September 17, 2016
Adoption News Roundup
Happy Saturday!
It’s the weekend, and it feels like fall! It may not be fall officially until next week, but we’ll take the cooler temperatures however they happen to come.
Here are some of the reads that captured us this week. Enjoy, dear friends!
What do you do when your child’s interests are so different from yours that you’re having a hard time connecting? This mother shares her story of struggling to connect with her “girly” daughter. “She is everything I am not, which makes it difficult to connect with her. I worry so much that I don’t get her and she doesn’t get me. And believe me, I try. I sit patiently and I listen to her stories and I try — I try really hard — to remain engaged with what the queen was doing and how pretty her hair was and how her dress sparkled in the story she tells me. I smile big and applaud loudly when she twirls in her tiara and matching necklace. I do my best to facilitate arguments between her and Dora and Abby while not rolling my eyes at the absurdity of it all.
I try.”
“5 things no one told me about being a special needs parent.”
Medicated moms face a definite double standard. Why is it that being a mom who drinks is more culturally acceptable than one who needs Xanax to function? Tara Wood shares her emotional, relatable story of extreme mom guilt on this year’s first day of school.
“It wasn’t until I was back in my driveway that it occurred to me I hadn’t taken a single photo of any of the kids. I was too distracted losing my mind to ask them to pose for my iPhone.
Within an hour or so, there would be dozens of flawless, staged photos of coiffed kids — little boys with their shirts tucked in and wearing belts, girls with grosgrain bows larger than their own heads smiling all pink-cheeked and sparkly eyed — holding chalkboards or Pinterest-worthy framed prints listing the year, their age, grade, and new teacher’s name.
I decided to post a back-to-school photo of myself with a caption about how I’d obliterated the morning for my children. I stood outside of my van, still braless plus a halo of frizzy hair that had escaped my Mom-bun, held up my prescription bottle of Xanax, and took a selfie.”
“Honestly, I don’t care if you think placing my child for adoption makes me a bad mom.” One birth mother’s powerful, honest story.
THESE are the kind of friends moms need.