Adoption Can Be Funny

By: Jordan Tate

We all know that adoption is a joyous occasion, and also a heavy one with many challenges. It’s a true rollercoaster with peaks and valleys and slow turns and fast hills, but I think we can all agree that, for the most part, Hollywood has shaped many an opinion about adoption for those who don’t have a real connection to it. And it can be stinking funny. So today I thought I’d invite you over to have a silly little chat about some funny things we’ve experienced in the world of adoption in hopes that you’ll laugh a little. If nothing else, you’ll quickly learn what not to say to your friends who have adopted or will adopt in the future.

That said, I’m curious, how many of these have happened to you?

We get asked frequently if we’re going to tell Shepherd he’s adopted. You guys…we get asked frequently. To be fair, it always seems to come out rapidly and clumsily and without much forethought, which is very good news. Usually I’m like, “No, we planned on turning his life into an actual Lifetime movie where the ‘big reveal’ happens on his wedding day or something.” Or wait until the day someone else, who is not us, tells him that his parents are white and he is not. How fun does that sound!? Not fun at all. Not fun at all.

One of my favorite things ever is when people ask me, when out and about, if I’m his “real” mom. I respond by telling them I’m actually a robot, so no, I am not real, and if they do not back away slowly, the laser beams will commence and then I’ll be forced to self-destruct. Okay, I know, I know, it’s just semantics. We try really hard over here to encourage others to use terms like “Biological mother” and “Adoptive Mom,” but I’ll be the first to tell you that if I’m feeling especially feisty I’ll just stick with the robot scenario. That, or scream loudly as I stomp away,  “What would it even mean to be a fake mom?!”

Oh, man! I said the previous situation was one of my favorites, but now I’m remembering another favorite, and that’s when everyone and their brother asks me if I’m the babysitter. I mean, okay, fair. I look insanely young and fresh and like my life has been nothing but rainbows and butterflies and look at me, I’m just babysitting to kill the time before my next semester of college begins, why thank you. While I daydream about actually traveling to Europe, I blubber something like, “Do you see the bags under my eyes!? Two of my children died and this is my son who I adopted just 4 months after burying my second daughter. So no, I am not the babysitter unless you want to offer me extra money because you feel bad for me.”

Ha…haha…sigh.

On a lighter note, how about when strangers ask very, very personal questions about the nature of his adoption? I’m over here like, “Umm, how about we start by you telling me your entire life history, including the moments you’d only share with family and close friends?” It’s weird, though. I usually don’t get a response when I say that…

Trust me, I could go on. But let’s end on this one:

“So, is it hard to choose which baby you want?”

And then it starts.

“First…adoptive parents don’t choose their babies.”

“What!? How does it work then!?”

“Well, after a family is licensed to adopt, they make some sort of profile that highlights various traits about their story and their family. Ultimately, the biological parents choose, from a group of licensed families, who will raise their child.”

“So then the families all go and meet her and she chooses one of them?”

“No, that would be so weird and so not okay. The birth parents usually look through profiles. Like books. About the families.”

“Whoa, no way! So you aren’t choosing the child at all.”

*silence*

“No. I don’t walk up to a precious birth parent during one of the hardest moments of their lives and decide that I like their baby best and that I believe that I would raise them in a way that would make the birth parent most comforted, and then take them without input from the person/people who made/birthed them. Make sense?”

How about we end there? I suppose if you don’t learn to laugh you just end up crying, amiright?

All in all, I think these comments and questions truly are an amazing way to education more effectively on the process of adoption. But having a good laugh at the end of the day doesn’t hurt, either. 😉

A Recipe for Homemade Laundry Detergent

By: Jordan Tate

Hey there, guys! I’m coming at you today with a recipe for homemade laundry detergent! Why? Because it’s so easy, so cost effective, and it totally works. I saw this recipe a while ago and I knew I wanted to start making our own laundry detergent because it’s cheaper and healthier to use. I just had to wait until we got through our stash of store bought detergent first! I don’t know if you’re like me or not, but I can tell you that I spend far too long standing in the detergent aisle comparing prices against the healthiest, safest option for my family, and I just can’t afford the really high end brands that have minimal ingredients.

I ended up having to make a trip to Walmart as well as Target in order to find all of the ingredients, but I actually saw the labels where all of the ingredients would be at Walmart – they had just run out. So you should be able to get everything you need in one trip. Here’s what you’ll need (one each):

• 4lb.12 oz. box of Bora
• 4 lb. box Arm and Hammer Baking Soda
• 3 lb. box Arm and Hammer Super Washing Sod
• 3 lb. box Oxi Clean
• 1 bar of Zote Soap

Directions
Step one: Pour all of the dry ingredients into a huge container/bucket/pot and stir really, really well. I poured all of mine into a 2 gallon glass container (also available at Walmart or Target). I found that the stick end of a wooden spoon worked well to mix it all up, but I also used my hands.

