Adoption Update & Venting Some Steam

It's been awhile, we know. Many of you have yelled at us, online and offline, to tell us to get on with it already, and we've heard you. Last night Wanda and I plowed through all but two of the remaining pieces of paperwork to complete the home study. The two remaining are the medical reports, which we will schedule for this week, and the police reports, which I will take care of tomorrow, if possible, this week for certain. Those two things are also requirements for the overall adoption paperwork pile, and are two major accomplishments along the road. Houston, we have movement once again.

Now, that said, let me explain something.

Wanda and I had a nice late night outing last Friday, just the two of us at one of our favorite late-night-outing locations, the Brickstore Pub in downtown Decatur. It was noisy and energetic, and we had a lovely time screaming at each other to be heard over the general pandemonium surrounding us. What we discovered was remarkable.

You've all heard of those 5 stages of grief, right? Turns out Wanda and I are still both smack in the middle of denial. We refuse to accept that we'll never be able to have our own biological children. We still have hope that something might work for us some day. So here's the rub - we both us of feel, even though we know it's not rational (and if there's a more rational person around than me, I'd love to meet them), that proceeding with adoption is giving up on biological children forever. Our mental and emotional roadblock is the fact that we see adoption, on some level, not as moving forward but as giving up. And neither of us are the quitting type. Not even a little bit. We're stubborn, and driven, and both of us believe that, if we just try hard enough and do everything just right, that we will achieve any goal we set for ourselves. It's just inconceivable to us that we can't accomplish anything we set our minds to.

It also doesn't help that we HATE having to go through this adoption thing, and we hate it with a white hot passion. We hate the paperwork, we hate feeling judged, we hate the constant feeling that we're just not good enough to have our own kids, when the entire fucking world around us can do it. We can't shake the gross unfairness of it all. It's offensive in the extreme. Much of this, of course, is tied to our underlying grief, but it's thorny and complicated to say the least.

You see the problem?

Well, now so do we. Both of us were on the verge of tears many times during this very loud conversation in this very public place (it was largely cathartic in many ways, being able to scream like that knowing we weren't screaming at each other - I recommend this highly). I verge on tears just typing this shit out. It's deeply painful to contemplate - Wanda and I have essentially lost 4 children in the last 3 years. They might not have been physical, actual children, but in our hearts we were planning birthday parties and teaching them tennis and music and sending them off to Emory and sleepovers to their friend's houses and having play dates with our friends' kids. They were so real to us. We could smell them, feel them, hold them in our arms. You show me anyone else who goes through that kind of loss and has their shit together any time soon. We talk and walk and laugh and play and seem like our ordinary selves on the outside, but inside we have all-too-easy access to what feels like an endless well of grief. It's really not like us at all to dwell on something this much, or to let ourselves be held back by any kind of burden, but this, this is a special sort of circumstance, and all we're trying to do is weather the storm.

What we decided is that, in the meantime, we can begin to separate the mechanical process of adoption from the emotional and physical process of grieving, so that we can move towards something that we know will bring us great happiness, and that is having a pack of children running amok in the house. We've already made a start with last night's paperwork spasm, and it will continue this week as we try to conclude the proceedings as soon as possible.

I can't tell you how much we appreciate the support, well wishing, and even the ass kicking we've been getting during this time. I hope you all understand that we're doing the best we can, and that we really do want to get this done, even more than you want us to get it done.

A lot more.