Melissa and Joseph | Party of 10

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We are the Nelsons. I'm Sean. And I'm Lynette. Today we are so excited to share an interview with Joseph and Melissa. We are actually old friends with Joseph and Melissa. We knew them before any of us had kids. And now they are the parents of eight kids. And they're incredible. Oh my goodness. But they have built their family in many ways. They have some biological kids. They have some kids who were adopted as infants. And they also have some kids who

0:32they are fostering who they're planning on adopting. And they are just incredible parenting all of these kids and involving all of their biological families. I really just love that they have so much experience in so many aspects of raising children and bringing children into their family. And they do a great job at articulating the awesome nature that that is of just having this great big family. But they also are really authentic in sharing what challenges and struggles kind of come along with adding children in

1:05different ways and also having a larger family. Yeah. And just juggling these different kinds of open adoption relationships, different levels of openness, and what that looks like with foster foster kids too. So here we go. We'll jump right to our interview with Melissa and Joseph. All right. So we are here on the podcast with Melissa and Joseph. Thank you so much

1:35for joining us today, guys. Hey, so good to be here. Yeah, super excited. Thank you. So to start off, can we have you introduce yourselves to us? Sure. We'll let Melissa go first. So I'm Melissa. We are parents of eight children. Joseph and I met in the foreign language dorms. I majored in Spanish and he majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. Something fun about us is we like to make chocolate from scratch. One of our favorite things to do. And I literally eat a chocolate bar

2:09every day. I love it. And we've had some of that chocolate and it's amazing. It's really good. Yeah. It's, I don't, my nose doesn't function very well. It's like 50% smelling capacity. At least that's what the doctor said. And I remember the first time I walked into a chocolate shop and it was like hearing a symphony inside my nose. Like the first time I'd been able to smell that well. And I just remember turning to Melissa and saying, some people have wine cellars, we shall

2:40have a chocolate seller. So we're slowly but surely getting there. That's so awesome. Anything else you would share about your, you guys or your family introduction wise? There's eight kids and they're young. Our oldest is nine and our youngest is four months. And we built through a combination of biological children, domestic adoption and foster to adopt. So yeah. So our oldest two are biological.

3:13It was kind of interesting. This never came, we never planned this. I think that's the biggest, that's the funniest thing about this is that it was kind of one surprise after another to a degree. It took us forever for our first child. And then so we thought it takes some time like that for the second and he came super fast. But with Melissa needing to be on bed rest for each pregnancy,

3:43doctors weren't sure if we should have any more. My first child, our first child, severe preeclampsia, just showed up at 36 weeks, went to my appointment, delivered a baby that night. Right. And it was our first, so they didn't really think it would happen again. But with our second, it showed up at 24 weeks. We were lucky enough that between medications and interventions, I stayed at the hospital until 35 weeks. We delivered then when things started getting really bad. Like they were able

4:15to do that, which was amazing, but it was still three months in the hospital, which was so hard. It was so hard because you were in the air force, Lydia was little and we couldn't take care of her. He was training. So after that, they, you're highly discouraged from having more children because the preeclampsia tends to show up earlier and stronger with each child. After we had Hiram, our second, messaged Lynette and I said, Hey, how do you do this adoption thing? What does it even

4:47look like? And she just kind of gave me a rundown and told me what to look for. So when we moved to Wyoming, I actually looked up agencies and it was a very easy choice because there was one for the entire state, which kind of blows my mind. But well, I mean, there's not a whole lot of people. There really isn't. The foster care system only had like 30 kids in it. It was not a lot. And so very few, so we made our choice easy. It was at that point, we're kind of thinking,

5:21we'll try. We honestly were not sure what was going to happen. We found an agency, we did a home study and we chose domestic infant adoption because we were air force. We knew foster care could take a long time. That's what people had told us. And with Joe's this particular career, we could move at any time. And so we wanted to be able to do it from wherever we were and not have to take kids with us or lose kids because we were moving. We built a blog and got the word out, but really,

5:55the truth is none of that made a difference because it was a family member. Her best friend's little sister found out she was having twins at 33 weeks. So originally she was in denial about the pregnancy until their family kind of had an intervention because at some point it was obvious that she was very pregnant, right? So they took them into one of those sonographers off the street. So like a fetal photos, find out the gender kind of thing. That's when she found out she was 33 weeks along

6:29with twins. That night she goes and tells the dad who really wanted no part in it. So when she suggested adoption, he was for it. And she had decided that she wasn't in a place to raise children, even though she was older. I think that was part of it. And she was actually much older and she decided to place. My aunt told her about us and she literally didn't look at anybody else she just like perused her blog. She's like, yeah, here's our family. And they gave us a call and we flew down to Arizona the next day. So I guess our blog did do something. It did. It helped her.