Step two: Grate your bar of Zote soap with a standard kitchen grater into the already-mixed jar of goodness. (I used the smallest grate size on my hand held grater and it took me about 10 minutes to grate the whole bar.) I love the way this stuff smells but I can’t pin-point what it reminds me of. Hotel laundry? College laundry rooms? I’ll figure it out eventually.

Step three: Mix the grated soap until it’s well incorporated throughout the mixture and applaud yourself because you’re done!

BONUS: The Oxi Clean container comes with a laundry scoop marked in tablespoons. You only need ONE tablespoon per laundry load, and TWO if your laundry is extra dirty.

Total cost to make? $18.26. And it should last a family of four about six months! If it lasts us 6 months that’s $3.04 per month for good quality detergent. What do you have to lose? Give it a shot and let us know if it worked for you!

A Letter to Infant Loss Mothers

By: Jordan Tate

Just like you, before a healthy baby happened, my heart, mind, and physical body were already transformed fully to those of a mother. My body is scarred by pregnancy, cesarean section, and natural birth. My “mother’s heart” was forever awakened the moment I held my first little girl. She did not go from womb to some mystical place in the atmosphere… her physical body came into the world and I held her when she died and I carried her sister and held her as she died and they were taken from me, but my badge of a mother was not. I would argue that it was more fully earned.

Further, I would argue without a doubt in my mind that carrying those incredible girls to term and delivering them and watching them die will always always always be harder than doing this thing I’m doing now- it’s harder than these fleeting sleepless nights that I get to wake up and feed my sweet child who breathes and cries and wants to be held. Wait- so you mean I get to wake up and hold a snuggly baby!? Still blows my mind. This term “mother,” that you and I are just now being stamped with (or have yet to be stamped with if you’re still waiting) by most of society is being used in a way that doesn’t do justice to the word mother.

One of the meanings behind the word “grief,” is “the heart of a mother.” Why? Because mothers feel so deeply and love so deeply and the meaning of that hits my heart way more intensely in regards to Ellie and Elsie than it does with Shepherd. Our children who are gone are still very much a part of daily life..but that doesn’t always make sense if you haven’t felt it.

Waking up to care for Shepherd, my very alive son, is literally a piece of cake in comparison to the cumulative months of sleepless nights I cried through with a heart that ached, both during my pregnancies and, of course, after they died. Does that mean parenting my son is easy? No. It means the other stuff was so very hard. The hardest.

Does it mean I’m not a sleepy mom? No, I could nap at any point of time…anywhere. But sleepy is not equivalent to bad. It’s equivalent to blessing. It is equivalent to redemption.

So, my friends. I see you. I feel your heart when people ask how many children you have. You have permission (not that you needed it from me) to include your sweet babies that died much too early. I see the tears and the nights of heartache that nobody really knows about. I understand that you can’t turn off the mama part of your heart even though your babies aren’t with you and that is simply not fair, and wouldn’t it be easier if we could? You are a mom, because you did the hardest thing a mom could ever do, and that is saying goodbye to her sweet baby.

If you haven’t yet had your “rainbow baby,” I’m here to tell you this: it’s a joy. It’s all a gift. Few will have the privilege of seeing parenthood the way you will…some do get it – you know who I mean. But loss makes the gift of your healthy baby inconceivable to most who have never had to say goodbye. I would never wish our loss on anyone..but don’t you wish your heart and feelings could be felt for just a moment by anyone who wished it? It’s a devastating experienced that now gets to be your greatest weapon as you parent your alive baby with a deep understanding of purpose and a deep gratitude for health. It will forever make you a different brand of mom. The best kind.

You’ve seen the very worst side of motherhood and none of the best sides. You don’t get to pull up to baby play dates with a baby in your arms and you can’t talk about how often your kid dirties diapers or his latching abilities or his nightly routine, but you can talk about planning baby funerals and how much your heart aches and how you hate baby aisles in stores right now and so it’s not fair, my friend, that you’ve seen only the worst and none of the best and yet you may not be labeled a mother until you see the good.

So, if your heart allows, when people ask you how many kids you have: tell them. We say we have three and two aren’t here with us. It may be alarming to the average person, but it opens the doors, if they want, for tough conversations about life but great conversations about healing and hope.

