Adoption Outreach

So I've been thinking lately that we need to step it up a bit and do some more adoption outreach. I've been subbing a lot this past week, and yesterday I had an "aha moment" when I was at a local middle school. In an attempt to encourage and inspire the youngsters, this particular school reads inspirational quotes over the PA system every morning. The topic for yesterday was hopelessness. As they asked, "Have you ever felt hopeless and like there was a problem in your life that had no solution?" I had the thought that hopeless is exactly how I've been feeling about adoption lately. The friendly PA system voice went on to say that when you are feeling hopeless, the very best thing you can do is take action. She read the following quote:

"Action is the antidote to despair."
~Joan Baez

I'll be honest, at the time I was listening to this, I was internally smirking a bit. I was thinking that this all sounds really good in theory, but that it's not always easy to take action when you truly feel hopeless. Then I was talking to my friend, Heather on Facebook, and she mentioned that there is a free web site where you can post your adoption profile. After looking around the site a bit, I think it's a really good idea. This has also gotten me thinking about other proactive things we might be able to do while we wait.

The bottom line is that we don't know how we will be matched with our birth family. As so many of the blog stories I follow have shown, anything can happen at any time. While I love our agency and feel very comfortable with them, they are very small, which is actually one thing I like about them. But--that, coupled with the fact that they provide social services, also means they don't do outreach of any kind. Birth families must come to them before they will have a chance of getting to us. For a long time, I sort of felt we should take a hands-off approach to this whole aspect of the process, but the more I think about it, the more I think maybe it's time to change that thought. I don't necessarily think letting fate take it's course means we should sit around and wait for someone to magically bump into us. I don't think there's anything wrong with us doing a little bit of mouth opening of our own, in a manner that feels comfortable to us.

I don't exactly know what this will entail, Michael and I will need to talk it over and decide what and how much we feel comfortable with. I certainly don't want to cross that line into a place where I feel like we're "advertising" ourselves, because that's a thought that's always made me feel a little unsettled. As with everything adoption, everyone has their own comfort/acceptance level with how, when, and how much they put themselves out there, so to speak. We will have to figure out what ours should be, but I'm confident in our ability to do that. What I do know is that I now--at long last--feel that I may be regaining a small amount of hope again. I have been through some of my lowest lows of this entire experience these past several weeks, and I am finally beginning to break free. Finally beginning to feel like me again.

As an extra (uplifting) aside, I also found the following quotes about taking action that I really enjoyed:

"You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone,
which can become a watered-down, occasional hope
that you'll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless."
~Caroline Myss

Know Action, Know Satisfaction.
No Action, No Satisfaction
~Victor Starfish

"Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results."
~Denis Waitely