7:04You know, she looked at pictures. It was great. Now, honestly, it was nothing short of a miracle because we had two at that time, we had a two and a one year old. It had taken about almost two years at that point. Well, and there was four potential adoptions to that point where we had been contact by families and they chose someone else or their agency. So there were a couple. This is the farthest we had gotten. We got to the actual birth. Yeah, I'm just saying it's funny because we got

7:35to the point near the end of those two that two year interim where we're like, well, you know, this has been kind of hard. Yeah. And we're like, maybe just the two will be fine. And it's really funny is after we made peace with that, like, no, we'll just be grateful for the two that we have. Just move forward with our lives. They're like literally the next week we got the phone call. It's true. We had decided we weren't going to renew two years was enough and there had been a lot of ups and downs is it's hard to get your hopes up every time that you're contacted and interviewed.

8:09And it had decided that we were now maybe we're trying to do something that was beyond us. And then it was the next week that we got chosen for the twins. And they were born two weeks after that. So at 35 weeks in Arizona at the time, I would have said that it was really difficult that there were a lot of ups and downs. I didn't know what to expect, but now looking back six years later,

8:41it was one of the smoothest adoptions that I have ever seen. But I didn't know that at the time, the fact that we went in there and I was able to be at the birth and that both babies were healthy and that we took them home 48 hours and that the birth parents actually signed the paperwork in the hospital. Like it was incredibly smooth and it only took us a week to get permissioned across

9:11state boundaries, which now being in foster care, I know can take like nine months. I have no idea what strings she pulled to make that so fast. It was very smooth. And then the next twist. Oh, I know right. Six weeks later, we found out we were very unexpectedly pregnant and it was terrifying. Because Hiram's birth, like I had straight up PTSD. I still do. Like it was hard. And I wasn't sure if we were going to make it, if she was going to be alive. But during that two years with the twins,

9:46I had some crazy health stuff and it actually like completely changed how I ate. I lost like 85 pounds. I just did all this health stuff and that's what I attribute it to. It was still the hardest nine months of my life. I ended up spending the last bit in the hospital again, but I delivered a baby at 37 weeks. He was perfectly fine. Like it was the latest I'd ever gotten with a child. But at that

10:17point, we were extra sure that we didn't want to do that again. And we made sure that it wouldn't. So there we are with our five and Joseph leaves the Air Force and we move to Arizona. It's funny because it happened to both of us in the same week. We had friends who had done foster care. And at this time, Ruth was three and a half. So not super young, but to us it felt old. Our oldest was three when Ruth was born. So we had five and a half. And then we had three and a half.

10:52And then we had seven and three and a half years. It was really close together. And so by the time she was three and a half, I was like, Oh, I'd had five kids in this time. Like I wasn't overwhelmed anymore. We were doing well. So we just kind of decided one night that our family wasn't done and that we wanted to foster. We had thought about it for a long time. We were very open to adoption. We've gone through the foster care classes in Wyoming to see if it was something we wanted. So we went with the one and all the sudden decision, it was just the switch flipped from it's not time

11:24to it's time. So at that point we needed to find an agency and we literally just went with the ones that our friends had done because they had nothing but good things to say about them. And so we contacted them and we have good experiences. So we felt like it was a solid good enough and that was a good direction. It was really cool how it worked out. Another one of those where I have no explanation is so as October and it's supposed to take about six months to be approved, but we were

11:58really on top of our paperwork. Background checks were easy because of the air force. When you handle nuclear bombs, they do a pretty thorough check. So we were able to use that. So Tuesday before Thanksgiving we put in our application. So it's like six weeks later. So we got our stuff done record time. That was pretty good on us. We had a lot of 20 hours of training and we just did it. When we are, when we decided to do something, we jump in. Both feet. Right. We're the same way.

12:32And they told us it'll be about eight weeks after you send in your application to be approved by the state. So that's what we were expecting. Yeah. Expecting like, great. It'll be sometime next year. Apparently they had had a huge influx of kids right before the holiday and they didn't want, they had like 50 kids in the placement center. It doesn't even hold that many. The one at Phoenix hold maybe 25. And the Phoenix, the Thanksgiving holiday was the next day. And so we turned in our

13:03application at two. We got emergency approval at four. Like they literally just went through our application and approved it right on the spot. And we had a baby by seven o'clock. Holy cow. It was like so crazy. And it happened to be a newborn. We were licensed zero to four. We wanted someone younger than Ruth, but that was our only stipulation. But it happened to be that they had a call for a newborn who had just come out of the hospital and we went and picked him up.

