, there really isn’t anything safer or easier. We read so many profiles, had so many phone calls, and yet we still hit dead ends. After feeling nothing but frustration, we were reminded that the family needs to fit the child…not the other way around. So we recentered, focused on other things, and moved about our routine as normal. Life has a way of making you wait when you need it the most.
In 2021, our caseworker came to us with the profile of an 11 year old girl. We checked her boxes and she checked ours. It was the fit we had been hoping for. To start this slowly, safely, and in a manner that would not get anyone’s hopes up, we began having monthly visits with her so we could get to know each other. I had read so many stories of adoptive parents meeting their children for the first time and just “knowing” that it was right. I had always thought this was so strange…how does someone just “know”?
And then it happened to me. This bright 11 year old walked through our front door, looked around our living room like she hadn’t seen it in years, and plopped down on the couch. I knew in those first 2 minutes that this was our daughter.
The next 2 years were met with the fight of a lifetime as we battled for the ability to adopt her. She was legally able to be adopted since we met her, but she has a half-sibling that the state wanted them to stay together despite the needs of each child being wildly different from one another. It was said over and over that it was in the half-siblings best interest to stay together…but nothing about what was in the best interest of our daughter. Our question to the courts quickly became “how do you choose which child has their best interest met and which one gets ignored?” These two children are completely different: one that has rarely been focused on and the other that gets all the attention because they require it.
Eventually, the courts were given documentation that expressed what we knew all along…that two very different families would need to be found to give these children their best, individual, chance at success while still working to maintain a sibling relationship. The adoption of our daughter was finalized 6 months later in 2023 and her sibling has also found an adoptive home.
This process is not for the faint of heart, but parenthood in general is not for the faint of heart. It has a way of testing you and pushing you way past what you thought your limit was only to reward you with a little person that you could not love more even if you tried. I fully believe that some people enter your life for a reason, and we knew our roads crossed not due to coincidence, but because they had to. This experience has an undeniable duality. It shakes you to your core and forces you to look outside of yourself while also fiercely loving and fighting for a child not born to you. Even though it’s hard…it’s still worth the 23 years it took for us to achieve.
