Before You Decide To Adopt This Adoption November

So many times we walk into foster care/adoption thinking our role is that of the difference makers. Recruitment efforts and blog spots share the theme that we are there to shine a light in the darkness and to save hurting children.
The deeper I have walked into this journey I realize the less I feel this way. Sure, we may have adopted children who didn’t have a home, but now I see more than ever, it was truly myself who at the beginning had the least: the least knowledge, the least wisdom, the least compassion, the least grace, the least mercy.
Through adoption I have become the mother to children with medical and developmental special needs. I have become the mother to children who have endured great trauma. I have become the mother to black children. As such, I find my eyes and ears have continually been opened to new perspectives, new voices, and new communities than I otherwise would have tuned into.
I listen more attentively to the voices of the disabled community, both adults living with disabilities and the struggles of families who are caring for children with special needs. They are often drowning in lonlienss and isolation.
I listen more attentively to advocates who are working to prevent trauma, to those who are on the front lines battling addiction, working with those who struggle with mental health issues, and adults who are wrestling with these very monsters. They desperately need our support and understanding.
I listen more attentively, and even now actively seek out black voices, to learn where I might have been misled, and correct where I was previously wrong. In the places I used to assume the invalidity of experiences of others different than my own, now I find myself constantly reassessing my own, limited perspectives. Their voices are valid and their pain is real.
One of the most painful voices for me to listen to even now is the voice of adult adoptees. I still cringe when I hear their hurt and their loss. I know one day my little ones will grow up and echo many of those same wounds. I am slowly letting go of the idea that adopting my children was “saving” them from a difficult life, but rather a commitment to walk the painful road of loss, heartache, and difficulty alongside them.
Each community that adoption and fostering have ushered us into has welcomed us with open arms. They have been ready to share their experiences with us, ready to educate us even through our ignorance, and ready to love us for no other reason than we knocked at their door. I only hate that my children have walked through the hell that created the circumstances necessitating their adoption before my eyes were opened to all of the voices in our community that I would have otherwise failed to pay attention to.
It was only when I began to raise non-ambultory children did I consider the importance of access, only when I began to raise black children did I consider the truth of bias. It was only when I loved their birth mothers did I begin to see poor mental health and substance abuse issues as more than poor choices and laziness. I write this with genuine remorse.
So if you are thinking about adopting this month and the cute campaign videos about how much you have to give bring tears to your eyes, pause first and take inventory. Yes, I am sure you have a lot to give; I thought I did too. But in actuality when it comes to loving the marginalized including our adopted children and the communities they come from, we had way more to learn than we had to give, and my guess is, if you considering adoption, then you probably do, too.
