This morning the website brought me an email from a long ago adoptive mom. Her daughter (now grown) is about to become full time guardian of an at-risk teenager.

A couple of weeks ago I heard from the wife of a former Wednesday’s Child. This couple is planning to adopt a child from foster care.

I’m not saying that either of these young adults had easy childhoods. Quite the opposite. They and their adoptive families met the challenges. And now they’ve grown into adulthood with the desire to pass love along to someone else that needs to be safe and needs a place to belong.

Several years ago a couple of caseworkers and their supervisors, along with some generous volunteers and supporters put love in motion for one boy and one girl. Now those efforts are rippling out to two more youth in the next generation.

Jacki keeps his photograph where she can see it from her desk. Darrell is smiling in that picture, and Jacki remembers it as a day when he had a really good time.

But good times were marred by the fact that no matter what we did, we were unsuccessful in finding a permanent family for him.

Darrell’s disabilities led to his death when he was still just a teenager. As a ward of the government, he was given a pauper’s funeral. The only people in attendance were his child welfare caseworker and a handful of staff members from The Adoption Exchange.

We count 6,281 adoptions to date, but Jacki says Darrell’s photograph reminds her that time is running out for far too many children who are still waiting. Like Darrell, they need the love of a family.

Yes, I’m aware of it. The whole world took a hit. And recovery is very slow.

I’m remembering another time (about 25 years ago) that I felt like we do today – so, so tight on money with bills stacking up.

I’d done the math and was convinced The Adoption Exchange could net over $3,000 on helium balloon sales at our exhibit booth at the national adoption conference. So we purchased the balloons for about $900 and took them to the conference.

We scarcely had $900. But we had a good plan.

We rented a helium tank and set up shop at the conference…and …

…they were defective balloons that would not float. No matter what we did – including sealing them with the curling iron I’d brought in my suitcase. We trimmed each one with fingernail scissors to make them lighter weight – and still those balloons would not rise into the air.

It was dismal. At one point I climbed into the bathtub in my hotel room, holding a sampling of balloons under water to see if there were leaks.

Oh, what a sinking feeling.

We tried to sell them flat (not blown up) as something to tack on poster board, but there wasn’t much of a market.

Six months later, when we were still trying to recover our $900 investment from the manufacturer, I walked into the office to see one of those pathetic balloons languidly drifting 3 inches off the lobby floor (that’s all the altitude they ever got).

We recovered.

Face Book announced that it now has 500 million users. When the media reported this milestone, a reporter remarked, “If it were a country, Face Book would be the 3rd largest in the world.”

That makes the discussions about adoption across county, state, country, and public/private jurisdictions seem archaic.



Become a fan on The Adoption Exchange’s Face book.

Because of her experiences as an adoption professional and an adoptive parent, Paula recently commented, “I know that families cannot do what they need to do without a community of support. We are all in this together! Nothing is more life-changing or more meaningful!”

At the Rhode Island Adoption Exchange, Darlene Allen says, “We believe that everyone has something to give to a child. For some, providing [hope] may be in the form of a guitar lesson, or an art class. For others it may mean tutoring, visiting, or hosting an adoption event. For some, it means opening your heart and home to a child, and for still others it will mean supporting the work necessary to find that family for one child.”

The children in foster care don’t belong to the government. They are ours. Yours and mine.

One hundred years from now, it won’t matter what kind of house I lived in, what kind of car I drove, or how much money I had in my bank account, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

It doesn’t take much to be important to a child:

You’ll find Faye at work in our office at least five days a week, along with the rest of our staff. Recently she said, “If I do my part to findhomes for waiting children, the world will be better, one child at a time.”

That’s where beginnings start.

We don’t like letting go. But poets and philosophers tell us that “every door that closes allows another door to open into new freedom” (Laurel Elizabeth Keyes).

Adoptive parents tell us that their children have to let go of the hurts and anger in order to move forward toward trusting relationships.

Their parents learn to let go of their own expectations and dreams in order to love the children just as they are.

My mother’s youngest sister was living in our home before I was born. We didn’t give a name to the arrangement, but in my heart this aunt has always been my big sister.

Indian child welfare wisdom encourages us to recognize customary adoption* and other legal options that create permanent and safe family bonds without terminating all legal rights of birth parents.

In 2010 the adoption community is treating this as a new discovery, though the established Indian culture has endorsed it for many generations.

There are lots of families of many ethnicities who do this. Some have arrived at formal guardianship arrangements. Sometimes the families simply do it themselves, without arrangements ceremonially established by a tribe or government leader. Aunts and uncles step forward to help raise children who are victims of parental neglect, dug misuse, or incarceration of their parents.

Sometimes close friends of the family who feel like relatives are the ones who step forward to raise the children – as their own, but without denying the ties to birth family.

Many people in their fifties and sixties are raising their grandchildren. A recent news article reported 6,000 such families in Montana alone.

According to the Chicago Tribune, 4.7 million children in the United States were being raised in households headed by their grandparents.

Customary adoption? Modification of parental rights? Co-parenting? I don’t care what we call it. I just think we should allow for cultural and legal avenues that encourage us to do whatever the children need for us to do.

Adoption itself isn’t sad. But the circumstances that lead to the need for it break our hearts.

Like all changes in life, the process isn’t without pain and loss. As adoptive parents come to love their child and are confronted with the devastating consequences of that child’s losses, they are haunted. “I wish I had been there to be his parent in those first years. I wish I could have protected him from all of those experiences that left these scars.”

Suzanne recently looked back over her years as an adoptive mom. This is what she said:

When we let it, adoption transforms every one of us who is involved.

Kenni was eleven when she was adopted after years of neglect that often left her without food or a warm place to sleep. She was left alone for long periods and felt the only one who cared about her was her dog. She said, “I now know that a Mother and a Father are not [people] who give birth to you – it is someone who loves you and takes care of you.”

The experience of adoption is hard to put into words. But I asked some of our staff to try. This is what Margot said:

I would not have the life have had it not been for the courage of a young woman to know that she could not do what she hoped I could do.

My daughter is a gift from the universe…two or more lives intersected from different countries with one common need LOVE.

Adoption has made my soul whole.

The world of adoption is a sacred place that the few who go to [even] once know what it takes and feel the sense of community.

How has adoption touched your life?