The Adoption Journey Part 2 by Not a Fictional Mum (NFM)

Someone said to me today, “I love the way you’re sharing your adoption journey this time the same way someone who is expecting would.”

And I am. But I hope you know, I want you to know – I share to represent. The thousands. The tens of thousands of other notfictionals before my journey and those that will come after ours.

This isn’t just my journey. But it’s one that’s been walked quietly for too long.

Why the hell should it be?

I won’t ever forget the family-finding process the first time. How something so intimate, so personal felt so inhuman.

The raw brutality of it was us on a website night after night for months looking at profiles of human beings.

I’m sorry I can’t dress that up any other way, that’s how it was. That’s how it is. This was the only way we would find him.

I struggled with this. I still struggle with the thought of one day having to explain to him exactly how we found him. I worry about how that will make him feel.

He’s an individual, a beautiful, unique, secular individual yet there he was thrust in amongst statistics.

This phrase won’t be for everyone.

But it is for me.

This is how I want him to see himself, how I want him to feel.

I want him to know that he was Chosen and when he asks me why

Because… basically you’re amazing

I can’t dress that up any other way either

I’ve chosen to love you

This is the beautiful thing about adoption;

I didn’t give birth and have this child placed upon my chest.

I had to fight to find my child

I made the choice to keep getting back out there to never give up.

You were the choice I made to give my life meaning.

You need to know just how amazing you are.

You need to know how amazing you must have been to have given two grown adults the light they could no longer see.

I used to get into bed and cry myself to sleep.

Not even to sleep, just into some sort of weird state of nothingness.

Before I’d eventually nod off only to wake up and feel it all again.

Last night I got into bed, I snuggled in next to them both and I smiled myself to sleep.

Cheesier than one of those havin-it-large grab bags of cheesy Wotsits, I know, but it’s the gods’ honest truth.

I smiled, I sort of wiggled my toes a bit. Kissed them both and went to sleep.

It took me far too long to get there.

But I did.

I held on with every inch of the soul I had left throughout that long adoption journey and I bloody got there.

A mum.

The struggle that inspired this piece of jewellery, so close to my heart.

Not adoptive

Not real

Not Birth

JUST. MUM

 

Shared with permission from Not a Fictional Mum.  Not a Fictional Mum is the UK’s first – and original – infertility and adoption clothing brand with some truly beautiful pieces.  She also has an amazing blog which is open and honest with tonnes of info – do go and check them out.