Find My Family

Have you seen the show? Well I can barely see it through tears because I am such a blubbering mess when I watch it. I have so many thoughts and feelings, but one main thing I think of is that I am SO happy that we have an open adoption. Truly, these people who are looking for their birth families on this show many times know NOTHING about where they came from. We have had so many questions since we started the adoption process...so many people wonder why we chose an open adoption. Watch Find My Family...you'll know why.

It does scare me though. Tonight's episode said that all adopted children have a "primal wound". Is that true? I pray that Tate does not feel that way. I know he feels the intense love his birth father and birth grandparents have for him and we never forget to tell him how much his birth mother loves him and we pray that someday he will get to see that love first hand. The last thing a parent wants is for their children to feel incomplete, unloved or sad. Without his birth family in his life, it would have been inevitable that Tate would have felt at least one of those feelings at some point.

And that leads me to think about our next adoption and how we are likely going to adopt internationally. This will be a whole new and different journey than what we've had with Tate. I will admit...when we originally decided to adopt, we had no idea how it would break our hearts. It was about us. We wanted a child, we thought it would be completely wonderful and joyous and didn't ever consider the heartbreak we would feel. Heartbreak for Tate's birth family, heartbreak for Tate, the fear of us not being "enough" and us not being able to express to him how much his birth family loves him, the fear of him feeling incomplete or unloved some day. We were blessed to not have to use only our words to tell him how much his birth family loves him, they have been an active part of his life and he can see it himself. And it is such a huge blessing to us and to him that they are in his life. We have hope that more of his birth family will be a part of his life someday too. Still, I do wonder at times if he will feel incomplete or unloved ever in his life. I pray he never does. And our next child? We may take he or she from it's home, it's country, it's culture. That will be a whole new heartbreak.

I guess I just needed to ramble about it. It's been over 3 years since we adopted Tate. It's something that has made me change my thinking in so many more ways than I ever expected...it made us different people. I never realized that after having such an amazing experience with our adoption that I may fear adopting again because I don't want our next child to feel less loved than Tate because maybe it's birth parents won't or can't be in its life. I love that God chose us to be adoptive parents. I look forward to what the blessing of adoption will teach us the next time we take the journey.