Call me Naomi. My husband and I live in a small diverse suburb of New York where we have a beautiful daughter who is almost three years old and is usually busy tearing up our house. Otherwise, she’s busy tearing up other people’s houses. We are fun guests to have over.

Our adoption journey started about three years ago, after suffering a miscarriage of a much-wanted pregnancy. After waiting the prescribed time, and pursuing the usual fertility routes, we sat with a Reproductive Endocrinologist who, holding our test results, half chuckled to himself, shook his head and said that he couldn’t quite figure out how we had managed to get pregnant in the first place. It was horrible but it was good closure at the time.

Even before we got married we had talked about adopting. I think for us, having already been in that mind-set, we were able to make an easy transition. We looked into different routes of adopting and came close to going internationally via Guatemala, but then decided on another path. Our daughter came to us through the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) – also known as the foster care system. She was just a bit over a year when she came to us, and was officially adopted at about 2 ½.

Jewish Adoption is both different and similar to Generic Adoption just like Adoptive Parenting is both different and similar to Regular Parenting. Although we are Orthodox Jews, my husband and I were both raised Conservative, and I’ve worked with all movements as a Jewish Educator. Our extended family runs the gamut from non-Jewish to Ultra-Orthodox, with everything in between. Our daughter will grow up as a minority within a minority within a minority. She is Jewish, Adopted, and Black.

If you recognize my story, please don’t post any identifying information for (hopefully) obvious reasons. Okay, okay, I’m paranoid. I’m one of those parents who doesn’t let their kid be photographed for the town newspaper. What else is new?

I entered the blogging world by accident about a year ago while looking for support on the internet. I’ve been posting under the name “juliejulie” but I decided for my own blog that it was time to start anew. I hope this blog will be an opportunity to talk about all aspects of being Jewish – any denomination or none at all – and adopting or thinking about adopting. Our religion has been a backbone of our lives, and it thrills me to watch our daughter growing up with traditions that are thousands of years old.

• California
• Looking to adopt?
• Pregnant?