Choosing adoption for your child is a profound and parental decision that reflects deep love and concern for your child’s future. While it can be an incredibly emotionally charged process, it’s important to remember that it is your choice and that it can be quite empowering. There are many ways to move forward positively after a decision to move forward with adoption is made. At Open Arms, we understand the complexities and emotions involved in this process and are here to help you navigate your journey. This blog will explore how birth parents can manage the bittersweet set of emotions that can occur early after making an adoption plan. We all manage grief and loss differently and there is no right or wrong way.
Recognizing the Parental Nature of Your Choice
Choosing adoption is a courageous and thoughtful decision that prioritizes the well-being of your child. It’s important to recognize the strength it takes to make such a choice and to understand that it reflects deep care and love for your child’s future. It is an option that is considered by people with enormously high parental standards. Embracing this decision means acknowledging that your child’s needs come before your own. Only you get to decide what is in your child’s best interest.
Understanding the Long-Term Benefits
Adoption can provide long-term benefits for both your child and you. For the child, it offers the chance to grow up in a stable, loving environment with parents who are prepared at this very minute to provide for their needs. For you it can be empowering to know that your hopes and dreams for your child and for yourself are within your control to ensure they happen. Understanding long-term benefits can help you with the complexity of emotion you may experience. Reminding yourself you are acting in the best interests of your child and that your decision is deeply parental.
Navigating Post-Adoption Emotions
Acknowledging Your Feelings
After the adoption, it’s normal to experience a range of emotions, including grief, sadness, perhaps relief, or second guessing yourself. Grief is such a powerful and painful feeling that it can be confused with regret. Acknowledging these feelings is an important part of the process. It’s okay to feel a mix of emotions, and it’s important to give yourself permission to experience them without judgment.
At Open Arms, we recognize the emotional complexity of adoption and are here to support you as you navigate these feelings. If reading is your thing, there are wonderful books about grief and loss as it relates to adoption and many other things in life. As is common, a current life experience can bring up past loss, trauma, and other grief. We can also connect you with ongoing counseling services to help you.
Maintaining a Connection with the Adoptive Family or Not
Understanding Open and Semi-Open Adoptions
All adoptive families that work with Open Arms believe in the benefits of Open Adoption. Whether an adoption is open, or the degree to which it is open, is your decision to make and only your decision. You may wish to choose the adoptive family from reading about them in profile books they have prepared that are intended to help you know who they are through pictures and writings about themselves. If you choose adoption you may feel too much grief in the beginning to sort out what you want to do in terms of having an open adoption. That is okay. You may only want pictures and letters from the adoptive family at first. You may need to disappear and go inward for a period of time. You may also know right away that you want to schedule a visit and then cancel at the last minute because it feels too hard that day. All of this is normal human behavior. The type of adoption you ultimately have is your choice and not anyone else’s and like any other relationship in life, may look different at different times in life. Open Arms will help you understand what open adoption looks like as soon as we connect as part of helping you in your decision making process. Open Arms will also always be available to you to navigate the process over time. We know life is constantly changing.
Final Thoughts
Considering making an adoption plan for your child is a parental decision and one only you have the power to make. Open Arms is here to educate you about what adoption is and what it isn’t, we are here to help you through every step of the process and to support you as you move forward in whatever you choose.
If you have questions about adoption or find yourself struggling with the process, reaching out to Open Arms Adoption can offer education and support. Open Arms is available 24/7 and can provide you with resources and answer your questions. You can contact Open Arms Adoption by phone at 1-888-OPENARMS. You also can text them at 267-961-2720.