Are moms who haven’t experienced loss a lesser kind of mom? No way. Never. But you are a different breed. Your journey to motherhood was not the kind you asked for–but if you let it, it will be the source of the greatest moments of gratitude and amazingly miraculous perspective on the very beautiful gift of life.

Adoption

By: Jordan Tate

The day we picked you up felt like a dream. I wondered if what everyone else said would be true. I already loved you but I wondered what it would feel like to see your face. The day we picked you up I stared at all of the pictures your caregiver had sent me throughout the week. I was so jealous of her. I was so jealous that she was caring for my son, and that week–it felt like a year. All of the pictures of you looked different, so the day we picked you up I wasn’t exactly sure what you would look like.

But, oh, my son. You were even more perfect than I could have imaged.

The day we picked you up we passed the time during the 4 hour car ride by revealing one letter of your name at a time to my parents and brother, who were riding in the car alongside us on the interstate. I was messaging back and forth with them and with my friends, who were jumping out of their seats with excitement for this day. These friends- you know them now. They are the friends that wept with us when we laid to rest your sisters. They are the friends that pleaded each day for a fast and smooth adoption. They were among the first to know when we matched with you. They had a blast guessing your name.

The day we picked you up my heart beat faster than it ever has before. I had a hard time catching my breath as we walked into the tiny little agency in Alabama where your caregiver was holding you.

They were right. They all were right. Meeting you was just like what everyone said. It was like I had known you forever. I cried and cried and cried and I only fought back the tears when they started to block my view from your perfect face. I cried as I held you. I cried as I remembered your sisters and how holding you felt just the same as holding them except this time it was better. This time there was no pain. It wasn’t hello and goodbye, it was just hello. Hello and I love you.

It was so worth the wait. We didn’t wait long. But if we had it still would have been worth it. I would have waited decades just to meet you and know you and call you my son. You were so worth every part of this crazy journey.

We put you in your car seat and I was shocked at how normal it felt. I was shocked by the normalcy! You see, we met our other children and they didn’t come home with us. Those times were the times I was shocked by how abnormal it was to leave the hospital empty handed. It felt eerie and wrong and terrible. Leaving with you was the best part. Leaving with you was the start of our life together as a family. I sat in the backseat with you and stared at your face. You looked tiny in that carseat. And then it was mother’s day and I was stuck in a foreign state and we barely had any baby gear but it didn’t matter because you didn’t leave my chest except for when your daddy stole you to lay on his.

I don’t understand why it all felt so normal. I can’t express why it all felt so right. But everyone should know this. Everyone should know because there are many ways to grow a family and growing ours this way was a dream I wish everyone could live. There was no hospital. No labor and no delivery. There was just the deep and miraculous understanding that babies grow in hearts, not just in bellies.

How to Help a Grieving Parent

By: Jordan Tate

As an infant loss mother who has lost two littles ones far too soon, I’ve learned a whole lot about the process of grief and the way this process relates specifically to those parents who have lost a child. It is an incredibly difficult road to walk, but I have found that having others walk alongside of us can be more helpful than anything else.

That being said, there is a reason that parents who have lost children tend to look for other parents who have also lost children as a means of support and encouragement. The reason is that there are some popular habits of well-meaning individuals that can actually trigger great pain for a grieving parents and, because of this, many end up choosing to retreat to a community of people (even across the internet) who they know will be a “safer” option to process with.

I fully believe that knowledge is power in these situations, and I have seen first hand the encouragement and comfort that can come from a group of people who are determined to be courageous in walking this road together, whether they have experienced child loss or not! I wanted to take some time to talk about some of the most popular mistakes individuals can make in trying to comfort a grieving parent and instead offer alternatives that could be much more healing. It is my hope that nobody reading this would ever have to put these four tips into practice, but I know that if the time ever came this advice would be useful.

Tip #1: When in doubt, ask questions.

It is a natural instinct for individuals in our culture to meet traumatic events with logical conclusions. We are a society of problem solvers. I can’t count the number of times people have started infant loss conversations with me by saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” It is immensely difficult to process, as a grieving parent, that your child must have died for a reason. Regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, this is a comment that many grieving parents talk about as being very difficult to swallow. There is no question that anyone who says this is well-meaning. You’d be hard pressed to find an individual who would maliciously speak to a grieving parent about their loss in hopes of causing further pain. My advice, though, is to ask questions rather than offer conclusions or comments about the loss of life. Try opening the conversation by asking, “How are you feeling today?” or “Is there anything I can do to help?” This will put the ball into the court of the parent and allow them to share (or not share) what’s going on inside and any specific needs they might have.

