Mostly, I don’t really post about the adoption process.  You know why?  Because I’m supposed to be presenting myself to the world as happy, confident, positive, loving, and a perfect – future – mom.  And the whole process so far has been mostly sad, and scary, and frustrating, and sometimes it just feels like it’s taking my heart apart, piece by piece.   I mean, really, what is there to say about what just happened?  It sucked.  It was awful.  It was incredibly painful. It’s over.  It might happen again.  It might happen lots of times.  And eventually, a real birthmother will really call me.  (It happened last year! It will happen again.)  And I know that when it happens, I need to be able to trust her with a whole heart.

So I have to learn something and move forward.  Here are the lessons I see in this story, and many of them are things I already knew.  But some things have to be learned many times, many times.

Also, I spent some time on google and I think my fish was — most likely — a baby perch.  I plan to look for him again the next time I go to the beach.  I’m sure he’ll be around.  No hard feelings, little fish!

Dear friends,

Take hold of hope, but take it in very careful doses, because like all medicine, too much isn’t good for you.

Take hold of love in huge armfuls, and when you cannot hold any more, let it hold you.

Take hold of everything mean-spirited in the garden of your soul and rip it out by the roots, and know that you will have to weed often.

Be patient with yourself and your weakness, because you can’t possibly know how strong you are unless you break a little bit.

Be patient with other people and their weakness, because they are the main characters of their own stories, and you don’t know which role you play in that story.

Be patient with magic.

Dear Birthmother,

When you call me, I will be thrilled beyond words.  Also terrified.  I will ask you slightly lame questions like, So…  where do you live? while I try to collect myself.  And I won’t care if it’s 2 am.  2 am is awesome.   And just for the record, I am happy, confident, positive, loving, and while I’m not perfect, I’m pretty great.  (Yeah, I said it.)   I’m also really sad, and really anxious, and really angry sometimes at how unfair life is.  And I think you probably feel that way sometimes too.  But love is stronger than sadness, and stronger than fear, and stronger than anger, and as long as we remember that we’ll all be ok.