Barbara left a message on my voice mail over the weekend. “I want to tell you my story,” she said.

I love those messages, and I didn’t let much time go by on Monday before I returned her call.

Her story involves three states and covers quite a span of time. Barbara and her husband were foster parents in California in the 1960’s, so she says it wasn’t much of a stretch in the 1990’s (after her husband’s death) when she decided to become a foster parent again.

Jessie came to Barbara when she was a toddler with physical disabilities that continue to impact her life as a young adult. The whole family fell in love with Jessie, and Barbara adopted her. “It is just a wonderful experience. I want everyone to know that,” she said.

She said, “I was 60 years old when I adopted Jessie. My husband would have said it’s just like me, an old woman, to do something like that. Jessie was a wonderful kid.”

And Jessie has a mom who loves her through the good times and the tough times. Over the years there have been plenty of both.

The two followed an employer to Oregon for a time, and now Barbara lives near a daughter and grandchildren in Colorado, and she hopes Jessie (now 23 years old) will join her.

Barbara’s message to me and all of the people who work in the adoption arena: “Whatever you do, don’t ever put an age limit on who can adopt.”

Good advice.

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.

Bobby wasn’t yet in school when parental rights were terminated. His grandmother later told me some of the story behind his adoption. Their daughter (Bobby’s mother) has a debilitating mental illness, and her parents were faced with an agonizing decision.

They were forced to choose between caring for their daughter and raising their grandson, who was prevented by the courts from having contact with his mother.

The grandparents felt confident that Bobby would have a loving adoptive family. To raise the little boy they loved, they would have to break off all contact with their daughter who needed them.

And so they helped their little grandson say goodbye to his pre-school friends and to his birth mother. And they helped him learn to trust the people who became his adoptive parents.

It wasn’t easy. They did it because they loved Bobby and his mommy.

As he was settling into life with his adoptive family, the question Bobby asked his grandmother was, “Some day will you help me find my other mommy again?”

Today Indian child welfare specialists challenge mainstream professional and legal definitions of family. Terry Cross, Executive Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, reminds us that the whole idea behind the push to provide children with permanent families is the concept of belonging, a central value in Indian culture.

Their experiences encourage us to recognize customary adoption and other legal options that create permanent and safe family bonds without terminating all legal rights of birth parents.

It is the notion of belonging in a community – not just in a narrowly defined nuclear family.

We are slowly learning that openness in adoption is a good thing. But adoption isn’t just a social arrangement. It is also a legal contract. Adoption and family laws off the reservation don’t acknowledge customary or informal adoptions.

Nonetheless, Bobby’s caseworkers, adoptive parents and his birth grandparents created a sort of blend – partly open, a little bit like customary adoption. It was a good option for Bobby.

And it’s another example of how in the world of adoption one size fits one.

When it comes to definitions, I’ll just say that Webster didn’t know everything. Wikipedia doesn’t cut it, either.

Adoption is a social, legal, emotional, spiritual, anthropological phenomenon that profoundly changes individuals, family members, neighbors, communities and cultures.

My definition of adoption is something along these lines:

• society’s expression of its faith the future
• a family’s commitment to love
• a leap into the unknown
• a place to grow and become your own self
• a bridge connecting the past to the present and beyond


How do you define it?

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.”

As happens every year at about this time, I have been doing some cleaning up in my office. There are notes on pieces of paper in every size and color. Some have bright yellow highlight to remind me of things I must do. I see the phone number of a retired colleague that I’d like to stay in touch with. And I found a punch line for what was probably a good joke.

There is a stack of stuff that needs immediate attention (so why does it get bigger and not smaller?). And a stack of stuff that might come in useful.

Some notes are well organized. Most aren’t.

As I file things away, I come across a provocative item from another year. Tucked away in a binder, it stopped me in my tracks today. It is a sort of diary on half a page, with two dated entries. The first is rather descriptive. The other – well, it’s short.

Quit trying?! That couldn’t happen today, could it? Somebody please tell me that wouldn’t – couldn’t – happen in 2010.

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.”

We live in a world of instant messaging, fast food, and results by the end of the business day.

So it is no surprise that successful people who like to be in charge of their own lives sometimes look for short-cuts when they adopt.

If you’re considering adopting, I hope you won’t be tempted to look for the easiest process.

Sure, it’s possible to find loopholes and ways to avoid standard procedures. But I hope you won’t skip steps without thinking long and hard about the implications, because research has documented some things that lead to successful adoptions.

Two things that successful adoptions of older children have in common are: pre-adoption preparation, and post-adoption support services.

I don’t know what went wrong for the 8 year old boy who was recently put on a plane in Tennessee and returned to Russia. But I know that successful adoptive parents reach into their own local communities to participate in training and support activities before, during and after adoption.

Here are some resources that might be useful for you or someone you know.

It’s been seven years since he and his siblings were adopted. He has settled in, and his family is happy. But he wanted to know, “Are you getting rid of us?”

Brendan’s mom grabbed him and held him and assured him that he isn’t going anywhere. She explained how she and his dad have a will. She said that even if someone dies, they are one family for always.

It happened that the phone call was about another family who wish to adopt.

No matter how many times the fears emerge, Brendan’s mom and dad are there to assure him that he and his siblings belong. Permanently.