Sunday 2 June 2013

One Year: Adoption Order: Goodbye For Now!

A week, or so ago,  we had a very special and memorable occasion.  It was the Pronouncement Hearing at the Family Court for Raina's Adoption Order.  It happened to fall on the same day as the 12 month anniversary of the day we first met her...we can read the blog from that day and it brings those emotions flooding back to us. The Social Workers, Momma and I were crying tears of joy as we became an official family.

So we are signing off from this blog for now...we have been very poor at blogging updates; but actually we never intended for this to be a blow-by-blow, daily or weekly account of our family life....

When we do look back over the last year; our first as a Family, we simply cannot describe the rollercoaster that has been our lives.

That little girl, who was just two years old when we first heard about her in 2011; saw her in a photograph in 2012 and finally met last May.  That little girl who we had imagined walking around our home, sleeping in our home, calling us Mummy and Momma.  That girl, is now officially our daughter, we share the same surname and we are a Family.

We have wiped her tears; blood, vomit etc; mopped her brow in the midst of a fever; fed her; held her when she's been scared; disciplined her when she's tested our boundaries; taught her new words and her alphabet; watched her grow out of her clothes and laughed together when she's made a joke.

We love her. We are still getting to know her and she is learning to trust us.  She feels anxious when one, or both of us are seperated from her.  This will be a theme for our lives together, as I am sure it is for all adopted children and their adoptive families.  She is growing up; she's almost four years old now.  She's learning new things everyday and we feel priviledged and blessed to be witness to this.  Integrated and embedded within all of this is her adopted status and each day we help her to make sense of this of her her story.  It would be so easy to slip this under the emotional carpet, but never would this be fair to our daughter.

We have travlled one heck of an emotional journey and made some great new friends through the process.  It's helped us both to learn more about ourselves and being parents has bestowed upon us both the greatest sense of purpose. We don't expect this to be easy; by definition the world of adoption is hard.  We don't know what kind of people we, or Raina will grow to become but we will always know that we care, protect and nurture her and that we are a Family.

To anyone considering adoption and wondering whether it could happen for them: Believe me; it can.