Robert Frost once said, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both.” I truly feel in a lot of aspects that this is my life. Eli and I are at a crossroads. Now, don’t get me wrong. We’ve been at a crossroads before, but not ever quite like this.

As many of you know, we’ve been in a conundrum since about December as to the next steps we take in our adoption journey. We’ve nursed our wounds, developed some calluses, and know that we are better for it. Now we are at our fork in the road. Public home study or private?

Research? We’ve done it. Discussed with others? We’ve done it. Now it’s go time, as we face an expiration of our home study and a plan to start fresh, no longer with our agency.

Through the good, the bad, and the ugly, we’ve realized that we are open to many things. And we most definitely see benefits to adopting privately, as well as becoming foster parents with a public license. We are not naïve. Trust me, we know it’s not about us. That’s why we’ve remained still for quite some time. We knew we needed necessary information and time to get over our own stuff, so that we could truly be the best people we could be for our future family.

We can feel ourselves right at this precipice—this fork in the woods. As of right now, in the private sector we are looking at an agency out of state that has a very large need for hopeful adoptive parents who are open to other races and ethnicities, as well as different substance use during pregnancy. Eli and I both feel very prepared for this, or at least as prepared as you can be in a situation like this. However, we are little gun-shy to an agency adoption right now due to some past experiences.

On the other hand, we have really been researching fostering to adopt. We’ve contacted some private agencies that do public foster parenting and adoption, as well as our local county. They have been incredibly helpful. But we know, and fully support, that the end goal is reunification with the child’s birth family. And we support this 100%. But we also know that this makes for a very different family dynamic for our future family.

So where does the difficulty arise? In a private adoption, we could face signing on with an agency and being there again for entire year, with little to no movement. In addition to this, many private agencies charge a sometimes substantial sign on fee. It’s hard for us to get past this idea, that as little as we like it, private adoption can be a very profitable, and sometimes not always ethical business. Now, don’t get us wrong. There are many wonderful private adoption agencies out there. Agencies that fully support providing assistance and counseling to birth parents so that they are as confident as they can be in making the decision they choose.

On the other hand, we also know that fostering to adopt offers it’s own unique set of challenges. There is a lot of trauma involved in a child being removed from his or her home. We understand that to the public many people cannot understand why the state would “leave” the child in a situation they don’t see as being beneficial, but what many people don’t understand is how truly traumatic it is for a child to be removed from his or her birth family. This loss is not lost on us. It is traumatic for the child as well as the chid’s birth family or “first parents”.

At the end of the day,

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

   Somewhere ages and ages hence:

   Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…”

…will take the one that I know is not just best for me, but for all that are on this simplex road to adoption.

~Chelsea