Hope's Story vs. Josh's Story

The weather topped 100 degrees but we were still having a blast!  Every year the regional office of our adoption agency hosts a "Family Fun Day" at a ranch which belongs to a family that supports the organization.  Our kids get to enjoy horseback riding, snow cones, face painting, a BBQ lunch, jumpy houses and a ton of other fun kid activities.  Josh enjoys it because we let him consume as many snow cones as he wants.  By the end of the day Josh becomes a happy, sticky mess!

This year, at lunch, Alex had an interesting conversation with the woman who organized the event, who is also in charge of public relations.  She enthusiastically told us that Hope's birth mom had come to share her story at an agency event recently and that it was so touching to hear more about our family.  Our agency has invited us to share through several venues and platforms about Hope's adoption story.  

There has been a great deal of interest about her story because we have a very successful open adoption situation with Hope's birth mom.  Miranda visits us three or four times a year and has a very positive relationship with Hope.  She is a very mature and gracious person whom we trust to be a good presence in Hope's life (and the lives of our other kids as well).  She's also a great voice for Bethany because she's thoughtful, articulate, poised, beautiful and has had a profound spiritual revival in her life through the process of choosing to give birth to Hope and place her for adoption.  We have been so glad that our story has been used (by the organization and by God) to encourage others about adoption in general and about open adoption specifically.  Below are some links to some of the content that has been produced about Hope and Miranda.  

http://blogs.christianpost.com/every-child/a-life-with-hope-12521/

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/october/opening-adoption-files.html

http://vimeo.com/36151146 

However, Alex found himself sharing with the staff person from our agency that it was a little sad for him that, while Hope's story has been told very publicly, there has not been much interest in Josh's story.  Now, it's rather obvious why an adoption agency might not want to highlight Josh's story.  His is a story that says to prospective adoptive parents, "you might adopt a child hoping that he would be healthy but then they turn out to be a severely disabled, medically complicated person".  This is not a adoption agency's publicist's dream.  After we adopted Josh, Alex and I used to joke that we'll probably never get invited to come speak at those prospective adoptive parent trainings because our family story would probably scare everyone away!

Not every child gets to have their story put into videos and articles.  Still, the imbalance between the interest in Hope's adoption story and Josh's adoption story is painful for us especially because it's the healthy, typically developing child who gets a lot of attention and the special needs child who gets ignored.  For us, as parents, both adoption narratives feel like stories that should be told and celebrated.  I suppose that it's the conviction that Josh's story needs to be told that causes me to write this blog.  He may be mostly non-verbal and hard to get to know but I believe, with all my heart, that his story is important.    

Surprisingly, the woman listened with an open heart.  She emailed us a few days later to ask if it would be ok for her to talk to the agency's national communications department about doing a story about Josh for their quarterly adoption magazine.  Apparently, it fits right in with a special focus that the organization is launching about adopting kids with special needs called, "Courage to Love".  We told her that we'd be glad to participate!  I feel so touched that the agency is one who is feeling moved to address this topic.

I just got off the phone with a writer who has been contracted to write the story and am looking forward to seeing what kind of fruit this produces.  I'll blog about this more later, hopefully with links to the story about Josh.  

In Praise of Birth Moms

Last week we woke up and found that we had been sent a surprising email. Joshua's birth mom (I'll call her Andrea) emailed us after 7 years of not being in touch. We were thrilled to hear from her.

I posted something brief about it on Facebook and it was interesting to me to hear people's slight discomfort with open adoption even through their comments on my quick post. "Well, I'm happy if you're happy" said one Facebook friend. "You have such a big heart" said another. I have a feeling that it's quite odd for most people for adoptive parents to be in touch with birth parents.

Alex and I love having connection with our two adopted children's birth parents. Once we learned what "open adoptions" could be about, we were all for it. We want our children to know that adoption is a part of their life stories not because they were abandoned but because they were born of amazingly courageous young women who made a choice in love. These women came to decide that placing their babies for adoption would be the best option for the child and for them. We want to know and bless the cultural backgrounds of our children as much as possible. We appreciate having as much medical history as possible. Open adoption has been a tremendous blessing to our lives.

For Hope that means that we get visits about three or four times a year from her birth mom. We've met her entire nuclear family and some of her friends. She is an amazing person; lovely, gracious and mature. About a month ago for her last visit, Hope suggested that her birth mom might want to take just her out to ice cream for a "special time". Anna asked why she couldn't come along. Hope told her, "Because she's my birth mom so I get special time with her." Anna declared that it was not fair that she didn't get special time with her birth mom. I reminded her that I was her birth mom and that she often gets special time with me. I was informed that I don't count because I am the "regular mom" and that she wanted another birth mom that doesn't live in our house (presumably so that this person could take her out to ice cream).

We were in contact with Joshua's birth mother for about a year after he was born and placed with us. We even drove out to her town (about 2 hours from ours) to pick her up so that she could come and see where we lived and where Joshua was going to grow up. When Joshua was hospitalized and diagnosed at 2 months old, we were in phone contact with her then email contact. We told her everything we knew about his diagnosis (SOD) by that first year then we lost contact with her. (She stopped responding to our calls and emails.) Our adoption social worker told us that it is not uncommon for young birth mothers to need to take time away from contact with the adoptive families. We respected that but were sad to not be able to share about Joshua's life with someone else who loved him very much.

This is some of the background to why we were so thrilled to hear from Andrea. She (along with Hope's birth mother) is one of our heroes in life. She became pregnant at 15 years old and had no family support in her life. She was living with an older brother, who mostly spent time working in a city a couple of hours away. Andrea broke up with her boyfriend immediately and did not tell anyone about the pregnancy (including the boyfriend/ birth father, who did not know about the baby until he was born and until he was asked to sign papers terminating his parental rights). For some reason, despite only having information about abortion as a possible response to an unplanned pregnancy, Andrea felt that it would be wrong for her to abort the baby so she kept the pregnancy. She wore big sweatshirts through the end of the school year then mostly hung out at home by herself during the summer (Josh was born in August). When she went into labor, she mostly labored at home then took the bus to the hospital. She gave birth 30 minutes after she arrived. Then she asked the nurses to help her to find options for adoption.

Although Hope's birth mother's story is very different, she shared Andrea's experience of feeling immense external pressure to abort but also having a strong internal feeling that this was not what she should do. Both of these young women walked through the long months of having a precious baby form inside of them. Both carried through with the conviction and choice to allow someone else to raise that child. I have no idea what kind of courage and love it must have taken to make this choice but I respect it so much.

Through adopting Hope and Joshua, our eyes have been opened to the reality that there are many, many women out there who are birth moms. They have a huge part of their lives that few people may know about and few might affirm. One day, we shared Joshua's story with a speech therapist who was at our house for a home visit. She listened carefully then she shared with us that she had given birth to a child over 20 years before and had placed her for adoption. Ironically, she and her husband struggled with infertility and never had children. As she told us her story, she wept openly, her grief still very much with her, along with her love for the baby that she had so many years before.

There is so much more to say about Joshua and Hope's birth mothers but the main thing that I have on my heart today is this: Thank you. I treasure that suffering and sacrifice that you went through so that these beautiful, precious children can exist. May God honor what you have done and who you are.