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I am having the hardest time with the birth parent letter. I am working with an agency and they of course want a birth parent letter. I really don't like the letter. How am I suppose to write a letter for possible dozens of different people to read and make a lasting impression in them. I feel like the agency wants me to write some letter and poor my heart out to them explaining how I understand the grief. I have been through 8 years of grief but it isnt the same thing and I dont want to talk about that is the letter a make women feel sorry for us and want to choose us. When we sat down to write the letter I chose to not really talk to the birth parents and instead explain what kinda of a family we have, what we have learned for being parents of our foster to adopt older child, and what we do for fun family activites. I guess I am really curios what birth parents think of the letter in general? Is it something that you spend a lot of time reading or do you spend more time looking at the family photos and what they are doing? I tried to put myself in the position as the birth parents and write about what I would want to hear, and for me personally I would want to know everything I could about the family and less talk of promises to love and take good care of my child. I am really curious on birth parents perspective of the whole thing. :thanks:
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I tried to look at the letter as an introduction to our family rather than a plea for a child. I also provided specific expamples instead of relying on catchphrases. So instead of saying "we are fun loving" I told a story about how we cracked each other up playing a match of tic-tac-toe with a chicken at Wall Drug in South Dakota. I figured if we just focused on who we are and what our values and interests are, the right emom would find us. I did end the letter with an Irish proverb about listening to your heart when making decisions. That basically left it open--if you choose adoption, we hope you find peace. If you don't, we will find peace as well. And I never told her she was brave or courageous...which she later told us she appreciated. We simply acknowledged she was considering a life changing decision, and let her know that if we were entrusted to parent her child that we would honor our commitment to openness.
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We were just ourselves, and talked about our lives. I worry less about what "other" people write, and I wrote what was important to me that an expectant mother know about us and our family. I put some humor in there, I went very easy on the "Poor us, we want a baby" routine. I was honest that we didn't live in a mansion and our house was small...we have three crazy dogs who wanted nothing more than a kid to feed them off the high chair so they can get insanely fat. Be who you are...it will flow when you relax :)
Same with us. We just wrote about our family, friends, neighbors, our home, the kinds of things we like to do for fun, our traditions, a little snippet of what we do for work, our values and what we hope to instill in a child. When going for #2, we talked about our daughter a lot (and said she was adopted as well). We talked about our diverse family/friends/town and we also talked about wanting an open adoption. We did write a sentence about how she must be facing a tough decision, how we appreciated her considering us and we wished her peace with whatever decision she made. And I'm pretty sure it didn't come off as insincere because it was heartfelt. And it worked for us. Good luck. It's not an easy letter to write. Just start putting stuff on paper and you can edit and rearrange later. Or start with headings if that will help you organize your thoughts (Our family, Our daughter, Fun times, Our home, etc). I'm also happy to share our letter with you.
I surrendered my baby during the Closed Era, so I wasn't given the opportunity to read profiles and letters. However, IF I had been given that chance, I would have wanted to know what makes you tick...what are your passions in life, your hobbies, your favorite academic subjects from your school days. Do you have any extended family who live nearby; will education and academics be strongly encouraged? Do you have pets, and if you do, what are their names? Do you love the ocean or the mountains? Do you go camping and fishing? Do you like arts and crafts, and if so, what type...painting, drawing, music?? The biggest thing I would NOT want to read is what a selfless, courageous act I'm doing...and how I must love my baby so much to make such a sacrifice. I can't really tell you why I wouldn't want to hear this...I just know that it would rub me the wrong way, and I would not choose you. And whatever you do, please don't tell me I'm giving you a gift. That is just about the worst thing you could say to me...my child is not being given to you as a gift. He is being placed in your arms because I cannot find a way to keep him, and I cannot give him the kind of life I want him to have.
I found writing the letter extremely difficult as well. I swear I rewote it 10 times before I thought it represented who we are, what we love doing, what we wanted out of our open adoption, and what meaning parents would mean to us. We now have a beautiful 3 year old son and when we asked his bmom why she chose us she said our pictures helped a lot and common interested and amount of openness was the key. I think if you are being open and honest that's the key. Good luck!
