Myth #1: Adopting children is a glorious, romantic experience.
Truth: Adopting children is difficult for both adopted children and adoptive parents.
Myth #2: Adopted children are "lucky" to be adopted.
Truth: Adopted children--even those adopted as infants--experience grief, and symptoms of grief, worse than any other childhood trauma. For them, adoption is often experienced as a loss. A loss of culture, language, previous familial ties, familiar places, biological identity, previous attachments...
Myth #3: Adoptive parents should be congratulated on going "above and beyond" the "call of duty."
Truth: Adoptive parents do not adopt to be "heroes;" they adopt to be parents. On the other hand, adoptive parents do experience a range of emotions (for example, secondary post-traumatic stress) that are not common among biological parents. Adoptive parents need support and understanding.
I write these words because they seem to be the only way to express what our week has been like...and what many weeks in the last couple months have actually and truly been like. It's not fair to either of my children to account in a public way what they are experiencing, and suffering through, and I have struggled many times with how to ask for prayer in this forum in a way that is respectful of our privacy. And so I will simply say that we covet your prayers as our family continues to struggle to find its way through the grief, the loss, the pain, and the sadness that is a part of our boys' life--and a part of ours, too.
In the meantime, we will continue to share our happier moments here, because we need these reminders of just how great our family can be. And we hope that if you know of an adoptive family--or a family about to adopt--you'll stop saying the trite things ("WOW! You adopted?! We could never do that!" "Your children must feel so lucky to have you." "It's amazing how you 'rescued' those kids.") and have the courage to look an adoptive parent or child square in the eye and say, "How ARE you?" Adoptive families don't need admirers, they need friends.
4 comments:
We will absolutely keep you in our prayers.
Hang in there.
As a soon-to-be adoptive family, I'm passing this message along to all of our friends. This is the kind of understanding and support we will need, and I hope it's the kind that we've given you guys. We love you and are pulling for you!
Thank you for being as transparent as you can be while still protecting your family's privacy. It's always nice to 'see' glimpses into friend's lives so we can support one another in prayer.
Love you always! Praying for you. Thanks for sharing your struggles as well as the joys. All of life seems to teach us how very much we need God and how little we really understand this world. Kids are especially good 'teachers' even though they don't know it. I love your boys more than I can express and I will love all the grandchildren I have - adopted or non-adopted. I pray that your family's hurts will be healed and the trama erased as only God our Father can do. Just makes a Gramma want to reach inside of them and take the hurt from them and 'make it all better'.
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