Tip #2: Don’t make assumptions about practical ways to help.

This is similar to the advice above, but relates more to the “do something” friends who feel like they are helping most when they are actively serving their grieving friends. These friends are the friends that make the world go round. They are absolutely necessary and they have hearts of gold. If you want to do something to help ease the pain, ask your friend the best way to go about doing that. When we lost our first daughter, our friends started a meal campaign for us where people signed up to bring us food almost every night for a few weeks. The gesture itself was so heartwarming, but I started to realize that I had a hard time getting the meals down, knowing they were brought to me because my child died. On a second note, not everyone feels this way, but cooking is very therapeutic for both me and my husband. I missed working with my hands and I missed how my mind could take a break from the reality of grief as I would delve into a new recipe or experiment with ingredients in the kitchen. When we lost our second child we actually requested that people not bring us meals. We had a few meals show up, but only for the first week or so, and from people who didn’t know we felt this way. Again, the gesture was comforting, but in the end we decided to be vocal and admit that we would rather cook together than be brought a ready made meal. What’s great, though, is that there are so many out there who might love this gesture and everything about it. That’s why my best advice is to ask!

Tip #3: Whatever you do, don’t bring up the conversation about future children.

It’s a natural inclination to wonder what’s next for the grieving parent. This may come as a surprise to you, but we had countless individuals ask us within the first few months of our losses what our thoughts were about moving forward (i.e. with expanding our family). Throughout my experience in processing with other infant loss parents, it seems to be split pretty much down the middle regarding how people feel about timing future children after loss. Some want to get pregnant or adopt right away because it feels right to them to do so, knowing their other child can never be replaced, yet longing to bring another child home. Others want to take their time in the grieving and healing process and wait years and years before even thinking about having another child. Both of these are okay, but this is an extra sensitive topic for the grieving parent. Post-loss, many parents feel a lot of guilt regarding this topic. If they want to get pregnant right away they fear people will judge them for “moving on” too soon, and those that want to wait fear people will judge them for not processing fast enough. Either way, allow the conversation to unfold naturally from the parents’ side, and if it doesn’t, don’t push the topic.

Tip #4: Don’t disappear for fear of doing the wrong thing.

I know these tips can make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells around a friend or family member who has recently (or not so recently) lost an infant or child. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable in these situations. Everyone processes loss so differently, and it’s okay to feel like you have no idea how to help. The worst thing you could do is to disconnect from them for fear of hurting them further. When in doubt, tell them how YOU are feeling! Tell them you want to help but you don’t know what to say. Simply tell them you are so sorry and that you wish you had the words to say to make it better. Sharing YOUR heart with them will help them to feel more comfortable sharing these hard moments back with you. My family is far better off because of our friends and family and their willingness to be vulnerable with us as we were vulnerable with them.

There is much more advice I’d love to give, but we’ll wrap it up with these four tips for helping a grieving parent. Whatever you do, just remember that it takes an entire village of people to support an individual or a family going through infant loss or child loss. It might be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but it will be worth it. Your friend or family member will always remember those who did everything in their power to make an ounce of positive difference.

Introducing Our New Every Woman Bloggers: Meet Jordan Tate

Hi, there! I am so thrilled to join forces with the incredible women of the Every Woman Blog and I wanted to kick start my involvement with a little introduction! My name is Jordan Tate and I live in the Midlands with my husband and my adopted son, Shepherd.

My husband and I met as next door neighbors in an on-campus apartment at Clemson. We were friends that entire year, started dating the following year, and it was 9 months later that he proposed, and 8 months after that that we got married. Chris is a nurse at Lexington Medical Center and he is so perfect for the job. He’s compassion and caring and he chose this career for the highest amount of hands-on patient care.

We never could have imagined that our vows of “in sickness and in health” would be tested so quickly into our marriage as we walked through two full term, traumatic pregnancies, resulting in the death of our two sweet daughters shortly after birth. We have a family blog in which we chronicled the details of both pregnancies and I am passionate about speaking out about infant loss, grief, and healing, in hopes that other women who have experienced it themselves or know someone who has can be encouraged and empowered through extremely difficult circumstances.

We never expected our journey to domestic adoption to happen the way it did after the loss of our first two children, although it was always a desire of ours to adopt children. We could never have imagined that our first adopted child would enter our family just four months after the loss of our second daughter, but his story is one of redemption and hope and he is absolutely perfect. I can’t wait to share more with you about all three of our children and our experiences through infant loss, grief, transracial adoption and private adoption in general! I look forward to sharing with you and hope that you will leave here encouraged, challenged, and inspired.