13:36Yeah. Just went and picked up a baby. It really was. It was so weird. You like go down to the Phoenix placement center and it's unmarked. You have to get the address from a case manager and you can't share it to anybody. There is a gate, a code to get in and then you pass security and then give them their ID and then you can go back and there's a room with just your child. And you like sign the paperwork and do the interview. And so it's very, it felt like I was in a spy movie or

14:09something. It's very locked down. Like am I supposed to be doing this? And it didn't help that it was dark. I don't know. Then we picked him up and that's where we got our first foster child. Six months later, not even five months later, we are in the middle of COVID lockdown. We were on a camping trip that weekend. We're supposed to stay overnight, Sunday, Saturday to Sunday. And we had the distinct impression that we should come home that night. And so we did. Like, okay, like that's not

14:44a big deal. Cool. We were coming off the mountain and you texted our agency rep. Yeah. I was like, hey, we're coming home early just so you know, because we're supposed to keep them informed. And it was Sunday morning. They called us. They said, hey, we know you have the bed space and the car space because that's on all of our applications. You're only approved for one bed. Can we approve you for two so that you can take another placement? Because what happened is during lockdown,

15:15nobody was reunifying. Nobody was getting approved to foster. But at the same time, the abuse rate in the homes had actually risen. And so there was a disproportionate amount of foster parents. So they were like literally trying to find foster parents to do more. And we said, okay, you can take another one. And I was working from home at the time. So the parents there, we were feeling

15:46good. And yeah. And so we said, yeah, we'll take another one. And that night again, another call for a newborn, which once again was weird. They always tell you going through training, newborns are rare. Do not ever expect that. But then we've got the two and we go through the next year almost. And our first placement reunifies. And that was actually a really good experience.

16:16They, we were prepared for it. We had a good relationship with his father. We were really proud of the work that he had done going through sobriety and getting a job and a stable home. So it actually ended up being a really good experience despite the fact that there was a lot of grief from saying goodbye to this child that you had parented for 16 months. And I really close, like, I feel like I had a really close special bond and still do with him.

16:46I don't know. He was like, he's like one of those babies that was like laughing as soon as like he could make sounds. Yeah. And like you like, I'd play games with him and like, you just laugh. Like if there's a favorite parent, not that there was, but I was definitely the favorite parent. So that one, that one was, that was, that was a rough week. Yeah. Because they're like, even though you know, like mentally, you know, like, all right, this isn't my kid. The goal is always

17:18reunification. Yeah. But at the same time, the kind of agency when they were telling us, when they first called us about, you know, this, this first placement, like, oh yeah, this is like a Dundee. You'll probably be adopting him. Like, but what happened is his dad got taken into ice custody. Luckily was not deported because he had children in the States. But during that time, he got sober and he was able to keep it up. So it really was just like a twist of fate. And so you're proud of him, but it was so hard to say goodbye, mostly because I didn't know if we

17:54would ever see him again. And that's hard because you, you try to maintain a relationship, but the situations they're in phone numbers are changing all the time. Houses are changing all the time. They lived an hour and a half away in, you know, North Phoenix. So you had to just come to terms with the fact that you may never see him again. And he probably would not remember you. And that was hard. Well, to that point, we had a good enough relationship with the father that a week after, was it a week, two weeks? Yeah, it was a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks after

18:28we asked if we could see, you know, just see him, just spend an hour or two with him at the park. And, you know, graciously he said, yeah, you know, you can come see him. And so he came, picked him up. And I think that was harder than saying goodbye the first time because, you know, they're so young at that age. Like he didn't notice at all. Yeah. Yeah. So all the things we would do together, all like the little gains we had, he wasn't responsive to them. I think that was actually a lot harder for me than saying goodbye

19:04the first time. And nothing was wrong. Like this is just how it was, you know, it's how it should be, you know, he should be bonding with his family. He should be, you know, it was still, I think of that whole process up to that point, that was probably the toughest day for me. Cause it was just like, yep, you won't remember me. So yeah, that was that, that was probably a tough state for me thinking back there. So, and then after that we didn't really, yeah, we were down to one,

19:36but we had decided, cause we had been homeschooling because of COVID, like, you know what, one was a lot easier. So we decided not to fill that second bed and went through the summer. And then our second placement had a brother born. Well, we were told family was going to take him because it's a different dad. It opens up new family members. So he had a grandma that took placement of him. So we weren't expecting a baby, but two weeks, when he's two weeks old, we got a call that family placement

20:09wasn't working out. They needed to put them into care. Would we take his brother? Of course, we said, yes, we wanted to keep siblings together. We could do two again. And so we said, yes. So we had the 15 month old in the new ward. And then three days later after this, we get a call from DCS again, that he was back in care and that we, could we take him? He was our son. So of course he said,

20:41yes. But in like, was it a week? Within a couple of days, we went from six to eight kids. And that was hard. Mostly because all, like we hadn't dealt with a lot of trauma behaviors because we had getting calls from newborns, right? So it was like drug withdrawals and things like that, that we were used to. But then when our first guy came back into care, he had all of the trauma behaviors.

