Cultivating a Village

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project, where we talk about open adoption and nurturing ongoing relationships. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lynette. And I'm Sean. On today's episode, we'll talk about our introduction to open adoption and some of the things that we learned in the beginning to create and foster these type of relationships. We'll also talk about what open adoption looks like and means for us today. Open adoption means having an ongoing relationship with the child's birth family or biological family.

0:47And it's something that's really important in our family that we've really tried to cultivate. We have four kids who are all adopted and we have contact with all of their birth families. There are some members of their birth family who we don't really have contact with, but we do have contact with members of each of their birth families. And it's really been a huge blessing in our lives. Yeah, I think it's pretty unique, the situation that we're in, where initially we were introduced to each of our children's birth parents as a couple.

1:23So both expectant parents, mother and father, were in the picture and together at the time when they made the choice to choose adoption and stayed or remained together through the time that they place their babies with us. And several of them are still together, some married and others have kind of parted ways. Yeah, so that's something that has been a unique experience. We've had birth fathers who have been involved in helping choose which family to place with

1:57and we've had contact with all of our kids' birth fathers as well as their birth moms, which has been a huge blessing. So that's kind of where we're at right now, but we're going to start this episode by talking about the very beginning steps, those first impressions that we had about open adoption and some of the fears and uneasiness that we felt as we took a step into this unknown called open adoption. When we went to our very first adoption intake meeting, they had a slide,

2:29I remember there was a PowerPoint and they had a slide that said open adoption. And they talked a little about this concept that we had never heard about when we were first entering the adoption world as prospective adoptive parents. And I remember it was terrifying and I remember there were these caseworkers who lectured us about the importance of never breaking promises to these expectant parents. Just talking about how it's so important to not make promises you can't keep, like saying,

3:01oh, we'll see each other every month and then you don't follow through with that promise and the damage that does to a relationship and ultimately to your child. Yeah, and I think that was kind of intimidating at the very beginning. Like, we totally understand the perspective where, you know, we're willing to do whatever it takes to have a child. Like we'd gone through this fertility journey that was unsuccessful and felt like adoption was the right course for us. And so for us, we knew that we didn't really want to get in the way of anything potentially happening.

3:37And so it's really appealing to want to bend to maybe all of the requests that a potential or expectant parent has as they are making an adoption plan. But it's really important to make sure that, like Lynette said, that you're super transparent, that you share what you're comfortable with and share what you're not comfortable with. You're starting a relationship that can potentially last a lifetime. And you don't want that to start on fabrications or extended truths.

4:13I remember one of the social workers at that meeting talked about how it's so much better to under promise than to over promise. And so, I mean, open adoption was a new idea to us. We really weren't sure if we wanted to have these open relationships at that point. But we thought maybe we'd want to, but we would want to under promise so that we weren't being unethical. So we were being honest. And if we said, hey, we're open to one visit a year and then changed our minds and wanted more, then that's great.

4:47But that way, it's not something we would ever go back on. And so we started off really with low expectations and a low threshold for what we said we were comfortable with. It was definitely a difficult conversation to have. In fact, I remember as we were filling out all of the adoption papers and everything, I remember it being really difficult in the beginning as we started filling out adoption papers to decide what type of openness we were ready for. And we were really gung ho about filling out all of our information for our approval.

5:20And that was the one thing that just took us the longest. In fact, I think there were sometimes where we kind of toggled back and forth through the different options. There's this kind of array of openness that you can choose from. And in the end, we felt like, you know, if there are expecting parents that are thinking about placing their child with us, that takes so much love and so much compassion for this baby that we would want that love and compassion to extend into not only just the first moments or days of their life, but really throughout their whole life.

