Support group #2. There was no one our age. Everyone was 40+ though it sounds like Jeff and I have been married longer then some of them have known each other. The topic was Birthparent letters. I was expecting it to be a family that had recently adopted. Not sure that I would have gone otherwise. I think rather then being helpful it put doubt in my mind. I like our book but have never been too confident with the letter. We purposefully left it brief as we felt the subsequent pages in our book were much better. Well as promised in a much earlier post here is our Dear Birthparent letter:
Hello,
Our names are *our names*! Thank you for taking the time to read our book and we hope that in the next few pages you will get to know us better. We cannot imagine how difficult this journey has been for you but respect that you are making a decision that is best for you and your baby. This book was a great deal of fun to put together but also a little strange because we dont typically write about ourselves.
Early in our dating relationship we talked about having a family. Soon after we were married, we began trying to conceive a child but learned we could not. We always knew we wanted to adopt children so we then turned to adoption.
As we have learned more about the adoption process we have grown to have an appreciation for open adoptions. We would hope to work with our future birth parents to establish an open adoption plan that works for both of our families.
Our family is very important to us and will be a big part of our child's life. Because of this we invited our parents and brother/sisters to each take a page and introduce themselves to you. Our baby will be the first Grandchild on both sides so this process has made both of our parents very excited.
We are very excited to be future parents and share all of our hobbies and interests with them. We also look forward to learning from them and seeing life through new eyes. We plan to speak openly about adoption and believe that he/she should always know and feel your love and we will do everything we can to make sure of that.
~Our Names~
On the next page we have a brief bio of each of us as well as about our relationship accompanied by a photo. Hopefully one day someone will read it and feel a connection. A resource that the agency did provide us (which would have been helpful PRIOR to writing the letter) is: www.achildchosen.com/how-to-write-a-birth-parent-letter/ Also we listened to a clip from This American Life http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/362/got-you-pegged which is in Act Three about a mother reading dear birthparent letters. Hope this helps someone else :)
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