Sharing the Experience

On Friday evening, I met up with Marnie, (Christopher's mother, for those of you who don't know) and her good friend Nancy Stensvaag for dinner.  Both of them are adoptive mothers of children around my age (or a bit younger).  That dinner ended up being such a special, almost magical experience.  Both Nancy and Marnie told of their experiences meeting their adopted children, sharing more than just what happened but also how they both felt about the experience.  Christopher is away right now at Otherworld in CT (Hi Honey!) so it was a girls only conversation that I will never forget.  I really felt a part of something wonderful- adoption.

To summarize everything I learned, it's natural to be nervous about this or that, but the love in my heart will win out and everything will come together as it should.  I am very aware of how lucky I am to have such amazing examples of adoptive families so willing to share and help and be supportive.

I was also able to share with them how I have relatives who have adopted and how inspirational they all are to me too.  Susan and Jack, Tommy and Helen, Kevin and Marsha, Maureen and Jeff, and Kelly and Jon are all cousins who have brought our family all kinds of joy through their experiences with adoption.  From them all I have learned so much about the way I want things to be, and I'm grateful for their example.  And I love all the interesting and wonderful things my adopted cousins have brought to our family.  They truly make us complete as an extended family.

And then I have good friends who have adopted.  Joslyne and Demetri are most notable because they have been so incredibly generous with all that they have shared that they have shaped our adoption in many important ways.  Because they adopted here in Tennessee, we got suggestions on who to work with in the area to handle the proceedings.  Then we got to spend good quality time with them and Zoey and learned lots about day-to-day.  I guess it would be accurate to say that most of what we learned there was about parenting in general, but since neither Christopher nor I have kids already, we needed to learn about that too. :)  And then when they were about to move to MA last spring, they passed on so much baby stuff that Christopher and I are well ahead of the game in terms of having what we need to get started.  Here is a picture of them from last December when we made holiday cookies together:

As far as Gene and Marnie,  Christopher's parents, I will write a separate post about them.  They truly are amazing people so it will take several blogs just to begin to convey my admiration and respect for them.  I'll just start by saying that the family I married into (including the extended family) is truly wonderful and I am proud to be a part of their traditions.  More on that to come.