A Life-Long Relationship Born of the Heart:

We hope our love and solid, strong marriage are a great foundation to build a family on, possibly through an open adoption that we wish to plan together with you.  We would respect your wishes if you preferred a closed adoption, with no contact between us, but please know that if you ever change your mind in the future and wished to contact us, we will remain open to this.  Truly, however, we hope and pray that you would like to do an open or semi-open adoption with us.  We'll share our thoughts on this with you....

When we first explored the idea of "open" adoption we did not know how we felt about this idea, even though the majority of adoptions today have a degree of openness.  We wondered if adopted children in "open" situations became confused about their family situation, or were upset by it.  We wondered if it would increase the birthparent(s) feelings of grief and loss, to have constant reminders of their child in someone else's family.  We wondered if it would be something we would even be comfortable with.  So we read every book and article on open adoption that we could find, and we realized that open adoption is an absolutely wonderful thing, and that we really, really wanted it for ourselves and our children, and for our birthparent(s), whom we were sure we were going to love like a family member. 

We read that children of open adoption are almost always the happiest, most loved, and well-adjusted children!  They have "extra" love and connections that other adopted children do not have; they will also never have to wonder what their birthparent(s) look like and why they made an adoption plan - they will know that the birthparent(s) love them throughout their lives! And we realized that open adoption does *not* mean "co-parenting", but rather that the birthparent(s) and child have a special relationship for life, something like a favorite Aunt, for example.  It helps us also because we would have a real sense of entitlement to our child if the birthparent(s) personally chose us to parent their child. And lastly, we learned that it was very helpful to the birthparent(s) to know that they had some input into their child's future - that it helped to ease a very difficult time, and that it meant never walking through a supermarket wondering if each child of a certain age was theirs.  It is certain that all three parties really benefit from an open adoption, much more so than with a closed adoption.  And in most cases the adoptive parents, the birth parent(s), and the child become like an extended family over time.  How beautiful that is!

We would like to experience this life-long journey with you, if you will have us.  We would like to know what your hopes are for a relationship with us - it would be so important for us to have a connection of the heart with you.  You are the birth mother of our child, such a gift you are giving us!  We would want to love you for always.  We could start with letters and lots of photos, and leave it up to you to let us know when you wished for phone calls, meetings, and occasional outings together. Please assured that the pace of the relationship would be left up to you, and that your decisions will remain private and yours alone.

We read somewhere that open adoption on our part would take courage, compassion and common sense. It takes courage to face uncertainty, compassion to consider the experience from the perspective of others, and common sense so it truly serves the interests of everyone involved.  We will try to have all three! We are happy to give you our heart to make this adoption plan be a positively wonderful life adventure.

Lots of love,

Barbie and Tad