Our kids’ adoptions have been finalized for a while now. It feels like it was just yesterday we said hello to teeny people, but the giants are consuming every piece of (prepared) food in the house and wearing pants that I could have sworn fit last week but are now too short let me know that it has, in fact, been over 10 years since our journey into the world of foster care and adoption began.
As I sorted clothes, I found myself face to face with physical proof that my kids have come such a long way since we first met. Life had not been kind to my babies before we were acquainted. Malnourishment and abuse stole innocence and health from them making them tiny in comparison to their peers. I can forget sometimes, how far we’ve come. I forget how much they’ve changed when I can still look at their faces and see traces of the toddlers they used to be.
I found a t-shirt that had gotten jumbled in with the laundry and my heart stuttered when I realized it was one that none of the kids had worn in years. It was so tiny lying next to the other clothes. It made something inside me ache in a way I didn’t recognize, but I think now is nostalgia laced with grief: joy that I got to help them grow from such little people to the (moderately) well-adjusted and healthy pre-teens and teens they are, grief because I know we’ll never get those years back. I have so many regrets about how I did things I wish I had done differently. Adoption is a mixed bag on its best days.
All the remembering, and the fact that we just passed the exact 10-year anniversary of when our kids came to live with us, had me all up in my feelings. It made me remember, though, how hard it was before I ever knew their names.
I grieve a little for past me. I was so hopeful and sure about so many things that turned out to not be the way I imagined. And I remember the tears I sobbed as I was waiting for parenthood. I knew there were kids needing families. I had searched photo registries, filled out reams of paperwork, attended trainings, and read books. I wanted my kids now dangit.
The waiting felt so hard. I imagine it’s a bit like pregnancy in that way. There’s only so much preparation one can do before all that is left to do is wait. Our timeline was a bit up in the air even after we found out about the kids we would eventually foster and adopt.
Every day they weren’t with me felt so long. I set up bedrooms, bought supplies, visited the school, and waited.
I was probably a terrible person to exist around. I’m glad I have patient friends. I lamented how there were kids living in unsafe places and my house was ready and why couldn’t the kids just come live with us now? If anything, I have more patience than I might have otherwise with hopeful parents. Having lived through it, even 10 years later, I can remember how heavy it felt and how sad I was to simply have to wait for someone else to make choices that would change lives.
That all said, I wish I could go back and tell younger me, more innocent me, that the waiting isn’t the hardest thing. It’s not even close. But in the middle of whatever storm you’re in, it often feels like that is the worst thing—like that situation is the thing that is the hardest. And, in a way, that’s not wrong. It’s not fair to compare pain and say someone else doesn’t get to feel a certain way because they have it better or worse. That’s not how pain works.
But now, standing at the precipice of a whole new season of life where the toys are no longer so much underfoot and where makeup replaces dress-up clothes and dolls, I’m not longing for them to be little again. But, I am longing to make my past self understand that though waiting to love them is hard, watching them go through things you can’t fix is harder. Watching them wade through pain that you cannot stop or change, that takes them working with therapists and in their own selves, that’s probably the hardest part. I wish I had known that. I spent so much time worrying about the wrong things.
Of course, chronic anxiety disorder doesn’t behave logically. There’s always something to worry about that turns out is mostly an unfounded worry. And it could always be so much worse and I’m thankful for the relative ease my life has that others would only dream of. I’m not ungrateful. I’m just aware that my perspectives have changed a great deal in ten years. I imagine in the next ten they’ll change again.
I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re waiting to be a parent, it’s okay to feel like it’s the worst thing. But I hope you can take heart in knowing that both it’s not the worst thing and in fact leads up to possibly the best thing.
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it forever. I wish my kids didn’t need me. I wish adoption was a thing that wasn’t necessary for kids to have families. That being said, I will be forever grateful that my kids are mine now, that my husband and I were able to raise our hands and say, “pick us please,” when they needed a home. I didn’t and never have hoped for a birth parent to fail at their job and lose custody of their kids. I absolutely did hope that if such a thing happened that I could be there to help.
