Cherry Blossoms and a Question Answered

We spent some time today at the Cherry Blossom Festival. One of the things that I have come to love about our area is that we’re so close to the festivals and fairs that the city holds. We can often just walk to them as they are only a few blocks away. Today was the Cherry Blossom Festival. In a couple of weeks they’re having a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

A lot of the kids booth – craft stuff and games and such – were run by the local high school students.

Of course, the first thing that we did was crafts.  They had an area to make keychains, pinwheels, sand art, and a couple of other things.

*She is so serious about her projects*

 Next we played games.  There was the cutest game there where you had to throw a ball into a toilet seat and they called it something like, “Potty Ball” or something.  Chloe won two prizes (*not for actually winning, mostly for being so damn cute*).  Here she is showing off her prize snake.

And what day, let alone festival, would be complete without ice cream?  They had wannabe dippin’ dots there.  Not as good as the real thing, but it’s ice cream so of course it’s yummy.

My daughter has always been intrigued by stage performances.  All of the fairs and festivals we go to, the highlight of her day is always watching the people and groups perform.  She always enjoys it whether it’s an old man and his guitar singing country music, or a puppet play about a pig and a woman in another language, or a high school choir singing How Far We’ve Come – it is always hardest to pull her away from here than any other part of the festival.

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And a question.  Metaphase asked why I’m uncomfortable with networking. 

Networking involves the idea of putting your profile out there, and it is to give more exposure.  The idea is that the more exposure you have, the more likely your adoption will happen.  It can involve a website, newspaper ads, sending your profile to numerous places including family and friends, churches, doctors, hospitals, and so on. 

However, I’m not comfortable with the idea of networking.  I am very attached to the idea that I want our child’s firstmom seeking out adoption first, not have people pushing adoption seeking her out.  I would prefer her to have appropriate counseling before even seeing us, before calling us.  I do want her to know about heartbreak and loss that comes with adoption, even with an open adoption.

Back to networking.  I don’t have faith that an expectant mom would be approach appropriately, especially at such an emotional time, and especially if she wants to parent.  I know of someone who was pregnant as a teen, was fully intending on parenting, and attended a school for pregnant teens that had PAP profiles all over the school bulletin boards.  It almost screams out to all of those teen moms that they shouldn’t parent.  I’m not comfortable with that. 

Our family and friends know that we are on a journey to adopt.  I don’t feel like I should send out networking letters to them.  It honestly feels to me like I would be rallying the troops, so to speak.  Again, I’m just not comfortable with it.  They know we wish to adopt and that is enough for me.  I feel like if we sent out a networking letter everyone would be on the “lookout” and I would hate for any unsuspecting expectant mothers to be hit on.  Not that I think my family and friends are rude, but you just never know. 

In the way that we expect an ethical IA adoption to happen without certain tactics used to obtain children from mothers, the same goes for domestic adoption, only it may not happen in the exact same way.

The ideal situation is that adoption is the choice that the mother makes, that is it what she wants and not what she is shamed or pressured into, with full understanding of the consequence of that choice.  I want to rely on my agency, assuming that if an expectant mother is considering adoption she will seek out the information and why she would come to the agency.  I feel like any other way is almost arbitrarily targeting moms, even those who would parent and choose to parent. 

Maybe there is a way to network that isn’t coersive as I view it, but I haven’t found a way that I am personally comfortable with pursuing.