6:00Yeah, so we would want that relationship to be there with them. But it was a process for us to get to the point where we really genuinely wanted that. And in fact, so we were approved to adopt in the summer of 2010. And after just a couple of weeks, Sean was posting on all of his social media about how we were hoping to adopt. And he decided to post on LinkedIn. Of all places. Yes, there was an alumni page. And I don't think you were even alumni yet, but he posted on this BYU alumni LinkedIn page that we were hoping to adopt.

6:37And somebody actually replied to him. Yeah, it was the next day. I mean, I think I was kind of grasping at straws in the previous episode. We kind of talked a little bit about how we just really tried to do everything in our power to get ready through our fertility journeys. We did everything that we could to make it work. And so in the beginning of our adoption journey, we were told that the better we got the word out that we were adopting, the more likely it would be that we were connected with expecting parents that were making an adoption plan.

7:12And so I did that and I chose LinkedIn. I put out a message. And like I mentioned, within a day, I got a reply. And this woman from Texas said that their foster daughter, who had been living kind of off and on with them through her teenage years, was expecting a baby and that she wasn't sure if she was going to plan, if she was going to parent or if she was going to choose adoption for her baby. But she thought it would be a good idea if we connected just to start talking about the potential.

7:43And so we connected with her and started to form a relationship. So we started talking on the phone with this expectant mother and we were texting a little bit, too. But we talked on the phone every week for a couple of hours. And we really began to form a really genuine relationship with her and a real friendship. And honestly, it was surprising to me. I hadn't really thought very much about the perspective of an expectant mother or a birth mother and her role in adoption, which sounds really unfair of me and small minded.

8:24But I honestly hadn't thought much about it at that point. And as we built this friendship with this woman who we grew to really love and care about, I realized that having an open adoption and having a relationship with the first mother of our children would be so important and so special and not at all scary. Yeah, we learned a lot through the conversations that we had with her, and luckily she was just very open about her feelings and her thoughts about placement.

8:59And so we developed this relationship over probably about two months. We were to the point where she was going to have an ultrasound to find out the gender of the baby. She had her ultrasound and we didn't hear from her after that for a couple of weeks. And we were getting really anxious. We were like, what's the baby's gender? What's the plan? Are you still thinking about adoption? We just want to know what the current status is. And then she finally did reach back out to us and she told us that she felt like she would be able to parent a baby girl better and more easily than a baby boy.

9:38And she had been sure that she was pregnant with a boy. But at her ultrasound, she found out it was a girl. So she decided because she'd be a single mom with a daughter, she felt she could provide the experiences and everything that she wanted for a girl, but probably not for a boy. So she decided to parent. And while that was really hard for us to accept, that was totally, totally her choice.

10:09I mean, we had our hopes up pretty high. We had our hopes high and I still was sure that we had a baby girl coming. And so when we found out it was a girl, that was hard. But I did really feel like the relationship we had made it so much easier to just respect her opinion or respect her decision and say, you know, you're this baby's mother and it's your choice. It's really not ours. And you know what's best for your child. Yeah, that's right. And so, I mean, we didn't have much communication, too much communication after that.

10:45But we are still connected on Facebook and we do still kind of see updates and every once in a while she'll comment on our posts. And it's interesting that now, even a decade later, we still have a connection to her. And we're grateful for the experiences that we had with her because it, like Lynette mentioned, it really gave us a look into the perspective of an expectant parent and some of the feelings and thoughts and emotions that they were experiencing while contemplating whether adoption was right for their child or not.

11:17I feel like it really did help us gain a lot more compassion for their experience and for their situation. It just helped us really realize that it's not all about us. It's about the baby, ultimately the child, but also that's about their birth parents, too, or their biological parents and what's right for all of them. So fast forward about a month or maybe a little bit more, and the day her baby was born, we actually were contacted by the birth parents of our daughter.

11:58Yeah, so they reached out and emailed us. They emailed a few different couples and asked a huge list of questions. Like, just imagine a list of probably 25, 26 questions that require essays. They were deep. They weren't just yes or no, but paragraphs, maybe like short essays. Yes, like philosophy on discipline and what would you do if this happened to your child? Like questions that you had to write quite a bit of a response to.

