I’m sitting at my dining room table with a delicious candle lit in front me, some great music (Billy Raffoul) blasting in the background, and the most beautiful scene of snowflakes dancing in the air as the beautiful camp I call home is under a blanket of snow.  It really is ironic isn’t it…to describe a blizzard as beautiful.  

Ever try explaining the Midwest winters to someone who has never experienced one?  We complain a lot about them, but we Midwesterners tend to take great pride in trying to really explain a true blizzard.  It’s hard to get across exactly what it’s like, isn’t it?  But we try.  We include details about the flakes stinging our cheeks, of the feeling of trudging through “feet” of snow, how it feels to plop into a freshly fallen snow bank, and the terror of driving through a true blizzard.  Even with all of our detailed descriptions somehow our attempt at trying to convey a true snowstorm or blizzard to someone who hasn’t experienced one just seems to fall short. 

Everyone has seen a blizzard or a snowstorm on TV.  But often that reference point is just one storm.  Just one experience.  Going through the experience of adoption feels very similar and even more so for an informed, ethical, eyes-wide open adoption.  How does one take something like this and put it into words?  I guess that has what has always been part of the purpose of our blog—to give people a glimpse, a real-word view of this process.  To help them to understand the crazy simplexity of adoption.  The beauty.  The loss. The lack of control.  The education. The loneliness.  The love.  

There are things about adoption that I could tell you, but until you throw on your snowshoes and stomp into the depth of the snowstorm or blizzard, you won’t appreciate the magnitude, ironic beauty, and terrifying temperatures.  That’s the crazy juxtaposition—it can be all of those things.  Now let’s face it…we maybe will never get to experience a true Midwest snowstorm or blizzard.  We may never choose to adopt children.  But that doesn’t mean we just listen to the narrative on The Weather Channel or a terrible Lifetime movie in the case of adoption.  See, I’ve been forced to allow myself to acclimate to this blizzard that can be adoption.  But it’s not because I’ve just seen it, played in it, and experienced it.  It’s because I forced myself to venture further out into it through listening to the voices of first parents and birth parents, adoptees, and other adoptive families.  I have been devouring literature that stretches far beyond the adoption world—encompassing trauma informed care, the complexities of race, white fragility, among many other things.  

So whether you are looking through the window at our adoption experience, are trying to navigate the deep snow or are experiencing the freezing temperatures of adoption, know that snow keeps falling, the cold is still frigid and the journey continues.  Not easy to describe the simplexity of either a blizzard or adoption, but both are awesome in an overwhelming sort of way.

~Chelsea