After I hang out with my mom friends, I always have this feeling of unity and difference at the same time.  We are all mothers and our parenting struggles are much the same, but there are somethings we will just never understand about each others’ experiences. 

I am really uncomfortable when people tell me what a great thing it is to adopt a child.  I don’t feel that it’s great.  I didn’t do it because it was great.  I did it because I wanted to be a mother.  Who am I to say that Minnow or Peepers are better off with Hubby and I than with their biological parents.  I don’t have the hubris to think that my life here in America is better than what their potential life might have been.  I do believe that my children are fortunate to be growing up in America but I have a hard time saying that, because Ethiopia is their birth country and it is an amazing place full of amazing people who are willing to give us the opportunity to be parents. 

I know that those who have not adopted do not understand fully the extent of contradictory emotions and feelings that accompany adopting a child and especially a child from a foreign land.  I never want my child to think that they need to be grateful for being adopted. 

I also don’t know how to explain the added pressure I carry around as an adoptive mother.  I know that I want to do what is best for my children, but I also want to raise children that their birth mothers and birth fathers can be proud of.  I want to make these women (and men) who have given me the greatest gift one person can give to another proud of the job that I am doing.  I see Minnow’s birth parents in him and have to say they must have been amazing people.  I don’t know how to explain it, but his birth parents are part of our family and I want to do the proud.  The expectations are high and I hope that we can live up to them. 

These amazing children are not just mine…they are also Ethiopia’s. 

Thank you Ethiopia.