Even though I’m jumping in late (10 days left in the month), I am setting myself a goal of writing every day, and actually writing about adoption.

Usually I don’t.  I write about stuff I do, especially if it’s particularly charming and involves kids: the most important purpose of this blog is to help me connect with birthmothers, so I’m under strict instructions to update often, and to be generally positive.  (sigh) 

But it does have other purposes too.  It’s been a great place to scrapbook and share all kinds of memories and ideas.  And sometimes also a place to pause along this journey to work out my own feelings  – which aren’t always positive.

But you know what?  I’d actually really, really like for it to be useful.  I would love it if someday somebody else who was on this same journey read my blog and found it useful, or helpful in some way.  I don’t know quite how to get there from here, but surely writing more about the actual adoption stuff, even if it’s just for ten days, is heading in the right direction.

So!  Post Number 1:

I just finished the revision of my Dear Birthmother Letter, and it’s being printed and shipped even as I type.

What is a Dear Birthmother Letter, and what’s it for?  Why I am revising it?  What have I learned in the process?  How do I feel about it?   And where is the link so you can see the letter online?

That would be a nice, organized way to write this post, but at every turn I find all I want to do is complain about hard it was.  It was heartbreaking to write the text the first time.  It was humiliating going through the “candid” photo shoots, over and over.  The revision almost killed me.  Yet I still don’t really feel like I’m “allowed” to complain online.  Maybe if I confess here that the super-happy sections I wrote (while true!) felt somehow fake, or if I tell you how grateful I was that the professional hair-and-makeup girl actually understood what magic I needed from her (to look exactly the same, only photogenic), or if I tried to explain how furious it made me every time my editors criticized my writing, even though normally that’s not what I’m like at all…  Good grief, who is this woman?  Fake, shallow and spiteful?  Is that me??

We’ll just skip to the end, I think.

In the end, with one near-disaster at the printer, which finally resolved itself yesterday, I made a letter I really do like.  I think it’s honest, and interesting, and positive, and the photo is very pretty.  I expect 200 copies in the mail before Thanksgiving, which I’ll sign with a sharpie and ship off to the adoption agency, where they’ll be included, with many other families’ letters, in packets for birthmothers whose profiles match mine.

It is big and glossy.  It is honest.  It is full of hope.  I’m really proud of it, and I think it’s a good self-introduction.  But it was so hard to create, I swear to you biting my fingertip and signing all 200 letters in blood would have been easier to do.  There.  I’ve said it.

Oh, and here’s the link!  My profile on the iheartadoption website has a pdf copy of the letter, too.

iheartadoption

My letter