Holy Cow Number Three

It seems we have jumped up on the waitlist. And after all the waiting and waiting, if feels like we are moving too fast! Our biggest obstacle is finding a house. We have looked at many, consulted with our adoption team, and just have to wait until the right one comes on the market before we redo our home study. In the meantime, there is paperwork to be updated and that should keep us plenty busy. Our medical evaluations are over a year old, and so they have to be redone with doctors up here. And we need new letters from our employers indicating that they will give us at least 6 weeks off of work to bring our daughter home and begin the attachment process. We have to re-declare our finances, have those documents notarized, and then apostilled. Before I began this process I didn't even know what apostilled meant.

I started my job this week at a college counseling center, and have really enjoyed connecting with my new colleagues. Kirk and I are beginning to create the community we so long for, the community that will share in our excitement as we see our daughter's face for the first time, and the community that will become the village it takes to raise a child. I am very aware of how I am putting down my roots, intentionally looking at the world around me from a parent to be perspective. A newly found friend at work asked me yesterday if I was ready to be a mother. He said, "If your daughter arrived tomorrow, would you be ready?" And it felt wonderful to say, without hesitation, "Yes, I am ready." For a long time, I wasn't ready to be a mother. As a therapist, I have the privilege and the burden of bearing witness to the pain and destruction caused by parents who didn't have enough to give, who didn't know themselves well enough, who used their children to meet their own emotional needs. For a long time I felt that I didn't have the resources within me to take care of myself, and give the enormous emotional support I want to give to my child. I felt really worried about not being able to give enough, and I don't want to parent unless I can give the way I know I need to. It has been a process for me, of filling myself up with what I need, of being selfish and honest and selfless, and now I am ready.

It's hard to believe that in three months we could have a daughter!! Then it takes another 6 to 8 months of paperwork, sweat, and tears and we are on our way to India to pick her up. Amazing.