Disclaimer: This blog is not a dramatic cry for help for myself personally – I’m okay. This is written on behalf of all adoptive moms going through tough seasons. It certainly does not apply to every adopted child and adopted mom or every season. My only goal is to help other adoptive mothers in the thick of it not feel so alone, and moreso, to help their friends get one step closer to caring for them. I have many friends who have adopted and need support from those closest to them, and we don’t know how to tell you that. This blog is my attempt to raise their voices (not just mine). This is OUR cry for help.

We know the reasons they hate us.

They were abandoned. They were abused. They were lied to. They weren’t fed. They weren’t loved.

They were thrown away like a piece of trash. Over and over again.

They have EVERY. FRICKIN. REASON to hate us – to not trust us.

Life. Can. Suck.

Sure, it can be great too. But there’s no denying its suckiness at times.

Last year, Brandon and I started planning the kid-free, work-free trip of our dreams to Hawaii for our 5th anniversary and my 30th. We were already exhausted with the business and the whole becoming-parents-overnight thing.

Real talk: while you wouldn’t have seen it on Instagram, I truly felt like I was hanging on by a thread most days.

“Why is she so angry?”

That was the question that constantly went through my mind as I sat in my Race and Ethnic Relations class a decade ago as a junior in college and listened to my black professor.

I was born a natural suck-up, and professors usually liked me. But this professor didn’t seem so easily enamored. To be honest, she just seemed angry. I noticed that most of the time she heard a white student’s perspective, she held her breath and her voice became a little more frustrated when she responded. I noticed most of the time a black student spoke, her voice seemed to soften and her shoulders relaxed.

It really bothered me.

Written a couple months ago when I went all the way to Canada to hit the “reset” button. This is what I’m striving for in 2020. Want to join me?

*S E L F C A R E*

It’s one of those blog topics that automatically makes me want to barf it’s so millennial. Then again, I love boots and Starbucks, and I upload pics of my dog to Instagram daily, so I might as well fully embrace the millennialism. I’m currently sitting in Ontario, Canada, with my phone off drinking a pumpkin spice latte (see previous millennial note). I drove here yesterday to try something for the first time ever: explore and relax somewhere random – alone.  

So far today, I baked myself a huge breakfast, sipped a mimosa by the lake, explored the southern tip of Canada at a national park, and ate an oven-fired maple bacon butternut squash pizza (say that five times fast).

Full disclosure: about two hours ago, 26 hours into this getaway of mine, I inhaled a deep breath of Canadian air, and cried a little. 

It wasn’t a long or dramatic cry – just a couple tears. But those tears held immeasurable meaning.

I’ve felt the urge to write for a lot of months now. But when I start thinking it through, I realize I don’t think I have anything profound to say. Nothing funny. No great life lesson. I just have words that I want to get down and for some reason, share on this ugly, pink blog of mine. I don’t even want to proofread it, so sorry in advance. This is really more therapy for me while I sit at a coffee shop for some much-needed alone time. Right now, I’m just taking it one day at a time. And today seems like a good day to reflect.

We are nine months into this adoption journey. We finalized just three weeks ago, and Kayden is officially a Sok.
We couldn’t be happier to check off that box legally. When we said yes to Kayden in January, before we even met him, he was already our son – but the formality of adoption has been helpful for us all. Especially Kayden, who understandably doubted the day would actually come.