12:32So being the couple that we are, we received that email and immediately started drafting and crafting our responses. And we were trying to be really heartfelt and honest and open. And so we spent that entire night working to early, early hours of the morning, answering the questions. And the next morning, we proofread our answers after kind of the haze of staying up all night, faded away. And we felt good and sent our email that day.

13:05And I think it was only just a brief period of time after we sent a couple of days, after we sent the email that our caseworker contacted us and said that this expected couple wanted to meet with us and a few other people before they made their final decision on who they wanted to place with. So that was absolutely terrifying. This was our first time meeting a birth mother or an expectant couple face to face ever,

13:37because our relationship with the mother that we met earlier was all over the phone and text. And so it was terrifying. I compare the feelings we had before to the feelings you might have on a blind date. But think of it, I mean, it's like the ultimate blind date, right? So this blind date lasts about an hour. And at the end of the date, you basically need to decide if you're going to spend the rest of forever together or connected to each other in some way.

14:09Right. With open adoption relationships, we know that we're going to be connected to the birth parents if they choose to place with us. And that's that's kind of a scary thought and a scary nerve wracking place to be. So we're meeting with this couple and they ask us more questions. It's a lot more casual than the essays that we wrote. And it felt really comfortable. I mean, even even the birth mother's mom had helped to make like heart shaped.

14:43Rice Krispie treats, because it was Valentine's Day, we met on Valentine's Day, and we just had a good conversation and it felt really comfortable. And I mean, it did feel comfortable, but it was also still nerve wracking. I remember my heart was just racing the entire time we were there, just so nervous that I would say something stupid and ruin everything, that what if this is supposed to work out and I just mess it all up by, I don't know, saying something dumb.

15:15But the nice thing is everyone is flawed. And what we had insecurities about, they had insecurities about other things, you know, and it was it was kind of mutual. And we didn't know that at the time, right? Like, they're nervous, they're scared. And so are we. But it's important. It was important for us to be as genuine and authentic as we could be. So they got to know the real us that we weren't putting on some type of show. We weren't answering all the questions they asked us and like, you know, what the perfect answer would be.

15:51But we tried to be us. And we were us. I was just a more nervous and anxious me, which I'm actually pretty anxious anyway. So it's not too different. But I was a little extra anxious. Which is totally understandable. And so by the end of our meeting together, we were feeling like this was good. We had a good vibe. We all got along well. And so we got up to leave. We were kind of like getting ready to give hugs and stuff. And this expectant mother walks over to the corner as she says, well, before you go, we have one more thing for you.

16:29And she walks back over and she has this large fabric covered box and it has this lid on it. And she opens it up and inside are baby clothes and a blanket and a stuffed animal and just all of these things. And as she opens the lid, she says, the real reason that we brought you here today was to tell you that we've already chosen you to be the parents of our daughter. And that, like, shook us in, like, the best way possible, right?

16:59We, I mean, tears on our side and their side of the table, caseworkers in the room. It just there was this this amazingly beautiful spirit in the room where we were really focused on the love of this little girl. And it was so apparent that that love was coming from so many directions. And it was it was unbelievable. Like, I can't describe in words how we felt, but. It was this piece that we had been waiting for for a long time.

17:31Hands down, the best Valentine's Day we have ever had or will ever have. Yeah, so I don't really have to live up to anything huge because I can't top it, right? Right. That's fair. We were never big on Valentine's Day, but now we celebrate. In a very different way. Yeah. Yeah. So that evening, we went out to dinner with them and their parents, got to meet them and spend some more time with them. And that kind of started the. Just this natural relationship and it started to grow organically where we, you know,

18:06messaged each other, we would call each other every once in a while we went we went out on a date with them one night. We ended up going to an ultrasound. And so that that really was kind of the starting point of what open adoption looks like and began to look like in our family. And I really need to give some credit to our daughter's birth family, especially her birth mother and grandparents,

