My adoption education today, a seven-hour training at MATC (we were a small group, we all wore masks, it’s required by the state to be in person, thanks Wisconsin), started with a review of the basics: Open vs. Closed option. Things like what openness means in different circumstances and why open adoptions have been proved to be healthier for the child, the adoptive parents, and the birth parents. A video or two showing how traumatic it can be for people who grew up with closed adoptions to be missing that part of their history and have to go searching for it later. Open adoption is by far the recommendation in the past decade or so, but that’s a more recent development. For me, it’s old news after researching adoption for years so unless the birth mom wants it closed, I’ll be as open as I can.
But that was the easy stuff. Then the training dove right into the heavy hitters for the rest of the morning: child sexual abuse followed by the impacts of childhood trauma. For example, did you know that one in four girls will experience some form of sexual abuse before they are eighteen? And one in seven boys. It’s a horrifying statistic, that the trainer (and my caseworker) punctuated with her own nightmarish stories from her time in social work.
But they also talked about how to recognize signs of potential sexual abuse and how to help children heal after trauma. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that every parent should have this type of education. I’m lucky that I’ve been forced into it for the adoption process.
In the afternoon, we got the opportunity to hear from two families who’d been through the adoption process with our agency. They told their stories, the twists and turns, the anxieties, the joys, the really tough stuff: waiting, NICUs, failed placements. But ultimately, a child.
The day wrapped up talking about transracial adoption — adoption of a child who’s a different race from your own. I was pleasantly surprised by this part. They didn’t pull punches when talking about white privilege and dove into anti-racist education in a way I didn’t expect from state-mandated training.
It was a good day. Partially because I don’t have any homework or to-dos from it, I didn’t have to lead it myself, and I could basically just show up and listen. Despite the heaviness of some of the topics, it honestly felt like a mental break compared to work lately. We ended at four and I drove the three hours back home to sleep in my own bed again tonight. I’ll slide back into my current normal after today and try to ignore the inevitable long wait and an emotional rollercoaster.
With Love,
Natalie