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The other night my Hubby and I had dinner with some friends. These friends also invited another one of their friends who is a reporter for our local paper. Said writer is extremely nice and we have met her before. She wants to do a piece on our adoptive family. I baulked at first, not wanting attention (I seem to draw enough without trying to!). We eventually agreed as I thought it would be a good way to promote adoption and adoption reform in November as well as educate during National Adoption Month.
She only has 500 words and there is so much to talk about with adoption I will be interested to read the final outcome. I talked about older child adoption, transracial adoption and the financial options the a lot of people are not aware of including adoption benefits and the tax credit. We discussed things we have had to learn, such as skin and hair care that is different than our own, how the girls are doing in school and about the challenges. Where to find brown dolls and more diversity. I was careful not to get to personal about the details and tried to talk in broad strokes.
If you are at the begining of the adoption process I must tell you that there are a few questions that adoptive parents will always face, the most common one seems to be, “What made you want to adopt?”. I never have the words I need to express why we made this choice. Articulation is not my middle name as it is, but the truth is that adoption came very natural to us and we had talked about it for years. I didn’t have an Ahah moment or an ephiphany. I need to figure out a concise, yet informative answer to this question. Maybe next time I’ll say,”Because we wanted to.” That just doesn’t seem deep enough. It is true, but not the powerful statement that people want to here.
I’ll let you know how the article comes out. I must admit I am a bit nervous. I’m hoping the piece is truely educational for the public and doesn’t give Hubby and me what I think of as the halo effect. I don’t want to be treated like an angel. I would love to hear from others who have allowed a newspaper or other press outlet talk about their story.