21:17He wasn't sleeping. He was screaming. He had attachment issues. He, just all the things. A lot of neglect. Yeah. Yeah. And abuse that we didn't know was going on. He would just go catatonic sometimes. It was hard. His fight or flight was really strong. Yeah. If you heard a loud noise, you just stop and he wouldn't move. He had to come to him, kind of pick him up, calm him down. So that was the first couple of weeks.

21:51Cause of course your newborn isn't sleeping and then our toddler isn't sleeping. And so that was a very interesting. Hard. It was very hard. Interesting. It was scientifically. No, it was, it was mostly hard and physically hard. But here we are four months later and he's doing fantastic. Like he, all of his, all of his behaviors now are just two-year-old behaviors, things that kids do.

22:26And he's sleeping well. He's eating well. It really took, it took probably three months to get to that point though, before he was comfortable being back here and new routines and visits where that's always kind of hard for little kids where they see their biological family and then they come back to their foster family. And so that's, that's been good to see how he's improved. And when the judge got the case back, he decided to move it straight to severance because it was

23:01his second time in care, but it was dad's third strike. So that's nice to know that he'll have a stable support and home from here on out. That's how our family has gotten to be at this point. Right. And our, our second, so number seven, the second foster, his case has moved to severance as well. So really it's a little baby that we'll see what happens. It's only four months. And typically

23:34Arizona tends to take a lot longer where, you know, domestic infant adoption, we finalized it six months, whereas this, they don't even consider if it's like cut and dry, they'll do six months, like, Oh, neither parent has been seen. They both abandoned. We'll do it six months. Right. Ours, the earliest we've had severance is 19 months or like even gone to severance. And then it's like nine months after that, by the time you've done the severance trials and the adoption hearings

24:04and everything. So it takes longer. So nine years, eight kids. So your three foster sons, you're planning on adopting the first two at this point? Yes. Okay. Yes. Cool. Some, some point in the future. That'd be a good year. Well, thank you guys so much for sharing that is like so twists and turn. I have a coworker who likes to use the phrase plot twist. And I felt like that could have

24:37been said about five times through your story. I imagine living it was crazy. I sometimes I feel really blessed that you can't see the end from the beginning, because I think I would have been really overwhelmed and maybe not chosen it at the time, but as you're living it, you know, you just take it each new plot twist. Not what you don't expect the overwhelm. It just comes on at certain

25:07moments. I mean, you kind of got to expect it, right? Things are going really well right now with all the kids. You know how it is even what was most surprising to me is that I got postpartum anxiety slash postpartum depression with all eight. Didn't matter for his biological adopted foster all eight. And I think that's just a combination

25:40of like lack of sleep, poor nutrition, overwhelm, a lot of crying. So that was actually really surprising to me. I thought that that would not happen if I did not give birth and it still did. And how have your older kids done adjusting every time a new foster child joins your family? They love it. Our kids love kids. It's been so interesting because with each one, we've

26:10asked them, are you okay with this? Is this something we can handle as a family? And they overwhelmingly said, yes, they love it. The hardest by far was when our little guy went back into care and it was really good for learning that we were reading books on grief with kids and figuring out how to talk to them and how to remember him and what was the best way to handle it. And obviously as parents, we don't know if it was us or if it's just, we have resilient kids,

26:41but they seem to handle it pretty well. We talked about them a lot. So that was the hardest part was the reunification, but they seemed to be resilient and to handle it. I think they have like this kind of like sense of pride with how big our family is. Like I'll be out with the five and like, oh wow, there's five. Like you have a really large family and Lydia will be like, but we have three more. And the twins will ask like, are we getting another

27:13baby? So they ask that all the time. Like, what are we getting? Are we getting a new baby? So they ask that a lot. They, all the kids want a bigger family. I think we're done, but I think it's interesting how our biological children have started playing stories about how they were, how they have tummy mommies or how they were adopted. They're kind of like feeling left out. It's true. Our youngest biological Ruth, who's five talks all the time, I had a birth mom,

27:48then you were my birth mom. I'm trying to like somehow make it make sense. Right. And then sometimes she just gets sad because everyone tends to get like gifts from their birth family and she doesn't like, uh, that's a hard one to explain. Sometimes. How do you balance that or how do you maybe help them understand that? We, there's a lot of talks because even with the five who do have birth

