2.5 Years as Adoptive Parents — Our Biggest Takeaways

It’s hard to believe she’s been with us almost as long as she was in her first home, there is something that feels so monumental of crossing that threshold between longer there than with us and moving into the future.

I’ve heard from so many adoptive families that have come before us that every season is a different conversation, different feelings, different dynamics. All of it melding together to create a hard fought, vibrant life. We respect the fact that it was never meant to be this way and honor and take very seriously the journey of our family and the hearts and minds we’ve been given to help grow and nurture.

And in so many ways both of our kids are thriving. They started Kindergarten in August and in their own unique ways have grown into actual kids, not littles anymore, learned things together and individual things that interest them, started learning how to navigate hard days and emotions and friendships. What a beautiful road we get to walk beside them, in the good moments and the hard. And yet… in the road we’ve been blessed with there are unique milestones we have to face.

1. Growth in compassion.

I’m not sure what I thought no really, whatever timelines I expected, imagined or the like were like most of life — completely unreliable — someones background really does set the tone for so much of life. It’s true no matter your background, but regardless of where you’ve come through or what you’ve been there is a commonality among us = we’ve all been through really tough things and it’s a place we can breed trust and relationship from. In the compassion blossoms the community.

2. Exhaustion and the intentionality of health rhythms.

Being a parent in general is exhausting, worthwhile and beautiful but exhausting. However, there is so much we don’t know about our daughter’s first year, it’s like fumbling around in the dark just hoping you flip on the light switch. It creates a lot of stretching in patience and grace and also being completely worn out. A year into this journey, my husband didn’t know how to feel revived trying to help this little kid navigate it all and not feel completely spent. Now 2.5 years in and we’ve started to feel in a rhythm — so much intentionality still in the unknown but healthier rhythms at large for our family. This really isn’t that unique to all families, just a few more blind spots than normal to navigate.

3. Unique conversations and a lot of dead ends.

Prepare for the unexpected. Life is full of twists and turns, but as adoptive parents with one child biological and one child adopted 4 months apart in age it can breed really interesting conversation in our home. If we had adopted our daughter as a baby it would probably have still been this way, but our son had three years in our home before his sister came along. They are both really aware of it but without a lot of logic to help the conversation along. It’s full of rough edges and a lot of u-turns. We’re learning to embrace it rather than be scared of it.

If I’m being honest the first year, year and a half those conversations were incredibly anxiety inducing because I didn’t know what was going to happen. Now they feel as normal as they can be and although atypical we can typically get to the other side rather un-phased and glad we have open conversations in our family where everyone feels safe. It’s just not a smooth road getting to that point. Take your time.

Navigating life is a crazy incredible exhausting hopeful exciting road, I just hope and pray that both our kids can look back one day and be honest that we didn’t get it right all the time, but that we tried to get a little closer, a little more patient, a little more joyful each day!