Adoption is like anything in life - it will look different for all of us and I can only speak for myself. Here are some thoughts that would have helped me hold on to my seat during 3 of the trickier bits of the adoption rollercoaster. 1.) Deciding to adopt at all Beginning the adoption process may not have been how you imagined your family would come into being and you might need some space to acknowledge the loss you feel for a version of your life that didn't happen. That's healthy. Some of the roads to this point are difficult enough without piling on any extra pressure to feel a certain way. Yes, it's an exciting time but maybe it's other things too. It was a surprise to me but you might find that you come across some negative judgements from people around you too when you say that you have chosen adoption. A lot of resistance comes from a rigid view about what a family looks like and a lack of understanding about what adoption involves or what birth family circumstances might be. The antidote is often education but it relies on that person's willingness to be open to a different story and your willingness to offer it. It's not your responsibility and you've probably got enough going on so don't put pressure on yourself, it's okay just to hold your boundary (ending the conversation maybe) and it's worth saying that you might end up wishing you hadn't overshared if you try to explain and it still isn't received well. Those kind of judgements can be a hard thing to handle, especially when you get an unexpected comment from someone you thought would be supportive. Think about choosing who you speak to carefully and be kind with yourself, this process can have you feeling vulnerable for all sorts of reasons. Ultimately the people whose views matter when it comes to if and how you choose to have children are you and anyone on your parenting team - that's it. Any other opinion is just that, even if it stings. You might also find yourself blindsided by invasive questions along the way. I welcome questions as long as they're not specific to my children's stories but you might not. It's okay to draw your lines where they feel right to you and sometimes we might need to do this more than we expected to. Ordinarily I don't love seeking support on the internet (keyboard warrior judgement-fest) but when it comes to adoption support, Facebook forums have been really helpful. I would personally recommend YAWN (You've Adopted What Now) and Adopters Support and Advice UK for advice, friendly faces and a good rant with people who get it. If you're a prospective adopter it's also a great place to find people in your area who have some knowledge of the agencies close to you and how they work, it's always helpful to have an idea of what to expect. 2.) Assessment At the beginning it can feel like a bit of a maze - local authority or voluntary agency? Do they want to speak to your ex-partner? Does BMI matter or whether you rent or own your house? It often depends on the agency and because we are all looking for a bit of certainty when we begin the process, this can be tough. It's worth doing some research, whatever that looks like for you. Most agencies will run information sessions for an overview on their process and timescales or you can just ring them and have an initial chat with a social worker. There are great online forums where you can speak to adopters who are further along and get some advice and clarity. The amount of training and information before you have a little person to actually apply it to can be overwhelming at times and if you've drawn the short straw with your local authority you can experience clunky communication and lots of delays. Take it day by day and give yourself the space to wobble sometimes. Inevitably at some stage it will take over your every thought for a while, especially in the periods of just waiting for various things which can be a bit painful. It can be really helpful to have some enjoyable distractions ready. Date nights, great mates and time away if you can get it all worked well for us. You can also expect to be tired at times so TV, sofa and flight mode can also have their place. Listen to your body and as much as you can, try not to let the process take more from you than you have in the tank. If it happens, see if you can block off some time to recover, that email can wait until Monday. A wonderful friend of mine who was considering being a single adopter at the time had the great foresight of nominating someone to be her adoption partner. That person understood the process from beginning to end as she went through it, was the person she would sound off to and would talk through decisions with her as she made them. We all have days where it will feel like a lot and we need to be allowed to feel that, it's a good idea to know who your person / people are and in my humble opinion, you need at least one who you can say literally anything to. For lots of people the assessment process itself can feel very invasive. Going through your childhood with a fine tooth comb with a stranger isn't for everyone and neither is inviting lots of different professionals into your home and family - sometimes for years - before your adoption order is granted. What did help us was using the process to learn. We had already talked a lot about how we grew up and how we might like to raise our children but there were still questions that surprised us both and we ended up finding threads of conversation we might not have arrived at without it. If you have to do it you might as well use it to learn and to make