Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Waiting Families Night

Tonight we went to our first "waiting families" event at the agency. Very unexpected that we would have been picked before going to our first event! And also ironic, given the topic: "Surviving the Wait". Yep, that 2 month wait was extremely long and arduous!

Regardless of that, it was really great to have a chance to meet other folks who are also waiting in the pool now. (Technically, we're all "waiting families" until after a placement actually happens.) We recognized a few faces from the website, and had a chance to get to know a number of them. More importantly, it was eye-opening to realize how much variety there was in everyone's individual process. There were certainly other couples there who, like us, have only recently started working towards an adoption. But there were also quite a lot of couples for whom adoption has been a multi-year process already, and they're still just waiting. One couple in particular we talked to worked with three other agencies before OA&FS - definitely a huge amount of time has passed for them so far!

During most of the evening, we decided not to share the news that we'd recently entered adoption planning. Given the topic and the emotional battle scars that were apparent for a number of people, it almost seemed like bringing up our good news would be gloating. But we did end up sharing it with a small group at the end of the night, and I have to say it was gratifying to feel their excitement for us! And Katie (the agency counselor we worked with for the homestudy) was facilitating tonight's meeting, so it was fun to chat with her about our recent developments as well.

The only sad part about tonight is that there's only one more event for waiting families before our potential placement on November 12. We were hoping to get to know a whole network of other adoptive parents, both pre- and post-placement, before our placement happened, so now I guess we'll have to amp up that whole process! But I guess there are worse problems to have :)

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