I had an experience while Maggie was in the hospital last week that was one of those reminders of how being a transracial adoptive family is unique.

I was up there one night, right after a shift change for the nurses. The “new” nurse that was on, is a woman that I know well from our community. She came in and sat down and we talked some about my family, life, orphanages, etc. This woman has volunteered a lot in Romania, and so we had a lot to talk about.

At the end of the conversation, she looked like she was struggling to decide whether or not to tell me something. Then she said, “Your family really touches people. Tonight, when we were changing shifts, Maggie’s last nurse started to cry. She said that she had never been able to have children, and had never considered adoption. And now, seeing your family, it had made her look back at her life and think of what it could have been like if they had been open to adoption, and she was feeling sad at the choices she had made.”

Wow. It was wild to me that we could have caused that kind of thoughts in a person, and I had never even spoken a word to her! I never would have known the affect that we had on that nurse if the other nurse hadn’t told me, and it made me wonder how many other people are affected in some way when they interact or see our family.

Later that day Maggie’s surgeon pulled me aside and said that if there were more people in the world like Josh and I, that it would be a very different world to live in. I don’t take compliments well as I get all embarrassed, so I blushed and thanked him awkwardly, but later I thought, heck, if everybody out there just adopted ONE child and cared about the poverty and suffering in the world a little more and their own life a little less, it really would be a much different world to live in.

It really drove home to me how very much transracial families are constant advocates for adoption, whether we are trying to be or not. Even on a day when your mind is 500 miles away from adoption stuff because you are worried sick about your child who is in the hospital, the people around you look at you and think about adoption. Whether you are having a good day or a bad day, whether you are at a playground or a doctor's appointment, whether you are aware of it or not, you are advocating adoption.

In a somewhat similar experience, Josh’s mom and I were at a doctor appointment for Marcus not too long ago and we had Marcus and Belane. I kept trying to talk about Marcus’s health, and the doc kept asking about Belane and our family. As we were wrapping up she said, “You make me want to quit my job and go do something important with my life.”

Continued...