How do you picture or imagine our future family? I know many of you are friends and family and if you’re not, you’re reading the blog because adoption in some shape or form has touched or may touch your life.

So again, I ask when you envision our future family what do you picture? How do you think you’ll feel? Will you sigh in relief because then things go back to normal and we are just a “normal” family built through different circumstances? Do you picture a kid that kind of looks like us, even though they don’t at all and have no biological connection? Will you ask questions, ask how you can support, and talk about adoption? Do you see no color, no racial difference? Will you pray and hope that our child just is cured of their “primal wound” and will attach and blend into our family without skipping a beat? Do you picture a child that looks and acts completely different than us? Will you acknowledge that our story of building our family is different but our family will also be different? Do you picture a well-adjusted, happy, carefree child? Will you think of the woman and/or man who ache every single day because of the choice they made, or will you wonder if they did drugs, had unprotected sex, lived a life of crime, or were a teen pregnancy statistic? Do you picture a child with attachment issues who struggles in school?  Will you ask questions? Or will you just offer love?

The point I’m trying to get at is I think it gets easy to think that once we find our baby, our family, everything goes back to normal. Yay, happy family, and now we are in the realm of relatability. I’m so sorry to say it, but that’s not how it’s going to be, but know this—it’s my sorta fairytale. I say it that way because a mother or father having to place a child is never ideal. A child coping and adjusting to not being with their biological family, regardless of the circumstances, is sad and difficult at times to understand. My sorta fairytale is not me looking through rose colored glasses, but it’s the acknowledgement that I know what I signed up for, and I’m ready for it. This doesn’t mean Eli and I aren’t over the moon ecstatic. This doesn’t mean that my child is certain to have “issues”. This is me being realistic.

When I picture my future family I see:

• A child who has his mother’s eyes and his father’s chin and he/she may look in the mirror and feel sad that they don’t see their biology in their parents every day
• A child who will be told their story when they want to hear it and even sometimes when they don’t want to hear it
• A child who has enough love in his/her heart that he or she can love their first parents and us
• A child who may be scared and sad one moment and joyful and happy another
• A child who is impulsive and rambunctious and fierce where I sometimes wonder if he or she got that from their first mom or from me and Eli
• A child who is loved in so many ways

Honestly, I could continue for far longer. This is my sorta fairytale. It’s different, sometimes hard, but what I signed up for.

The simplexity of it is that it is well with my soul. It is well when it’s hard. It is well when we are happy. It is well as we wait. It is well when others don’t understand. It is well on the mountains and it is well in the valleys. It is well with my soul.

~Chelsea