October 28, 2015

Adoption News Roundup

Happy mid-week, friends! This is always the time of week we need something good to push us through to the weekend. Here are some of the fabulous reads we’ve come across this week.

“I don’t want you to be grateful: a letter from your adoptive mother.” Wow. So powerful. “You never have to feel grateful for your adoption. We don’t have to have special gratitude for something that is inherently ours. And my love? That’s yours.  It was yours before we met. It will be yours when time is gone. It was, and is, your right to have. My love for you is something I want to be so part of your being that it doesn’t cross your mind to even contemplate its existence. Take it for granted. Assume it will always be there. Because it will.”

Some thoughts on why open adoption is in the adoptee’s favor. How does opening up one’s adoption fulfill needs that children who come from closed options may feel they’re lacking?

Thank you, Parents.com, for addressing every parent’s deepest, darkest, question: how in God’s name can we leave a store WITHOUT purchasing a toy for our child?!

The mother-child bond is not relegated to only biological mothers, despite the fact that many adoptive mothers struggle with feelings of inferiority. This adoptive mother shares her experience in a powerful personal essay. “A few weeks later, emerging from that new-parent time warp when you wouldn’t notice war breaking out, I knew that I was hopelessly smitten and forever changed. Yet the thought came to me, unbidden and slightly shameful: ‘I’m mothering someone else’s baby.’ Sometimes I felt myself an imposter. ‘Your baby looks just like you,’ someone would say. ‘Isn’t that something?’ I’d reply. ‘She’s adopted.'”

This is so fascinating and inspiring. This woman removes the makeup from Barbies and other dolls to turn them into real-looking woman. THIS is the kind of message we should be sharing with our daughters.

Okay…who out there relates? 8 ways dining is different before and after you have children. Goodbye clutch, cute dry-clean only outfit, and long, luxurious meals.

What do you think? Should we be paying our children to do their chores?