Better Together

One evening I was chatting with a family member and she meekly admitted that others in the family think it was wrong of us to choose this [adoption] road for our biological children.

In their opinion, we chose our biological children’s ruin.

If our family goal had been comfort, then yes, we ruined our children's lives, and not just our biological children’s lives-  ALL of them.

Adoption is NEVER the first and best thing for our adopted children. If there had been a safe way to keep their first family together, that would have been far superior to them being adopted into our family.

For reasons I am not going to share, our adopted children needed to be adopted. They have experienced immense loss.

However, in my opinion, the rest of our family has ONLY gained.

Our biological children have become well acquainted with their brothers’ pain. It is a pain their brothers did not invite and did not contribute to. It is a pain we could have sheltered our biological children from.

We could have given them a plethora of worldly comfort, and in doing so, unintentionally sheltered them from most of what matters- most of what our family values.

Obviously we have a different set of goals and values than those relatives who are in despair over our decisions.

Our hope for ALL of our children has always been that they build character, be compassionate, and be empathetic.

Empathy, Compassion, and Character come at a cost.

All of our children have experienced pain.

As a family, we’re broken.

But, truthfully, we were broken long before our sons came home. Their pain exposed us for who we truly were and begged us to do the hard work of getting better.

So we ALL could be stronger.

While others mourn our destruction, we rejoice at the opportunity to move beyond our previously comfortable life.

I can now accept that many people will not understand and will continue to mourn the “destruction” of our family.

While we feel as if they’re the ones missing out.

And that’s okay.