The waiting journal

After we decided we would grow our family through adoption, the next several months were a fury of activity. Informational sessions with multiple agencies, check; decision on agency, check; paperwork, check; background checks, check; waiting family materials, check. Nearly every night was a discussion of a decision to make along the path of growing our family. We laughed about how many kids there would really be if everyone had to do so much paperwork prior to becoming a parent. But, we did our homework diligently, excited we were taking steps to build our family. Finally, after nearly a year, we entered the “pool” and our status as a “waiting family” began.

Then, silence.

Once we entered the pool, there were occasional background checks to update, screening emails every now-and-then, but mostly we waited. At first, it was an exciting secret that most in our lives didn’t know. But as more and more time passed, it felt like a weight that I carried with me everywhere. During our first wait prior to my daughter being born, and during the first two years of our wait for my son, we coped by staying busy. We traveled the world, said yes more often that most would think is reasonable at work, and hosted friends and family nearly every weekend. A friend referred to our home as “the halfway house”.

Then, came March 2020 and the COVID19 pandemic. We were two years into our wait and had just “renewed” our homestudy. The homestudy renewal (typically leading up to 2 years of waiting) marks an unwelcome milestone for many waiting families, and it was a hard time to have all of our normal coping mechanisms taken away.

I wanted to talk about the wait every night after our daughter had gone to bed. My husband wanted to try to put it out of his head most nights. When I tried to respect his wishes and way of processing, I couldn’t think of anything “light” to talk about. In my professional life, I’m an infectious disease researcher, so I replaced talk about the adoption wait with pandemic updates. That got us back to talking about adoption, but I’m not sure it did wonders for either of our mental health.

Eventually, it became clear that I needed a different outlet that I could use on my own schedule. Among other things, I started giving myself a weekly writing assignment. I’d write letters to my kids. I’d write how I was processing this or that, or brainstorm ideas about what I wanted to do with our family once it had grown. It helped me get back to fun and casual conversation with my husband.