Thankfulness, gratitude, contentment. These should be felt and exemplified with more than just one day. I mean, let’s face it, do we really need a day that was really about the exploitation of America’s native people to remind us that we should be thankful for what we have?

The last few years have been some of the most monumental, humbling, raw, amazing, trying, growing, difficult years of our lives. Not just for me personally but for so many people around the country. However, perspective is everything. It is one thing to be thankful. It is one thing to feel blessed. But it is a completely other thing to take action with those feelings. In my personal opinion, thankfulness and blessing without action becomes complacency. It becomes selfishness. It begins and ends with oneself. So how does this relate to adoption? In more ways than you can even imagine.

I can only speak for myself, but when Eli and I first decided to adopt we were over the moon. We couldn’t be more excited to start the journey, tell our friends and family, and plan for our future family. We were thankful. We counted our blessings and trucked along our journey. We enjoyed Thanksgiving, celebrated the birth of our Savior on Christmas, rang in the new year—2016, and had birthdays come and go.

We became more and more humbled as time passed. And as more and more time passed we felt grateful for all the opportunities we had to learn. We took online courses on trauma, we read hundreds and hundreds of articles, we listened to first-hand accounts of adult adoptee’s experiences, we studied transracial adoption and became more involved in issues that challenged our white privilege. We became awoke.

As we became more and more enlightened, we took action. We took action for more than just the betterment of our own situation but for the situations of others. Why? Because we are thankful. Because we are grateful. Because the recognition of what we have should make us take that and positively impact the world around ourselves.

So, by all means, there is nothing wrong with taking a day of the year to pay extra attention to the things we are thankful for. To appreciate all that we have. But the power of true thanksgiving is the simplexity of what one plans to do with that gratitude.

My plan?

• To provide a voice to the voiceless
• To engage in an adoption process that is ethical and in the true best interest of my children and their first parents
• To keep an open mind and learn
• To call out injustices
• To truly listen
• To use the privilege I have for the betterment of others

What do yo

 

u vow to do with your gratitude?

~Chelsea