What to expect: We might face rejection.

Thankfully many people have walked this road before us. We attended a required 2 day class with our agency. One day was about adoption in general and the other was about adopting older kids. I have also learned so much from other people's blogs telling their own stories.

It is easier for me to tell you about these things now while they are hypothetical. Once they become real they will also become personal. I will want to respect our children's privacy and as such I do not plan on sharing all the details. But these details can be helpful if you are thinking through adoption. So I will try to share these things now when I can talk about them in general.

So today I will tell you about one thing that we have been told to expect. Because we are adopting older children, our children might very possibly reject one of us. It is most likely to be me. It is possible that our children will have had bad experiences with men in which case Josh might be the subject of rejection. It is more likely that they will have had less exposure to men in which case a relationship with a man would be a novelty. If our children have spent any significant amount of time in an orphanage (which is likely), it is possible that they might see a female caretaker as someone who feeds you but not does stick around for the tough stuff. So it is very possible that they will reject me. I have heard about this happening with others and for those who did not expect it they naturally took it pretty hard. I hope that expecting this would make it less painful for me. I don't know how it could be not painful at all as you would be both rejected and know that your child has experienced pain that no child should experience that would lead him/her to feel this way. So in this way I expect to be broken hearted. The hope that comes with this is that you will be able to teach them to trust again. But it will take time to prove to them that it really is safe to love us both.

Sorry, this is not really a cheery subject. But is something that I am sharing with you now because if/when it becomes personal, I might choose not to share.