To China With Love

The journey to adoption is never an easy one and mine has been longer, and more complicated, than some. I started about three years ago when I was sure that I was destined to adopt internationally.  I looked at multiple country programs and nearly followed through with one, but I always had reservations.  Some small part of me that was unsure of my decision.  I finally decided that my hesitation came from my program of choice.  After all, my desire to be a mother has never wavered, but I often pictured myself with an infant and in the international adoption world infant placements are not common.  Added to that the fact that I would be adopting as a single mother,  I was pretty much guaranteed to adopt an older child.

Knowing all of that I decided to enter the world of Domestic adoption.  I completed all the paperwork  and made my profile book and sent it all of in hopes that a birth mother would see it and pick me....

No one ever did.  It sucked.  A lot.  And every time my profile was shown I would tell myself not to get my hopes up (but I did), and not to think about the child (but I did), and not to dream about the child (but I did).

And every time I was rejected I told myself not to take it personally....but I did.  Oh, I did.  And I would begin to analyze every picture and word in my profile.  And my self-esteem, well it took a flying leap off of the Empire State Building and smeared itself all over the intersection of 5th Avenue and 34th Street.  Because those profiles are personal, very, very personal so rejecting it meant rejecting me.  There was something they saw in it that made them say no.  Was it my clothes, or weight, or hair, or house?  I don't know but for two years I watched friends have children and I still didnt and so I was finished.  I have this theory that the female psyche can only handle a finite amount of rejection over the course of a lifetime and I had reached mine.

But then my niece turned six, which is significant only in that it opened the doors to China for me as a single woman.  And my thoughts turned to Chinese orphanages and little kids with my nieces dark hair and almond eyes.  But I didn't say anything.  To anyone.  For months.  Until the beginning of a New Year, and I felt ready to start a new journey.  So I started back down the paperwork trail.  I started looking for grants to apply for and fundraisers to start.

And I started looking at files.  Files of little boys with special needs that didn't seem all that special to me.  And one Tuesday night, at 11:30pm, my sister texted me from her bedroom downstairs to tell me there were new kids on my agencys list.  And just like that.  With the click of a button and a few taps on the ipad I fell straight into the eyes of this boy.

And suddenly it all seemed worth it.