28:19families, gifts and attention vary by family. And so it's really been, it's been a hard lesson and that life is not fair and that this is their relationship with their birth family that we want to foster, which that explanation has really only worked with our older two who are old enough to get that with the others. Millie Brooke actually have been kind of, they don't really, yeah, they don't notice the difference. I don't know why it's like hasn't bothered them. It's bothered Ruth

28:53by far the most and the older two, but they got it. They're like, oh yeah, this is their birth family. I feel like that explanation worked. And then Ruth has just been sad. I mean, it's sporadic, like sporadic, like, well, and she's five, right? Yeah. Yeah. So just being, and the truth is it's really like, why don't I get toys? And the truth is with the three who get, because their biological family will send gifts home from visits and things. And we just tell Ruth to wait

29:27till they're done playing with it. And then they get it. Like the boys tend to lose interest eventually. So she's had enough patients that it's worked, but she still wishes she had a birth family. I think when our kids were really little and that was happening a little bit, we would say, okay, the first day it's your gift tomorrow. It's the families. Do that with birthday 24 hour rule, but then you need to share. Nice. That's one of the hard things about being in a big family

30:01is they have a couple like special gifts. We tell them like, you get this drawer that fits in this drawer, nobody can touch it. But for the most part, things are communal, which works more often than not, but there are times when it's tough. Yeah. How do you, you know, teach that kind of principle of stewardship? Like, like you have stewardship over this, but it's still the families. We're still working. Yeah. And I know Melissa and I are still kind of working out our individual philosophies

30:36on that. So, but she's at home more. So I just kind of got to go with it sometimes. Yeah. So a question that we get asked pretty often by our listeners is how do you know if agency adoption or foster to adopt is the right route for your family? What would you tell them? We get asked this a lot. And I really just lay out kind of the pros and cons of each.

31:06Foster care is not only is it cheaper, you get paid to do it. So Arizona, we get paid $700 per child, which really, that was a deciding factor for us because taking care of more children does mean more expense. Like, well, at least this offsets the extra expense that we're getting. So we don't feel like we're hurting our other children by having a lower income to child ratio. So that was

31:36a deciding factor for us. The obviously our domestic infant adoption as far as adoptions, though, was quite cheap. The way that it worked out is we found a birth mother, not through an agency. And so we just hired a lawyer in Arizona. We hired a lawyer in Wyoming. And then we had the agency do the finalization and the whole thing was about $14,000, which for two kids was very good. Right. And then $4,000 that was subsidized by the Air Force.

32:08Yeah, the Air Force had adoption subsidies, which was really cool. Yeah. So it's really, you have to pick your heart. Do you want a cheaper, you know, a subsidized experience, but that comes a lot with a lot of strings attached to it, a lot of unknowns. Right. You don't know it's going to end up in adoption. The goal is always reunification. Yeah. And so you have to step into that space, being willing to love the child as your own, but being willing to support reunification. So, you

32:38know, if that's the hard and experience, like they're both hard, there's something I think there's something I think enlarging about that experience of just being willing to love someone if it's for a day or for a week. I don't know. It's really interesting experience, not knowing when they're going to go. So you just love them as much as you can prove it for that day. And then with domestic adoption, you know, it's more expensive, but it's perhaps a little more sure. I mean, okay, all right. You don't know when, but it seems to be like the more money you can

33:14throw at a domestic adoption, the more your probability increases. That's true. And at the time, my decision was based off of, I want to have a child from the beginning of their life, which looking back was probably not the best way to make a decision. I've learned a lot more since then, but it was what we did at the time. And that was a deciding factor for me. And I just decided we were going to make the money work. Right. But like I mentioned before, secondary, because we did

33:47go through the foster care classes when we realized how much time cases took. I don't think we can do this while we're in the Air Force. Yeah. And that's the thing, like, what's your timeline? I mean, well, again, adoption, domestic adoption is something- Yeah, they take a while, but you don't have the kid the whole time. Yeah. So the hardest part for us is, okay, if we moved, we'd have to get a new home study. That was the hardest part with the domestic. And we're still waiting. There's a lot of work. So honestly, I like what Joseph said. You choose your heart. And we've chosen both,

34:18and they both have had pluses and minuses. And it really comes down to what's best for your family and emotional needs at the time. There's no wrong choice. Thinking about when you adopted the twins, so your domestic infant adoption, from the time that you matched, knowing that you were going to adopt in the time that kids were born, what did you do to connect with birth family to start fostering a relationship? And then ultimately, kind of what has that journey looked like to this point?

