Featuring This is the Quarry: Mining Hope in My Quest for Motherhood

The journey to build a family though adoption is filled with ups and downs. As families go through the home study process, their social workers do their best to prepare them for what they may face along the way. At that early stage in the adoption process, it can be difficult to fully grasp exactly what they will go through in the coming years. At ACFB, we recognize the value of peer support. Even with the guidance of experienced adoption professionals, sometimes what can help adoptive families most is listening to the stories of families who have gone through the same journey.

Today we are sharing the words of Elaine, a single mother who adopted her daughter with ACFB. Throughout her adoption experience, Elaine kept a personal blog, This is the Quarry: Mining Hope in My Quest for Motherhood. Through the excitement of completing her home study, to the heartbreak of birth mothers having a change of heart, to the challenge of holding her joy and an expectant mother’s grief at the same time, Elaine shares some of the most intimate and emotional experiences of her life. The honesty and transparency in her writing gives readers a glimpse at what it means to adopt a child. Her story is one of many which show that although adoption is unpredictable, emotional, and at times heartbreaking, so much healing and love can be found when you welcome your child home.

Below is an excerpt from one of her posts, “Can’t Bear to Watch, Can’t Look Away”
Many children placed through ACFB grow up knowing their birth siblings. Pictured here is baby Alivia with her big brother Alister. Alister was excited to become a big brother from the moment he was told his mother was pregnant. Because of open adoption, Alister has been able to meet his little sister and will be a part of her life forever.
“As I watched the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, I couldn’t help but feel as if I were no different from the wives of the ruling class, whose infertility has led them down the path of the ritualized, government-sanctioned theft of other women’s children. While I know, rationally, that it’s not exactly the same, this has by far been the hardest part of my adoption journey: my greatest joy is going to come as a direct result of someone else’s immense sadness, someone else’s lack of options.

And yet, I don’t walk away from adoption. As a result of the imperfect world in which we currently live, it is necessary to have an ethical adoption system in place. The women who find themselves in the position of making an adoption plan must feel confident, comfortable, and at peace with their choice of family to parent their child. If an expectant mother chooses me, she has decided that I’m the best mom for her child in a situation where she, for whatever reason, cannot be. Too many people erroneously see adoption as an act of charity, but that cannot be farther from the truth. I’m the one who will owe my child’s birth mother an enormous debt of gratitude; I’m the one who will owe her child complete and emphatic devotion. She will be entrusting me with the most divinely precious life, and it is I who will forever be indebted to her.”

To read more about Elaine’s adoption journey, visit her blog This is the Quarry: Mining Hope in My Quest for Motherhood by clicking here.