This year will be sixteen years since I set down the path to grow my family through adoption. I have written on my blog, talked about it in interviews, ranted on social media and now, share my story on the big screen. The only constant through it all has been change. I went from an anxious infertile woman desperate to become a mother to a mother who now questions if motherhood is even necessary. How much of the biological clock and baby fever narratives are social constructs that force women of a certain age to pivot to seeing themselves only as people seeking motherhood?
Yes, I experienced motherhood both as an adoptive parent and through biology. I went from someone eager to help people like me navigate this process to someone who questions everything. I went from viewing choice only in the context of crisis to something that is to be exercised freely by all people at all times. I found community through my words. Now, I am at a point where I am wondering what the path ahead should look like.
For those new to my posts, I used to write a lot about being an adoptive parent. I have written about how our family navigates openness in adoption. I have shared at length my thoughts on how I navigate the complexities in our specific family dynamic. If in my early days as a blogger I advocated for adoption in whatever form, in the recent few years I have largely been silent. In the rare occasion I do talk to men and women considering adoption, I point them to voices far more outspoken than mine. I ask them to pause, read voices from all parts of the adoption triad, question everything they read and read exhaustively - notes from people working in the social reform space.
The mental space I am in now is in flux. I am recalibrating everything I know in theory with what I have seen play out in reality. While our story and my experience may not be the norm, it is one of the many voices out there. I am far more intentional about what I speak, where I speak and how I word things. I am far more aware of how words can be taken out of context, how narratives offered to the public can be slotted to force fit narrow world views. Knowing all this, I am still feeling called to write, to share what I know because of the few lives that it has touched and made a difference.
So, those of you connected to adoption and foster care and questioning everything you know, please connect. I'd love to belong to a tribe again.