34:48It's really progressed, but at the time, so we were matched and there was about two weeks. Really at that time, I went to a couple of doctor's appointments. We did do a family dinner, so that her, because she was very close to her family, could get to know our family. But it was really tough because their family didn't want her to place, but at the same time, didn't feel like they could take the babies. And so they were in a really rough spot where they were

35:20honestly kind of grappling with it and were, they were upset. And that rightfully so, like they, that's grief that they were going through. So we really just did what we could to show them our love. And we did, mostly for the birth parents, there were some things that we bought with their names on it. And we did footprints and matching blankets, just so she would have, I don't know if she ever kept any of them or anything, but we did it, right? I felt like

35:52that's where I wanted to come is an adoptive parent. Though originally they were supposed to be boy, girl twins. And so everything I gave with their names on it was not right. Because they came out to be identical girls, which in their defense is really hard to see when things are that squished. So then I ended up making new necklaces and things for her with their actual names. And we honored, they're both named after, she chose both of their first names and we stuck with those names.

36:26And their middle names are after her, her first and middle name. And so we did that to honor her choices and what she would like. I think it's interesting that you can do whatever you would like to do, but you can't force someone into a relationship. And seeing the children, it's always caused their birth mother a lot of pain. And so, you know, we used to do annual, we'd drive down to Arizona to do an annual meal with them. And they slowly just stopped contact and told us,

37:02hey, no, if we want contact, we'll let you know. Yeah, we did a lot the first year. And then it was like to the second year. And now at this point, we actually live just about 20 minutes away from them now. And they've requested no contact. But we are friends on Facebook and they like our pictures. So I know that they know that the girls are alive and they're happy and they are healthy. And to me, that's, I still consider that an open adoption, despite the fact that we haven't really seen them

37:36within the last two years. And I'll send her Mother's Day and birthday cards. That pretty much is our relationship right now. Facebook likes, likes and birthday cards. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting to like you mentioned in the beginning, you can't force a relationship, but I think it's important in the adoption community where if we've promised that in the beginning, or if that is what we started with to keep the door open, right. And I think what you are doing is a great example of that. Not trying to force something that they maybe don't want at

38:09this point, but know that that relationship is there anytime they want or need it. Yeah. And the most comforting part to me is when Millie and Brooke do have questions that I have their birth parents contact information, because they're going to want to know what they were thinking, what was happening. And at least I know where to find them. And that was comforting to me that when they decide they want to foster that relationship, I can at least have the first step.

38:40Doors, I guess from our perspective, the door is wide open and there's just lots of love and understanding. It's a mixed bag of emotions. You know, it's a very difficult, you sit in, I guess, intention of grief and pain and joy. And you know, it's just, it's an interesting place to be in. So what do you wish that you could tell yourself at the very beginning of your family growing journey? Like before you adopted, before you started foster care, what would you tell

39:10yourself if you could go back? Don't worry about it. It all works out in the end. And I tell myself that now too, because they're so, they've all had so many ups and downs where I'm like, it's happening, it's not happening, it's happening, it's not happening. Even now in foster care, where it's like, oh, this random family member is coming up or this is, there's so much thrown at you. I think the, just don't worry and let God handle it. And then just like, hey, it's going to be hard

39:47and you can feel the feelings. You know, don't, don't be scared of, don't be scared of the hard. You're strong enough to feel sorrow. You're strong enough to feel grief. You're strong enough to feel attachment, you know, and it's all in all, you're going to learn and grow and you're going to appreciate those experiences, even though they're hard to get to sometimes. So from the beginning, we've talked about foster care and how the goal is always reunification. How do you balance

40:18relationships with biological parents when you know that reunification is unlikely or now you know it's not going to happen for some of them? How, what did those relationships look like and how do you handle that? I think the biggest takeaway from foster parent training is an ability to hold space and compassion for how, you know, these individuals have come to the place that they are. And I think

40:51that's really key is having a great deal and a great amount of compassion and empathy for, for these people who are doing the best they know or have the capability of doing and just really seeing them as, you know, they're not villains, they're not bad guys, they're not good guys. They're just bad guys, they're not good guys. They're just people trying to do the best they can. And right now this is kind of where they're at and just being able to hold space for that. There has been a lot

41:22of empathy realizing the cyclical generations of addiction and the poverty cycle and how these individuals have come to where they are almost by society's fault. But at the same time knowing that we need to set boundaries to protect our most vulnerable. So that kind of going into that with the empathy, we literally sat down and said, how do we want to show this foster parents?

