Have you ever wanted something so desperately that you actually cannot voice your desire?
That the fear of hearing the words outloud is so scary that your stomach does flip flops.
That when people tell you to release your hopes into the universe it feels like a gigantic scam to make your world tumble down.
This is exactly how I have felt about the adoption of my new son. That if I actually shared the ins and outs of the situation it would actually explode in my face, my heart.
It hasn’t been helped by social workers who should have the words “hopefully” and the statement “it should” ripped out of their practice handbook. The hedging of their bets or professional distance is nothing but frightening for an adoptive parent.
We need to hear “of course” or “it will“.
I honestly feel as if I have been walking on eggshells this last year. From the moment we decided we wanted to adopt our then foster son my heart feels as if it has been ripped out of my chest, trampled on then replaced. It’s been hard and the reason I haven’t really shared this journey here is simply because I couldn’t voice my fear.
I couldn’t allow the inner demon inside my head any space here on this platform. It was doing enough damage inside my head.
“You aren’t good enough”
“Adoptive parent, you, ha really”
“It’s going to fail”.
The adoption process isn’t easy, I guess it shouldn’t be. The assessors actually have the lives of children in their hands. They have to probe, explore, question.
“How did you feel when this happened?”
“How would you cope with this?”
And the big one
“Why adoption”?
Your answers of course have to be the truth but I have woke night after night with fear that my truth wasn’t enough.
Thankfully, my truth was enough and last week we found out that the judge has signed our adoption order and in a few weeks our boy will be our son.
I cannot tell you how excited I am, how much it matters to call him mine. I am simply on cloud nine. My heart feels full and I’m sure I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard the decision.
I may not be able to write down our complete adoption story yet. It’s still a little too raw and it’s not actually at the end point yet. I still now wait impatiently for the date of our celebration hearing and my heart will still probably jump at the delivery of the morning post for a while yet.
But I will state this here, our adoption journey has been hard, we have cried many tears, had many sleepless nights and had way too many stress headaches.
Yet I promise you this, every stinking moment of this chaos and fear has been worth it, my son, he is so completely worth it.
Rebel with kindness 