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Can I share with you one of my greatest failings as a mom? Those are hard words to write, especially with the intent of hitting the “publish” button when all is said and done. I s t r u g g l e with managing expectations… so much so that it throws off my enjoyment of what actually is because it isn’t what I expected it to be. You can only imagine how painful 2020 has been. 🙂 My hope is that by sharing, you will allow yourself the grace that I so desperately needed as I became a new mom for the first time and still in my daily life now.
In a world that demands instant gratitude and social media moments, it is so easy to get caught up in everyone else’s story. It’s even easier to compare your own and feel the pressure to keep up or the guilt when you don’t.
Let me encourage you with this.
This is YOUR story. Enjoy it for exactly what it is… yours.
This little corner of the internet is dedicated to you. We want to do everything we can to help you tell YOUR STORY well. We have talked about the importance of telling your story, ways you can share and preserve your story, and given pointers on how to make an international adoption trip a little less daunting. We’ve shared our own adoption stories and corresponding videos and the gear that we used to capture them. What we haven’t done is talked about the emotions that were unfolding behind the scenes as we captured it all.
The story you are living isn’t the story of your parent’s expectations for what your life should look like… or that of your adoptive moms group… or your friends who are all having babies at the same time… or even that story that you have built up in your head of what your life is “supposed to look like”. This is your ACTUAL STORY. And as much as we want to give you the tools you need to capture it well, I want you to first remember this.
This is YOUR story. Allow yourself the grace to be present and live it well.
The tension of “this is what your life should look like” vs. my actual life had never been more clear to me than on our first adoption trip to meet our son. I had trudged through 2 heartbreaking losses as we said goodbye to babies that we never had the privilege of meeting. Years (and mountains of paperwork) later, we were elated to be meeting our two year old son for the first time in a hotel room in Thailand. Ecstatic!
I had read all of the books. I had done all of research. I was part of an incredibly supportive mom’s group for adoptive kids from Thailand. I had planned every excursion, knew our schedule, and prepared myself for the obvious emotions that I would be feeling the moment we met our son for the first time and the weeks that would follow.
Years of expectations had built up to these two beautiful weeks that we would be spending in absolute paradise meeting this amazing child.
And that’s where I fell apart.
I had spent so much time building up these expectations and putting so much pressure on myself that by the time the actual story started to unfold, I didn’t allow myself the grace I needed to cope with reality.
Reality is so much more beautiful when you don’t have the pressure of what you thought life would look like weighing it down.
I had placed this pressure on myself (no one else’s fault) of everything we could fit in to our trip to be “good adoptive parents” and take in all of the culture and experiences we could. Fun fact : Thailand is so unbearably hot and humid that sane people don’t go outside during the warmest parts of the day. Expectations broken.
I knew exactly how I would feel the moment we met our son for the first time after years of waiting to be a family. Fun fact : Aaron was living in a “Disney-like” elated/teary-eyed state while I sat there unable to muster up all the feelings. Expectations broken.
I prepared myself for a child who couldn’t easily attach to his new parents. Fun fact : Sometimes parents are the ones who don’t attach well (hand up over here). Expectations broken.
Days in to what should have in my mind been this beautiful emotional high and I was dragging, depressed, and I didn’t know how to resurface.
Please hear my heart in this and know that it isn’t to discourage you, whatever story is unfolding in front of you right now. My point would be this… allow yourself the grace to be you. Wallow in every beautiful moment that is YOUR story (even the ones that don’t feel very beautiful). Manage your expectations and realize that reality is rarely what we imagine it to be, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find beauty in it for exactly what it is… yours.
A few points of encouragement for you…
1. Manage your expectations. Know that as much as you research whatever is coming your way, chances are, it won’t happen exactly as you expect. That’s not a bad thing. Enjoy it.
2. Be flexible. Especially in the adoption world, timelines change. In the world we live in, all bets are off regarding travel and regulations. You don’t know how your child will react to having their world flipped upside down. You may experience illness while you are away. The more flexible you can allow yourself to be, the better.
3. Be present. Through joy and sadness, laughter and tears, allow yourself to be present through it all. Don’t wish it away as these moments aren’t coming back.
4. Give yourself grace. I still need to do this. Your story doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. That is part of what makes it so beautiful. Embrace those moments and the emotions that surround them… even when they don’t look anything like you had thought they would.
As you prepare for whatever is coming next in your journey, know that this is about you and your family. Do your best to shut out pressures that would pull you away from what you know in your heart is best. This includes well-meaning intentions from family and friends, comments from your support community, and that pesky little voice inside your head that tells you that this isn’t going according to plan.
Live YOUR story.
And we’ll do our best to help you tell it well.
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