41:52Because you will get advice all over the map from people who only speak through case managers, they don't know names, addresses, numbers, even an email, like nothing. There's people on the other side are like, oh yeah, they've reunified and we have dinner every week. If we saw all of it. But what we wanted is how do we show up? And we decided that we were okay. We shared our phone numbers and we met in person for courts. And sometimes we will supervise visits if case

42:25aids aren't available. So that helped a lot with fostering a relationship is because we actually got to meet in person and talk and then they can see that we love their child and that we're not scary because a lot of times they'll get foster, what am I trying to say, biological parents will lose a sense of control. And that's when things start to get nasty. There'll be DCS reports or things happen at visits. So we wanted to show them that we were on their team

42:57and that we love their child. So like for our first little guy, his parents were incarcerated for the first while of his life. And so I kept monthly pictures everywhere we went, ended up making first time I saw him like this big chat book that he didn't speak the same language, but it just had pictures of him for the first 16 months of his life. And he loved it. It was just crying. And I was like, yes, that's the right choice. Now he has no holes in his son's

43:32baby years. He can see all these things that he missed. And now I have all three of their biological parents numbers. Like today, all three boys went in for well checks. I sent them pictures. I sent them updates on what was happening, what vaccines they got, like all the different things. Sometimes they'll come with us to the appointments, but that's dropped off. It's kind of like when they're feeling like they want to. Tomorrow we are doing, we are supervising a visit with one of our guys, grandma. And so we're still fostering

44:10that in hopes to still foster that after the adoption is finalized. Cause we've deemed that she's the safe individual around him. We do kind of go out of our way to make sure that they have relationships with the people that we choose, but we're also deliberate. There's a couple of people that we've decided that they're not safe or not good because there's a lot of behaviors or something afterwards for the kids. So we just try to pick and choose based on what feels like love.

44:40And sometimes love means boundaries because you need to protect the child and it protects them from doing something that would have repercussions about their ability to maintain relationships after. And so sometimes love is boundaries. Sometimes love is driving for a visit, even though there's not a case aid to do it. Yeah. We've driven a long way sometimes. So yeah. And and it's a case by case basis. And I think you just have to kind of have a guiding principle,

45:12I guess. Like we just want to, you know, we just ask ourselves what is love and we try to do that. We don't always do it perfectly. Nope. Sometimes we kind of grumble underneath our breath about it, but we, we do, we, we try best. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. So what are some of the different ways that you've tried to educate friends and family about adoption, especially with all of these different ways of building your family, how you've adopted domestic infant adoption,

45:45and foster care and foster to adopt. Those are such different worlds, right? And so how have you addressed that with friends and family who might not understand? First, we have a lot of patients with the really stupid questions. Like, do they miss their real mom? Do they know that you're not their real mom? If I tell them they're adopted, do they know that? Like just things strangers have asked are well-meaning people where we understand where they're coming from is just, they don't know

46:18and I can talk to them, right? So once we get past the, I'm going to be offended at the questions phase. We've done our best to build a lot of empathy because there is a lot of upfront prejudice against birth parents that they're in terrible situations and they couldn't take care of their kids that it's their fault because they're addicted to drugs or whatever it is. And so trying to be an advocate for birth parents and decisions that they made is an important part to us. It's funny,

46:54because I feel like advocating, in order to advocate for foster care, advocate for adoption, you have to advocate for compassion, empathy for those who choose the place or for those who are in a situation where they can't care for their own. So I guess that's how we kind of approach it is we try to always like take a step back and say, oh, you know, we bringing the backstory and kind of bringing it home to they are doing the best they can. And, you know, we're just glad to help

47:30be part of the system that can help them learn, help them cope, learn new life skills. So we usually try to deflect to to compassionate everything. Melissa said it much more helpful than I just tried to fumble through. No, I think it kind of what you were just saying made me reflect back on what you said earlier, where it was like, these kids, and ultimately, their biological parents just need love. And whether that's for a day, or for 16 months, or for 18 years, they need love that

48:04probably hasn't been in their life the way that it could be right. I love that you kind of go back to empathy and just focus on Hey, you know what? I can't control the decisions they've made, or the decisions they're making, but I can control the way that I treat them and the love that I give to to this person. Yeah, the way I think about them, the way I perceive them. I think all kind of begins there. Another thing I feel like I explained a lot is domestic adoption is not better than

48:35foster care adoption, that there is trauma for all five of them, that we've had to take a lot of parenting classes. And if I could go back, that's the one thing I would have changed before we did our domestic adoption, is to be much more trauma informed than I was. I was somehow blissful that there would be no trauma since it was at birth, and they won't remember it. And that is wrong.

