Grief and loss

A timeline of one youth’s life from adoption, through foster care, and into independence, as told to Mary Caros.

Author’s note: This account started out as an interview with a youth as a way to allow her to give voice to her life experience. There is more to this story—and more to all of our life histories— than one person’s subjective experience. Our recollection of life events are often affected by the time and space in which we remember them. This young woman may tell her story quite differently five years from now.

Our adoption journey started in 1998. We chose domestic adoption for a number of reasons, including wanting a newborn, and the possibility of openness with a birth family. We were prepared to wait, knowing we had no control over when, or even if, we would be chosen.

We did all the paperwork and education sessions, and by March 1999, our homestudy was ready. We jumped into the pool of waiting families and prepared to wait.

Colleen and her husband of 17 years, Jussi, live on Vancouver Island. Colleen, a former foster parent for over 20 years, also has three grown children and three grandkids. Her oldest daughter was a neighborhood kid that came for the weekend and stayed for 28 years, according to Colleen. “We have no legal paperwork, but she’s not any less ours,” she adds.

As a mother of two adopted adult children, I had been going to the Forget Me Not Family Society (FMNFS) meetings in Cloverdale for over a year, and I thought I knew about Moms (birthmoms) and adoptees. My sister Bernadette was forced to give her baby to what society told her was a “better family” because she was given no support to keep her precious little newborn.

Anne Melcombe and Kirsty Stormer are adoption recruitment workers for Wendy’s Wonderful Kids.A North America-wide program, WWK was started by the Dave Thomas Foundation to find homes for waiting children and is administered in BC by AFABC. Anne and Kirsty do child-specific adoption recruitment; they match families to the needs of specific waiting children.

The following story is far from typical—most BC families that adopt from the US have a much easier experience. This story speaks to the immense strength of the desire to become parents. Despite the enormous difficulty of their journey, the couple we feature here persevered. That is a characteristic of many adoptive families—it is a quality that brings untold numbers of parents and children together.

Deciding to start a family took Jane Bartlett and Linda Coe (names have been changed) on one of the most difficult adoption journeys imaginable.

A primer for parents and parents-to-be

I’ve read about using lifebooks to help adopted children make sense of their lives. Why use lifebooks with children before they’re adopted?

In the 24th of our series, our mom of three kids--Emily, Grant and Lynn--has made her decision not to adopt the unborn child of Emily’s birthmom. Since then things have gone very silent, and she’s wondering what on earth is happening.

It’s been two months since that first phone call from the adoption agency letting us know that Alexa was pregnant and she wanted us to adopt her new baby. We were told her due date was late May or early June and, since she hadn’t had any prenatal care, that was just an estimate.

Adoptive mom Carol Bolton describes how she struggled but succeeded in developing an attachment relationship with one of her newly-adopted sons.

Last year, we adopted our two sons. Though siblings, the boys had been placed in different foster homes and barely knew each other.

David, aged two, was placed five days after birth with foster parents who were very experienced and knew how to transition a child to a new family. David moved in with us first and the process went very smoothly.

There are still many myths and much misinformation about birth parents. Though the adoption community may be better educated than the general public, we also still have much to learn.

A year-long project, "Safeguarding the Rights and Well being of Birth Parents," by the US-based Evan B Donaldson Institute for Adoption, has much to teach us about today’s birth parents. Though the study focuses on the United States, many of the findings are relevant to the Canadian adoption community. In this article, we focus on some of the major points in the report.