sure you're on the same page if you're adopting with a partner. It's also an opportunity to check in with how it feels to tell your story. I believe that we'll always find more to work on once our kids arrive and beyond, but if there are any particular points of tenderness that might translate into a parenting trigger it's a good time to address them. Also, and I can't stress this enough - do not be afraid to ask for someone else if you are struggling. We were lucky enough to have the same great social worker from start to finish (I know this is very rare), but other social workers involved were very unhelpful and honestly damaging to the process and to us as a family. It wasn't easy but getting a change of worker transformed the whole landscape for us. We can sometimes suffer in silence with the belief that as professionals 'they know what they are doing'. Like all areas in life - some are amazing and some less so. Ultimately this is their job but it's your family. Where possible, trust yourself and push if something doesn't feel right. 3.) Our children's stories Our children's birth stories are as different as they are. As someone who narrowly missed being removed myself as a child I had compassion for the loss that many birth parents experience. I knew that these sad and complicated situations are not about 'good' or 'bad' people. Having said that, the reality isn't always easy to navigate when your priority is children who were very often not safe and protected in their birth families. It's one thing having an idea of what adopting a child might mean and another looking at a child's profile, bringing them home for the first time, or negotiating contact. You'll often hear me talk about the unrealistic expectations of parents everywhere and adoption is no exception. Making positive space for our children's stories while knowing they have been impacted by what they went through and holding a safe, compassionate connection with birth family while protecting our kids where needed...is complicated. We are parents but we are also people and these things are difficult for anyone. If you struggle with your child's story that's normal. Most children who are adopted have a background with some kind of difficulty, whether that was before they came into the world or afterwards. Even with the commitment to openness that we all make as adopters, it can be hard to come up with an answer to a hard question that keeps things safe, compassionate and honest, especially if you have a particularly difficult story to tell the person you love the most. Your child's life story is bound to interact with your feelings as their parent at some point and whatever comes of that, try to let it. Once you know how you feel you can start to work through it so it doesn't impact your child's experience. Burying your (very normal) feelings doesn't mean they don't exist and if you find that during assessment there is something you feel is too triggering for you, you are never doing a child a disservice by saying you don't feel you can cope with something in their background. They need your honesty because they need to find the home that will best support them. While I absolutely agree that our children's lives before us need to be acknowledged, honoured and talked about as much they need - life is messier than they can teach us in the training. It's one thing to deny a child's identity as part of their birth family and something else completely to have complicated feelings about it. Despite encouragement from care teams, other adopters or anyone else to plaster on a rosy smile - if you feel sad, ranty or upset sometimes, that is not the same as not prioritising your child's need to know where they came from. Feelings are not actions. Our choices begin when we decide what to do with them and that gets a lot easier when we can find a safe space to lay them out in the open. This isn't helped by the fact that (at least in our experience), there was very little acknowledgement of the difficulties that you might experience as an adoptive parent navigating this world and figuring out how to explain everyone's place in it the best way for your child, especially if there are complications, hostilities or aspects of the story that you feel unequipped to properly communicate. During our journey we asked for advice on how to talk about a specific issue and we were told it simply isn't available. This is very common and it means that our support for each other as peers is even more important. No matter how smooth the process there are likely to be unexpected bumps in the road and you are guaranteed some emotional highs and lows. There is a lot involved and almost all of it is out of our control as adopters until we are a family. Go gently, ask for help and give yourself a pat on the back for getting through the hard days - a lot like once they're home! I support adoptive parents through 1:1 EFT sessions to meet their challenges gently and work through difficult emotions. For more information you can drop me an email at [email protected], or book a free call here to find out how EFT can help. If you've got any questions about the process, you can always drop me a line. I am no expert but if I can I'll point you in the right direction.
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AuthorI'm Jess, EFT Practitioner & mindfulness teacher, adoptive mum to two adorable little fireworks and a passionate advocate of the idea that change really is possible, no matter how far away it feels. Archives
July 2024
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