Plea to Adoptive Parents

As I mentioned in previous posts I was adopted at birth by two of the most wonderful people God has ever given breath to. There hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t feel loved and supported in every way by either of them, but I want to share my perspective and experience in case there are adoptive parents considering doing what my parents chose to do.

They kept the fact that I was adopted a secret from me.

I didn’t find out until I was trying to enlist in the Air Force in high school, and I was told sitting in the recruiter’s office at age 17. There had been clues throughout my childhood that never occurred to me to be credible so I didn’t question it, so finding out this way hit my like a brick.

I had a couple really important conversations with my mom and dad that day, and it took me about 2 days to snap out of the disbelief, but the point I kept coming back to was that knowing I was adopted didn’t change anything. If anything I felt more loved knowing that I had been chosen. I may have been an ‘accident’ to some other woman, but to my parents I was a gift from God.

My advice to adoptive parents is simple…
* be up-front with the child
* raise them to know about their history
* celebrate the fact they were adopted

They won’t love you any less and they won’t be any less committed to you…so don’t fear the notion that some day they may want to search for their birth-mother (which they may do, and I’ll save my story about this for another time)...because even if they do they are still your child.

My mom will always be my mom and my dad will always be my dad, and the fact that we don’t share DNA has nothing to do with that. Period.

Holding Hands on Flickr by Jedi Andy