Chamber President Starts Adoption Group, Shares Her Story

Each year, November is recognized as National Adoption Awareness Month.

I don’t consider adoption my “Plan B.” It’s just the plan that was meant to be. November is National Adoption Month. This is my story.

My husband and I knew that we wanted to be parents immediately after saying “I do” in October of 2007. No one ever thinks they are not just going to get pregnant right away, right? I sure didn’t. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. We were dealing with infertility. After about two years of being unable to conceive, I realized that I didn’t need to be pregnant. I just needed to be a Mommy.  Everything happens for a reason, and our reason for infertility was the adoption of our beautiful children, Delaney Grace and Parker Joseph!

The process of adoption can be confusing and overwhelming. I learned so much during our journey and my attorney clarified so many myths about adoption. Our family continues to have an open relationship with our birth families. This is not for everyone and each family needs to decide what level of continued contact, if any is comfortable for those involved. Some people with open adoptions share pictures and updates occasionally, and some meet and have visits with the children and families they have placed with. We love our birth families and have accepted them into our lives as our own family.

Our children may have questions as the years go by and we will all be here to answer them. The word adoption is used regularly in our home and we will not have some “big reveal” when they get older. People often question whether my children will be confused by the openness of our relationship with their biological families. With the dynamics of families today, between divorce, remarriage, etc, what is normal for us will be normal for them. We think our children are pretty lucky that they have so many people to love them.

I have started an adoption support group called “Mommy’s Angels” that I run at my office in Blue Point. There is no charge for hopeful adoptive families and individuals, families that have already begun the process or people who just want to find out information. I was fortunate enough to have a friend support, encourage and cheer me on as I navigated the adoption journey and I am looking forward to sharing that with other families.

Meetings are held the first thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the . Contact Laura Rogacki, 631-363-5794 to inquire.

Below are two adoption poems. The authors are unknown.

                                 Not flesh of my flesh

                                 Nor bone of my bone

                                 But miraculously my own

                                 Never forget for one minute

                                 That although you didn’t grow under my heart

                                 You grew from within it

                            I didn’t give you the gift of life but in my heart I know

                            The love I feel is deep and real as if it had been so

                            For us to be together, is like a dream come true

                            No, I didn’t give you the gift of life,

                            Life gave me the gift of you.