A Red Thread

I attended a fashion show for Matthew's high school alma mater with his mother and other family and friends. I look at the program to check out the events for the evening and the author who is signing autographs for her new book is Ann Hood. (Sidney had recommended to me this book, "A Knitting Circle" the author was local from Providence, RI. Sidney spoke highly of the book and since we have some similar reading styles I borrowed her copy to read. The book was AMAZING to say the least.) I was SO excited to meet her and immediately texted Sidney to let her know she was there. I purchased the book "The Red Thread" and got two signed copies; one for myself and one for Sidney. This book was also amazing, two years later we decided to move forward with the adoption process.

For those that do not know my grandmother Holt and her sister were adopted from an orphanage in Canada. We are not sure of some of the roots due to records being lost but they were not biological sisters and had come from different locations. My gram never talked about the adoption outside of the home and she actually never knew she was adopted until her mother gave her the birth certificate on her wedding day...talk about a big day. My mom does not think my gram every read it but that my grandfather did; we are unsure of names and origins and are still trying to solve the mystery. I have always wanted to expand my family when I had one to include bio and adopted children; so many lives are out there now that need a loving home and we are ready with big arms to give them one.

Matthew during a Spring break alternative trip visited an orphanage in Honduras. He met these wonderful children who ran around all day playing with a deflated soccer ball, happy as can be! He fell in love with how enlightening the experience was and a need to some day provide children like this a home and a family.

Anyway...I googled the book and found an agency The Red Thread Adoption Agency. I emailed the agency and heard back from Leah O'leary about an adoption conference we should attend put on by ACONE (Adoption Center of New England), we spoke about it but did not commit. A last minute decision, we ended up attending, best thing we did, and better was Leah spoke during our home study seminar. She walked in the door and Matthew turned around and said what I was thinking, she looks just like Grandma Legare, a younger sister. I think at that moment we knew we wanted to adopt and we HAD to have Leah as our adoption agent.

That day we attended four classes: Inter-country adoption; the home study process; instant parenting; and financing your adoption. Inter-country was where we decided we would be adopting from a Spanish speaking country or from Africa. Both locations were fairly inexpensive then other countries and both locations seemed to have the least amount of issues with HAGUE challenges and other legal hold ups. Instant parenting was an amazing class with these moms who had adopted; one from Korea, one from China, one a teenager and one a foster mom to adoption of two teens. These women were the real deal; they spoke about their feelings on adoption, the process for them, their fears, their struggles with their children, the silly things people say because they are ignorant about the process and how you handle it in the grocery store (one women said how much did she cost in the middle of the cereal aisle and yes she was an adult), and answered a lot of questions about where they are now and what they would have done differently.

After our first meeting with Leah I told her how we found her. She stated that she had never met Ann or read any of her other books. Leah told me that she had heard through friends in the adoption world about this book, she called Ann's agent and asked her to send her a copy while informing them that she was A Red Thread too. Chinese tradition says that there is a red thread coming from a child's heart trying to find their family. The thread picks the family for the child...or maybe for us it picks our agency! :)

The beginning...

As you know we have begun the adoption journey from Colombia. I wanted to start a blog to describe to all the steps in the adoption process and share what is going on; where we are at; what's new...etc... so that you can all share in this process with us as much as possible. I know that each time we see everyone we fill you in on the happenings but as I am sure you know we describe these happenings to many and probably miss out on some pieces through the multiple conversations. Our home-study social worker, Leah, talks a lot about recording moments and we want to ensure that we share those moments with all of you. We are very excited for the additions to our family and look forward to this process while sharing it with all of you.

M+C