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Back in the 1990’s I spent some time in Guatemala. Completely surrounded by a foreign culture and a foreign language (both of which became second nature to me while I was living there a while), I was a long way away from home and away from that wonderful lady who gave birth to me and raised me- my mother. I know the 90’s don’t seem like that long ago, but technologically it sure was. Email hadn’t yet become popular, so our main form of correspondence was by snail mail. And when you’re that far away it took about 2 weeks for a letter to travel from one to the other, then 2 more weeks for a reply. International calling still cost us an arm and a leg back then (or… [more]

By the late 1970’s and into the 1980’s, adoption agencies began to experiment with open adoption. The days when adoption was kept a secret began to dissolve and people began to embrace the idea of adoption. As adopted children and biological parents began to show an increased desire to have a relationship, that brought on a desire to have a relationship from the very beginning of the child’s life. Having an open adoption from the very beginning made it possible to avoid the disappointment and difficulty of trying to find one another later on in life. Relationships between adopted children and their biological parents were still very uncommon in the early 1980’s since the practice was viewed as radical, risky, and experimental. Gradually, throughout the decade, seeing that there were a… [more]

Before World War 2 there were few laws regarding adoption. Child trafficking and other problems arose because there were no regulations to keep them in check. War has a way of changing society, though, and after The Good War was over and the baby boom era began, the number of babies born to unwed mothers rose. With the increased number of unwed pregnancies, the government stepped in and created laws to make adoption more possible and desirable. Unexpected pregnancies were still considered something to keep hushed up, so the new laws made it so a biological mother could place her child up for adoption and the records would be sealed up from public access, making it possible for a woman to carry on with her life like nothing had ever… [more]

I’m not really big into roller coaster rides, but there is one particular ride at Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah that I really enjoy. It’s not really a roller coaster since it doesn’t follow a track, but it sure is thrilling. What happens is they strap you into your seat and raise you high high high into the air. Getting raised up and up and up is exciting, watching the people on the ground getting smaller and smaller, because we all knew what soon would be happening. Other than the seat you are sitting on and the bars holding you firmly in place, you have nothing else around you. Your feet dangle lazily beneath you without a floor to rest them on. The concept of the ride is simple. You free fall… [more]

She was the most beautiful little girl I had ever laid my eyes on! There are a lot of things that have made my life as an adoptive father unique. One of those differences that I love is the fact that both of our adoptions were blessed by women who let us be part of the hospital experience. For both adoptions, we were both in the delivery room. I imagine that adoptive parents are the only ones who are able to experience the joy of standing together, hand in hand, over the newborn child while the nurses suck out the baby’s nose, squirt goo into the child’s eyes, poke and prod and do all the things they were trained to do. Usually it’s the father that gets to watch while mom… [more]

I sat typing at the computer, eavesdropping on the conversation that my wife was having with a good friend. Her friend, like my wife and me, has adopted a couple kids. The topic of their conversation was about the hard day that this friend was having. She had a visit with one of the birth parents over a video chat and it hadn’t gone as she was hoping it would. The point of the conversation, though, was the fact that other people were making her feel like she wasn’t allowed to feel upset or frustrated with anything regarding adoption. Not all people do this to us adoptive couples, but there are people that do. A lot of the people who do don’t even realize that they’re doing it. For example, here’s… [more]

When I was soon to get married, one of the leaders in my church sat me down to have a good talk with me. There had been a lot of people like me that he had cornered through the years, especially since I was living in a college town where lots of us youngsters were getting married. And the conversation that we had, I assume he had had 100 times before. Still, he wasn’t the easiest guy to talk to. “Are men and women different?” he asked me. “What do you mean?”I wondered. I assumed there was some sort of trick to the question. Of course I knew that men and women were different. How could someone not think that? “I mean just that. Are men and women different?” he repeated himself. “Uh… yes?” I… [more]

“No, actually,” she said. “That’s the only thing that’s been going right.” The birthmother from our second adoption was talking to her caseworker recently and told her that everything in her life was going crazy. “A lot of case workers have to work out the issues with the adoptive couple,” her caseworker told her. “Don’t worry, you guys will get it figured out.” And that’s when she said that we were the only thing going right at the time. We appreciated that more than she knows- knowing that she thinks we were a little ray of sunshine in her cloudy days. That was a few months ago that she told us that, and now that placement is a little further into our past, her days have been a lot brighter and she has been… [more]

When I was a single college student, being a musician, I used to host what we called “Acoustic Night” once a month at my house. My friends and I would invite a bunch of people over to listen to a variety of people play songs on their acoustic guitars and we’d make an evening of it. It was a lot of fun. One evening, though, after the whole shin-dig was over and I thought everybody had left, I could hear some voices coming from my kitchen. I walked in to find three guys helping themselves to my fridge and my cupboards, preparing themselves some food and laughing about it the whole time they did it. I snatched the sandwich right out… [more]

My heart aches for a friend today. She is having to make a very tough decision, which I’m glad I never had to make. I’ll get back to that in a bit… Last week I was at the bank, opening a new account. I have recently started on the path of being a writer and I needed to have a new bank account in order to keep my author dealings separate from my other banking needs. When the banker started to ask questions about my book, which is about adoption, he said that he and his wife were considering adoption. When I probed a little further into his thoughts, he told me about how his wife hated being pregnant so much that she… [more]