December 01, 2015

Adoption News Roundup

Hello there!

We hope you had a magnificent Thanksgiving, filled with things, foodstuffs, and people that make you happy and thankful for the life you have. This is such a special time of year for the adoption community. Not only did we just wrap up National Adoption Month, which has us thinking and reflecting on greater issues in adoption all month long, but it’s a time of year inherent to thankfulness and giving…something those touched by adoption know a lot about.

It also means there are some important stories being shared by our community. Here are a few that have really resonated with us recently.

This family shares why older child adoption was the only way for them. It’s particularly impactful given this year’s National Adoption Month theme, which focuses on adopting older children from foster care before they age out. “As we looked through photos of our state’s waiting children, the faces haunted us. We were overwhelmed with sorrow and regret. Regret that we couldn’t adopt them all.”

This is a time of year when birth mothers are often overlooked. We forget about the pain they might be feeling, not celebrating the holiday with their biological child. They deep sense of loss they may be enduring, expected to celebrate the season when those around them may not understand how they feel. Thank you to America Adopts! for sharing 16 holiday survival tips for birth mothers. These are important for birth mothers, and for those looking to empathize with the birth mothers in their life.

A father takes his daughter out for breakfast, and at her insistence, puts down his phone and they choose to focus on connecting with one another. A woman who observed them left him a note that went viral, inspiring so many others to do the same. What a story! “The moral is not that any one of our stories is more moving, important, or newsworthy than any other,” he said on the Today Show. “It’s that our world is better when each of us listens, observes, supports, and loves. The woman who left us that note was doing all of those things.”

How will you feel when your kids are all grown up? Is this a question you ever ask yourself?

A crafty Christmas…fun activities you can do with the kids that decorate your house at the same time!