Drained

Jon and I headed to Bellefaire Friday afternoon to meet our social worker and get the list of all the forms, letters etc we will need for the home study part of the adoption. Diana, our social worker, seems to be very nice and very knowledgeable about the process. She told us more about Bellefaire and their programs and the campus. It actually looks like a mini college. They have several buildings, offices and housing space for a variety of different programs, groups etc.

After dinner we headed to training. We were in class from 6:30-9:30 Friday night and from 9-8 today. We are completely physically and mentally exhausted. We have been given so much to think about. We covered things like attachment disorders and obstacles you might face when building a bond with your adopted child, the grieving process and how something terrible has to happen to them in order for something wonderful to happen to your family, open adoptions or meeting the birth parents when you travel internationally and how helping your adopted child adjust to their new life could take away from our boys. We covered the major areas of development and talked about how adoption can interfere in each area. Whether we adopt domestically or internationally, infant or older, the kids will face very similar issues and have many of the same questions. Unfortunately, it was all presented so negatively. I know they need to prepare us for the worst case scenarios, but it almost left me wondering where the positives were in the whole process. We keep telling ourselves, we are doing a good thing and just think where these kids would be if they weren't adopted. Many (especially the kids in Ethiopia) might not survive if they weren't adopted. Just when you start to feel good again, you're hit with coping disorders/unhealthy coping mechanisms, skewed views (from everyone including the kids) on your reasons for adopting, triggers causing kids (and adults) to revert back to issues of abandonment, neglect etc. I knew this wouldn't be an easy process, but there was so much we never considered. We thought the younger we adopted, the fewer issues we would have to deal with. I had no idea. Its going to take a while to process all the information thrown at us the past two days. We have one more day of training. I can't imagine whats left to cover, but it sounds like we'll have a full day.

Our boys are with my parents this weekend. I know they are having a great time, but we miss them. Talking about something that will greatly impact their lives and hearing about some of the horrors kids have to go through makes us miss them so much more.

We're trying to stick to the positives. We have so much love to give and we know we could give a little girl a life of opportunities she might not have if we gave up on this process. Giving up is not in our nature, but I'm really ready to hear about the up side of adoption.