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RavenSong
The biggest thing I would NOT want to read is what a selfless, courageous act I'm doing...and how I must love my baby so much to make such a sacrifice. I can't really tell you why I wouldn't want to hear this...I just know that it would rub me the wrong way, and I would not choose you. And whatever you do, please don't tell me I'm giving you a gift. That is just about the worst thing you could say to me...my child is not being given to you as a gift. He is being placed in your arms because I cannot find a way to keep him, and I cannot give him the kind of life I want him to have.
The best advice given me was to try to write a letter as though I was writing a friend -- talk about the details of a few things we do, not THAT we do them; talk about what happened at a place we went, not that we like to go places; talk about what we do when we enjoy our home, not that we have a great home. Then, I had a friend read the letter and she thought of even better examples because she KNOWS me. It helped so much and brought down the artificial flavor a great deal. susan
craziest2009
I ended the letter with: We want our children to grow up to be independent thinkers and self confident for the smart intelligent persons they are. We value the importance of dedication and effort towards learning, and in developing a child’s strengths and talents. This in turn builds self-esteem, which we believe is an important part of finding inner-peace and happiness in life.
Thank you RavenSong. It took a bit of time for me to word the ending. Happiness and feeling you have the strenge to go anywhere it so important to us. We incourage our daughter to do what makes her happy and never feel like she isnt good enough or less then somebody else. She came to us with such low self esteem and she really struggles with trying new things, the first thing out of her mouth ever time is *I can't do it*. Since living with us she has gained so much confidence and is so so so proud of herself when she accomplices what she was trying to do, her self esteem has improved so much. We want all of our children to have a sense of inner strength that they can do any thing if they just put there minds into it. Thank you
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I like it too - it's very similar to some of what we said in our profile: It's [education] not just about what you learn from teachers and textbooks but about the things you learn from meeting new people, traveling to new places, and having new experiences. It's also about learning to be a creative thinker, a problem-solver, and an explorer of the world. We hope to foster a love of learning in your child that will last a lifetime and open up unlimited possibilities for him or her. And: Since self-esteem is such an integral aspect of success in life, it's important for a parent to always nurture it and allow it to flourish. We feel that self-esteem is one of the biggest gifts a parent can give a child, since if they have that, they can do anything. Writing our profile was SO hard for me. I've always felt very "private" about anything I write. It took the longest of anything - much longer than our home study. Ultimately I wrote practically a novel, and DH helped me excise some of the fluff (and cheese).
When i was writing my profile, i went online a read like tons of them. I remember thinking they were all soooo sappy, it made me want to vomit!!! They all talked about how the child would have everything in the world, the best education, the best clothes, the best house, the best everything. NO ONE can guarantee that is going to happen. And not to mention all the ones that say... thank you for choosing life!! Yeah, i would not put that in your profile. The majority that i read seemed so unbelievabe. Like these people were perfect and now they want a baby to make their life completely perfect. it got really sickening. Mine was not like that at all. i focused on what our family liked to do together, our extended family, pets, job(s), religious practices, etc. Was it the best decision to not make it so sappy... i dont know, weve been waiting for 13 months now, but i am redoing our profile, maining becaused i switched jobs, got another pet, and took some much better pictures. i think pictures are far better than words anyways, they dont usually lie as much as words can. Hope this helps. Rach
sugarmuffin
A mom here... Its hard but what helped me was looking at samples that others had written. The tip that the agency gave me that really helped was telling me to keep it simple and concise and not an overload of info. You will get there and when you do the letter will just flow. Goodluck and pls keep us posted.
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Be completly honest. We want to know what kind of family you are, or plan to be. Your hobbies, values, whats important to you for the child. We dont want alot of lines about all your respect for us and how hard you know our decision is..because u likely dont. Just as we have no idea about your pain.