Our story vs. their story.

At some point in the adoption process, we will become very private. We will stop discussing details with friends and family. Not because we will magically stop wanting to share all of the details, but because, at some point, it's not our story any more.

This blog has been a way to keep everyone updated on what's happening with our adoption process, as well as an outlet for me to vent my frustrations and share our triumphs. It has been about our journey to adopt. But the details about where our child comes from, the reasons for the adoption, the birth family they came from: those details will belong only to our child. And that child should have the right to share those details when and if they choose.

This was one of the topics we discussed in detail at our parenting seminar. Your child should find out the circumstances of their birth from you as a parent, not overhearing other adults chatting about it at group functions. This is not to say that anyone would maliciously bandy about intimate details of your child's life. It's only to say that your child should be the one to choose how much or how little people know about his background. This is obviously very different from birthing a child. You would feel free to enumerate all the gory details of the delivery because you participated in it. It's as much your story as theirs. But with adoption, you have to be much more circumspect about what you can and can't divulge.

When we went to the information meeting at Barker, we met a couple who had adopted their son from Guatemala. Someone in the audience asked a question about his birth family and the wife responded with, "That's his story, so we can't share that information." I didn't understand what she meant until recently. Our child should have the right to privacy and the right to share the details with the people who are important to him (her). So (hopefully soon) we will get to a point where we don't discuss the details of our child's background. You'll just have to wait until they are old enough and ask for yourself.