18:36because they are really loving, sincere, good people. And they made building these open adoption relationships so easy. So easy. And I feel like they really did help us lay such good groundwork. I mean, hopefully good groundwork for all of our kids and their birth families. And I mean, every relationship is changing constantly, right? Yeah, relationships evolve. And our relationship with our daughter's birth parents and grandparents

19:13is one that's similar to the relationship that we have with our own siblings or our own parents, where we need to connect with them, we need to do things to nurture those relationships. And at times there will be moments where we don't agree with what our family members do. Same thing happens with with our now extended family, birth families. We don't always see eye to eye on everything. And that's just life. And so I think it's important to know that it's not going to be peachy all the time.

19:45It's it's really good. Like to confess, we feel like we've really been blessed or we've lucked out on the relationships that we've had. But absolutely remembering that the relationship is the most important thing. A quick side note story. This past Christmas, we had one of our son's biological grandparents over. And our son asked them who they had voted for in this past election. And they voted for someone different than us.

20:16And I remember feeling a little tense, like, is he going to repeat something we said about this person we weren't a fan of? And I was so amazed by him and his maturity because he just smiled and said, that's OK. The important thing is that I love you. Yeah, it was an awesome moment for a seven year old boy to to to do that. I'm not sure if we really get any credit for it, but it was really wonderful to see that our kids do understand that relationships are what matter most.

20:51And at the end of the day, like we foster these relationships for the benefit of our children. Right. We love we love our children's birth parents and their parents. They have become just as much a part of our family as other members of our family are. And we we do that so that our children know that they're loved. And I mean, the old saying says it takes a village to raise a child.

21:22And our village is huge now. It has grown exponentially. Every time we have a child, we don't just add one more baby to the family. But we add a lot of people to our family. And in the previous episode, our daughter shared when we asked her how many grandparents she had, and she said 20, I think. Really, if you count our parents, all of our children's birth parents, parents and even great grandparents who who we see and they're involved in active to some degree in in our lives.

21:59I mean, there is this huge network of people who love and adore all of our children and have accepted all of them as family. And really, we do do this for our kids, but I would say that it's become a lot easier. It's not really a chore at all because we enjoy it, too. We enjoy these relationships. They benefit us, too. And they benefit all of our kids, like having a relationship with our daughter's birth family is benefiting our sons as well.

22:31And it's just this exponential experience of love, more love for everybody. And it really is so incredible. We really do feel very blessed. So going back to the beginning of our conversation where we were young, a little naive, very afraid or timid about open adoption. You know, ten years have passed. And if we could tell our old selves anything, it would be that the people that are going to join your lives through adoption are going to be huge, huge blessings to you.

23:04And they are going to love you and your family so much. And the love that your children feel is just going to be awesome because it's not only coming from you as their parents, but now it's coming from so many different angles. And they feel love and support and they don't feel the abandonment or disconnection that could potentially happen in a different situation. We hope that your takeaway from this episode is realizing that in the big picture, open adoption is this blessing that radiates past the adoptee and blesses so many other people.

23:47But ultimately, what we're really focused on, of course, is blessing our kids, the adoptees. And what a beautiful way to hopefully bless their lives and help them to feel loved and whole by giving them more love and also giving their birth families more love, giving our family more love. It's just more love for everybody. And it's really incredible. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. In our next episode, we'll be talking about establishing healthy boundaries.

24:20Thanks so much for listening. We really appreciate your support. We invite you to follow us on Instagram at Open Adoption Project. Also, you can find us on Facebook. Our goal is to help share open adoption experiences. And we feel like there are a lot of people out there who are kind of seeking for and yearning for information like this. So go ahead and jump on to Apple Podcasts or to Spotify and give us a five star rating so that we can reach more people that are really looking for this type of media to consume.

24:52Thanks so much.

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