Oh, I post this next session with chest clutching appreciation for messy beautiful stories. This family came into my life a couple of years ago when I did a giveaway for adoptive families. Their experience moved me then- having gone to the hospital to meet their new little girl, only to have to leave her there with the birth mother until the mother changed her mind again three months later and let them bring her home.
Two weeks ago one of their dear friends contacted me and wanted to gift them with a session because they had just adopted their second baby, a little boy! I am fascinated with the way adoption takes different shapes and follows different methods. Most stories I’ve heard may have similar threads to them but the overall tapestry of each dances to its own rhythm. Such is the case in this family, who unexpectedly found themselves with a new baby boy, the biological brother of their daughter, in their arms.
Emily shared the birth mom’s story with me, the desperate measures the mother had been willing to take, and her own determination to fold her daughter’s brother into their family. She noted that we hardly know the circumstances some people are living in, the choices people are facing in our own backyards and across the bay. When I shared a first photo from our session with her that day she said “When I see this picture you too- my heart leaps thinking of EC. The gift her birth mother gave her of a brother. The shame that woman carries. All the bad choices she made. But two very good ones. That matter over and over again. That child (my daughter) looks over at her beloved brother and little does she even know of that woman. Or of the significance of this brother and that gift. She knows she’s adopted. And do we understand our adoption? Into heirship?”
The little girl looked at me during our session and said “I pwayed for a brudder because I didn’t have one!” Yes, and amen sweet girl. And just like her mom I wonder if we can can comprehend the way earthly adoption is just a shadow of the one offered to us.
