One of my goals in life......

I have always loved receiving help on challenges I have had in life. I would seek out the different avenues through local contact and online to gain knowledge or just support for any challenge of work, marriage, home life and most of all one of those (read: MAJOR) challenges was going through years of infertility, miscarriages and starting the process of adoption.

I always want to research, investigate and prepare for something we will invest in our lives for a long time, possibly FOREVER. I want to be the most prepared to step up to the challenge of saving time, money and emotions in it all. Then I promised myself I would turn that good fortune of information around and give it out to others so they can reap the benefits of being able to make it through their plan in life also with the most efficient course to attain their goals. An outreach of sorts.

Today, I received a call from my former infertility and adoption counselor asking us to consider helping out a couple she had in one of her session today with information about our journey into adoption. I was able to provide them with the name and numbers to our adoption attorney, another adoption attorney and our adoption agency, A Gift of Hope Adoptions. I gave our counselor the ok to have that couple call me if they need to just chat about information they are gathering. I hope to also put them in touch with the local IAS support group in town. There are so many resources in town and on line that I know they can benefit from. I hope they call, but if not, I know I have given them very useful information to start their journey of information gathering for adopting.

One of the first reading materials I bought for the process of research was Adoptive Families Magazine. (No, they are not paying me to advertise this.) I was able to gather lots of information on what to look for as in agencies, costs, steps to take for the home study and lawyers. I was able to read hopeful stories about others that had gone through infertility and attained their ultimate goal of becoming parents through adoption. I finally had hope. I also attended the now IAS group for support and information on how to start our home study and what costs we were looking at and what to expect in our journey.

I always feel very good in being able to turn my knowledge around and help others in their journey to build that dream family. Yes, we are a family of our dreams, but we are still working on building that dream family of 4. Our home study is ready to go and we wait until we know if our tax return will help us in that ability to resign with our adoption agency we used to adopt our daughter through or if we might consider changing our home study over for foster to adopt program. We wait to see.

I am not a professional counselor, just a woman that has experienced it all in real life and I can share my story with you. Some sad points, yes, but ultimately the joyful process of adopting our daughter through open domestic infant adoption.

I am so thankful for those professionals and peers out there (you know who you are!) that have helped me be in a position to be able to help others in their journey too.

For that, I am THANKFUL!