What National Adoption Month Means to Me

For over two decades, National Adoption Month has been celebrated every November in communities across the country. Many national, state and local agencies will help spread the word through programs, events, and activities that help raise awareness for thousands of children and youth in foster care who are waiting for permanent, loving families.

For us, it’s just another month in which we are so grateful that adoption exists because it was the perfect way for us to grow our family.

After Allie died, we were searching for answers and clinging to hope that we would be able to honor her and have another child. Nothing worked, and for a time, it seemed like nothing would. When we were ready, adoption was there for us. We turned to it not as a final straw, but as another avenue.

Our second daughter is now four and a half years old. She is a happy, carefree spirit that has dramatically changed the course of our lives. I barely remember a time without her, and I know my life is better having her in it.

This past Halloween, after we went trick or treating and the rest of my family was sound asleep in a sweets induced coma, I settled in to watch “This Is Us.” I enjoy the show very much and often find parallels to my life in it. 

One of the main characters in the show was adopted. His adoptive parents had triplets, and one of the babies was born still. So they adopted a third baby who happened to be born on the same day and needed a home. They brought them all home from the hospital together. When the child (Randall) grew old enough to ask, he wondered to his mother what happened to the third baby. Did that baby get lost and then Randall somehow got found?  

His mother replied, "We didn’t lose him. Not like that. He didn’t live. Sometimes that can happen. Sometimes a baby dies right at the beginning. But your dad and I had all this love in our hearts…and we saw you and met you. So yeah, you are a miracle. But you’re not instead of anything.  You are the way it was always supposed to be.”
 
My daughter knows the word adoption, and we have visits with her birth mother twice a year. She knows she has a sister who lives in heaven, too. She has not yet put together that her sister’s death is what lead us to know without a doubt that we wanted to be parents and ultimately led us to adoption and to her. She will learn it all soon enough. The few times we have tried to explain it to her so far, it’s just been too overwhelming.

In this same television show, same episode, in fact, they talk about the child that died, and that his name was Kyle. That is virtually unheard of, even now. To name a baby that has died makes that child live on and I think you can ask any loss parent and they will agree. It's so beautiful to see these nuances played out on the screen. 

I was meant to be a mom to my two girls. To the one who shares my DNA and only lives in my heart as well as to the one who looks nothing like me but shares my love of life.

I am glad months like this one exist to spread awareness, and I am glad that TV shows like this one also exist to share their messages. Most of all, I am glad adoption exists because I love my family so very much and can’t imagine us any other way.