49:05That is so wrong. But I do think we've done a lot of preparation to this point, that we are learning how to handle things much better than we have. Because we understand it better. We're still like literally, I have foster care, foster parent college classes on, okay, this thing is coming up, and I don't know how to handle it. And funny enough, most of my trauma classes have been for the twins and not for the foster boys. And I was surprised by that. And

49:39then I embraced it. And now things are in a much better place as I've like figured out how to do that. That's great. Yeah, education is really key. Well, we have just a few more questions before we wrap up. Many of the listeners that listened to our podcasts are contemplating, or are just starting looking at foster care. You talked a little bit about what you would do differently, kind of looking back. But is there anything else maybe looking at the very beginning of your journey in foster care that you wish you had known in the very beginning? I know that it's a this process of

50:11becoming more and more educated. But what maybe advice would you give those that are just starting that journey? I feel like something that was very, that worked. And I think one of the reasons we were able to handle reunification, even though it was very difficult, is that we did not go in with any expectations. If you go in expecting to adopt, then reunification can destroy you. And that's happened to a couple of our friends where they fostered one reunification, they were done. They

50:45couldn't do it anymore. So I think going in with no expectations helps things a little bit more. And we both have been in therapy for the last couple of years, and learning how to cope with emotions, how to cope with change, because there's a lot like our dumpster fire cases will change daily. And you can't give too much into them, or let it affect your daily life. And so like learning

51:19how to cope. So I think that helped a lot too. I think education is important. I think learning to manage your own mind is probably the most important part. You can't control other people, and you can't like guess their motives or guess what's going to happen. I think that's the hardest part about it is you have to be okay not knowing what's going on. And so it's really you just have

51:51to love each day as it comes and feeling to embrace the hard. And I think that's the biggest thing. Our agency, they asked us why we were wanting to foster, like, oh, well, we want to foster adopt. And all of a sudden, foster to adopt was like the easiest thing. It happens all the time. And that's what we were told. And all of our cases would go straight from foster to adoption. It was

52:21like these, and then looking back, like these overly simplistic, and he's trying to grow a network of foster parents. So I understand where he's coming from, but I definitely entered into foster care believing like this is going to be a, you know, case closed in like six months, you know, like, and like, is this the way he talked about it? I think that's the very rare exception. Expect that you won't know what's going to happen and just going to have to

52:52take one day as it comes. Flexibility is the key to air power. Being comfortable with ambiguity and just being okay to walk into the dark. Yeah. Know that you won't know. I feel like there was a lot of mind management and coping mechanisms being foster parents, because when people get scared or out of control, they will turn on those closest to them or things

53:26people they feel like they can hurt. There have been times in court that we have been, our names have been dragged in the mud, or there's been untruthings said, or things that we've been accused of at visits despite our best intentions, right? And learning that healthy ways to handle those situations that are logical, that bring closure to everybody and not being defensive or offended. You guys have incredible mindsets. My goodness. I'm very impressed. It's all that

54:01life. Therapy. Well, we might need to get your therapist's information. No, I'm just kidding. All right. Is there anything else that you guys want to talk about? It's a viable way to grow your family either way. And it's all hard, but it's so, so worth it. I feel like we made it sound really hard. That's because it is. I mean, it is. I would 100% do it over again, even knowing what I know. I'd rather come to a situation knowing that it's going to be hard and it's going to be

54:33challenging. And that's why at the end of the day, you feel like you've done something worthwhile. It's true. It feels really worthwhile. And we are both invigorated and fulfilled for sure. And I feel like you're doing something good. Making an actual difference. So go adoption. Oh guys, thank you so much for joining us. I love how authentically you painted the picture. And I think that that's what we all need to hear, right? We need to know that there are beautiful

55:07things that can happen, but that at times and most of the time it takes a lot of hard work and kind of the blood, sweat and tears of difficult moments, right? Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it. And yeah, we just love you guys. Thank you. Oh man. You keep doing what you're doing. Right. Thank you.

55:46Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. And a big thank you to our friends, Melissa and Joseph, for talking with us and sharing their story. We loved hearing from them. I thought there were so many helpful things that they talked about. Something we get asked about a lot and that we think about a lot is how to handle gift giving with different levels of openness, right? And I loved hearing their thoughts on that and how they address that with their family dynamic. I also really appreciated hearing their thoughts on the

56:17importance of being trauma informed as adoptive parents and knowing how to help our kids cope with the trauma that comes with being adopted. Yeah. One thing that really stood out to me and that I appreciated was how they advocated for biological parents in some of the foster situations that they talk about. Just, you know, no one's perfect and being patient and understanding and empathetic in ways that we can be to these parents, especially in the foster care situation,

56:53knowing that they love their kids and they might not be in the best spot right now, but giving them the benefit of the doubt and advocating for the biological parents. Also, I think that that's something that is going to stick with me from this episode. Yeah, I love that too. Again, a huge thanks to Melissa and Joseph for sharing with us on this episode and to each of you. Thank you for being our listeners. We're so grateful that we get to be in this space and to help different voices in

57:25the adoption community be heard. And we've mentioned this before, but all along the way, we felt like we're learning a lot as we go through this and we hope that that's your experience as well. Thanks so much for being here and we'll be back next week.

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