June 18 2013

The night that my friend Rachelle invited me to the adoption support meeting at a local church I was able to re-connect with a couple I knew in high school.  They have adopted their daughter through the ministry, and are foster parents.  We went to their home last night to visit and talk about adoption.  It basically became a venting session about the ministry process.  It was nice to know that we have similar frustrations, even though our situations are very different (They foster/adopt addicted babies, and we're looking at old child adoption). To hear about their experiences with the same social worker and contacts that we have, as well as how they deal with them, was great.  Their biggest piece of advice was Pray and Push.  Basically keep God in the mix, and keep checking in with the social worker, to make sure your file keeps going.  If we feel that God wants something a certain way, we shouldn't let anything stand in the way because the social workers, or adoption board or whomever is making it difficult.  They wrote letters 12 times to a specific board before their request was granted.  That is persistence.

Just sent a "touch base" email to our Social Worker this morning (Haven't talked to her in almost three weeks, and I just wanted to make sure we're not forgotten) and I also emailed a lady from the AFABC about the AEP course, because she'd said the course would be added to the webpage a couple weeks ago and it hasn't been yet. 

Email sent:
I just wanted to send you a note to touch base. 

I've spoken to the education supervisor from the AFABC and now know the dates for the AEP courses in the fall - we're waiting for the webpage to be updated so we can sign up for the September course.

I thought I'd send you an update of the research we've collected and are utilizing. I attached it separately so it should be easier to print out if you have a hard copy file for us :)

I also attached the body of an email from Andrea Chatwin with her response to questions regarding birth order and sibling attachment.

Please let us know if there is a certain topic you think we should look into further, or if you know of any other resources that may be beneficial for us.

Thanks for putting up with me!

ESal and Cal

The research I attached to the email is a three page word document documenting the books, articles, interviews, radio broadcasts, courses, etc. that we've been collecting. Each time I get a new bit of information I add it to the word document, so that I can go back and reference the information any time I need it.

On a completely unrelated adoption wise note, I was having a rough night last night.  I've always felt that I am a friendly person, and that I've had a good group of friends, but last night I was struck with a really lonely feeling.  I still can't really explain it, nor has it fully gone away.