by Sherrie F. (FosterAdopt)

November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and Adoption is something very near and dear to my heart.  You see, all three of my children joined me through the gift of adoption.  J’Shawn, William, and Taleesa were placed with my as my foster children first before being settled into our forever home.  There are many different types of adoption.  From healthy new born infant through a private adoption, to caring for a family member’s child as your own, to opening your home a special needs sibling group from half away around the world.   Regardless of how adoption was a choice for your family, we all share the same calling – that knowing your child is out there waiting for you, and doing the hard work of bringing them home, wherever they may be.

As you can Imagine, I am a HUGE advocate of adoption through foster care.   I was a foster parent for 10 years and in that time had over 20 children placed in my home.  Not being a parent before fostering, I can tell you that my life changed in ways I never would have imagined.  Here are my thoughts on fostering/adoption through child protective services:

• People say, “I could never foster because I just couldn’t handle it when the children leave”.   My response is this – As a foster parent your job is to love, care for, meet the children where they’re at, and give them what they need to help them move forward toward safety and permanency.  The hope is that all children will be reunited with their birth families – it is their parent’s right to have them there.  The hope is that when they do return, you’ve helped them become stronger (emotionally, mentally and physically) but most importantly knowing that they are deserving of love, respect and safety – this is the children’s right to expect of their parents.
• When reuniting with their birth families is not a possibility, it your job as a foster parent to help them work toward permanency, hopefully with you – then if not, with their new adoptive family.  I’ve had a couple of children who became open for adoption and for personal reasons, I chose not to adopt.  Remember that it is also an act of complete love to know that these children deserve the very best home that can meet their needs and to know that you may not be it – it’s not about your needs, but theirs.
• Please, never hold anger or animosity toward birth parents for the pain and loss that our children have endured.  This is where our children come from, and our children deserve for us to let that anger go and find peace and acceptance with their past so that we can help them build a much stronger future.

Lastly, the one thing I hold dear to my heart and I always tell myself is this  – “In order for my family to be created, another was broken apart”-  I don’t say this as though we are not deserving of having a family, rather this helps remind me that what we are given is truly a gift, and that even if I got placement of my child right out of the hospital, he’s lost something too.  This is a grief that as parents we can’t take away for them, but be there for them as they work through it in their time and it their own way.

When deciding that adoption through foster care was the route for me, and that I was open to adoption of children of another race or ethnicity, I wanted to read all I could.   All three of my children are African American, and I am Caucasian/Hispanic.

Black Baby, White Hands: A View From the Crib by Dr. Jaiya John

I read this book shortly after my oldest son, J’Shawn was placed with me at 19 months and learning that I would be able to adopt him.  This book stayed with me long after I read it, and still touches me deeply.

Dr. John is obviously very well spoken and possesses a gift in the use of the English language – beautiful prose throughout the book. Initially, it was very hard for me to get through the book as Dr John kept pointing out all of the things he had wished his parents had done or not done or did differently, etc, etc. I kept identifying with the adoptive parent (s) and quite frankly vacillated between finding myself lacking as a parent or feeling that Dr. John was unappreciative and unsympathetic towards his parent’s journey into transracial parenting with absolutely no map. However, toward the end of the book, it was obvious that he greatly loved and respected his parents.

It was only after I had read the entire book and was able to reflect that I was able to take from the book that this was HIS story, not the story of his parent’s journey as transracial parents.  This is story of a black boy raised in a white home, with white parents living in a (mostly) white community – his feelings of isolation, lack of identity and struggle to find himself. I guess what this book has helped me realize is – until the world is truly color blind, I won’t raise my son to be.

I’m not going to raise him wearing rose-colored glasses about the world and the people around him. I’d be doing him a disservice if I did. My son is black and I want him to know that and be proud of it. That’s part of who he is.

One of my biggest peeves, is when people tell me say to me” I bet you don’t even notice that he’s black, he’s just your son.” That is absolutely not true. Being black is part of who is he, I don’t love him regardless of whether or not he is black, one of the infinite reasons that I love him because he is.