May 23, 2018
Feeling Unsure? You’re Already Ready To Adopt
Choosing to adopt is a massive decision. It’s life-altering in every way, and we would never underplay the magnitude of moving forward with this powerful process.
As adoption professionals, we talk to people all day, every day about what it means to choose adoption. We’ve discussed every possible fear an aspiring adoptive parent could have, including:
Do I make enough money?
Is it okay that I will be a single parent?
Will people want to adopt to a same-sex couple?
Will I be able to parent a child of another race?
Is this the right time?
Should I be able to adopt if I have debt?
What if I’m not ready?
The answer we always come back to is, “if you’re here, you’re ready.” Because the process of adoption doesn’t start with your first meeting with an adoption agency, or your homestudy, or the match, or when you pay the fee.
It starts when you decide you want to be a parent.
People have children biologically all the time with loads of debt, or before they planned, or older than planned, or single, or in multi-racial relationships, or at the worst time they could have imagined, or before they’ve reached their preferred income bracket. Although the process for bringing a child into your life is different when you adopt, the nerves, the fear, and the interminable “what if’s” are not.
What children need most are people who love them.
Parents — one or two, gay or straight, colors and creeds of all kinds — who have chosen to raise, support, and nurture their growth. Parents who have chosen the messy, challenging, gratifying, stressful, beautiful, life-changing journey parenting is. And when you’ve decided that parenting is important to you, that it is something you want and need to do with your life, then you’ve taken the first and most important step. The rest will come. Either spontaneously or totally as planned (although likely not — does it ever?!), smoothly or with many bumps in the road, and definitely with surprises at every turn.
Trust that you will never be ready, and that you already are ready. And then give it everything you’ve got.
