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.

An adoptive mom in Utah published a book of poetry in 1983. That’s the same year The Adoption Exchange opened our first office. After reading the book Dorothy DeBolt said, “Lordy! How Grace Sandness can write!..She has taken my innermost thoughts and placed them on paper. She answers every ‘why’ ever asked of parents of large ‘chosen’ families…”

Here is one of the poems from the book “the loving river” that touches me:

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.”

Brian’s path into adulthood wasn’t easy. He’d been adopted from the foster care system, and then returned. Twice. Caseworkers were hesitant to take the risk again, but one woman wouldn’t take no for an answer. And Brian became part of her family.

Well, that is to say she made room for Brian in her family.

But having been rejected again and again, Brian withdrew. He spent long hours in his room alone, afraid to get close to anyone.

“Did you give him space?” I asked.

“Oh, no!” she said. “I demanded that he join the rest of the family in the living room and at the dinner table. I insisted that he communicate with us. I was in his face!”

For years Brian lived in that house, but he wasn’t really a member of the family. He didn’t act with the sense of entitlement children without such struggles display.

His mom found a good therapist for him. And she made something very clear – she didn’t promise to be perfect. But she promised to be there.

And she was – day after day, year after year. And ever so slowly, Brian began to discover himself. While he struggled within, he played ball at school. Eventually he was asked to coach the younger children, and he discovered a desire to become a teacher.

I got a phone call from Brian’s mom about 20 years after his adoption. She asked if I remembered a hurt and angry little boy named Brian. And she thought maybe I should meet this young man he’d become.

I asked him, “Do you remember when you felt like you belonged in this family?”

For Brian that moment came the day his mom helped him load up his car to live in the dorm at college. He was 18 years old. As he drove away from the family home, he looked in the rear-view mirror, saw his mom waving, and felt an early pang of home-sickness. That’s when he said to himself, “I did it!” That day he knew where he belonged.

Last year over 29,000 young people left the American foster care system…..to meet life on their own. When they look in the rear-view mirror, there is no one waving at them. No one to call. No one to lean on. No one to get in their faces!

About to grow into adulthood without a family, this year another 18 year old young man said, “I’d even change my name, if someone would adopt me.”

That about sums it up.

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.

Bill Williams is our New Mexico Director of Programs. Recently he shared this story:

At my first event two years ago I met a young man named Matthew, at the time he was ready to go home with me. He wanted a home very badly and was willing to recruit for himself. I had to explain that I was not able to give him a place in my home but I would be working to find him a family just right for him.

Well, almost two years went by and I found Matthew sitting beside me at another event with an inquisitive look that only a ten year old boy can have, so I asked him what was on his mind.

He answered with a simple question. “Why is it taking so long to find me a home?”

Try and answer that sometime.

Well I am glad to say we had Matthew in a home for Christmas and the adoption will soon be finalized.

Sometimes finding the right home takes too long for us, but it is even longer for every child we serve. Matthew reminded me why I moved to New Mexico and why the long days I sometimes spend are not so long at all.


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