"dear birthmother letter"

two of our closest friends are in the process of adopting a child, and i'm looking for some advice about how to help them.

k & p are wonderful people and have a two year old biological daughter. they do not have any fertility issues, but want to grow their family through transracial adoption (they will be adopting an african american child; they and their daughter are white), and are as well equipped as anyone i know to do that thoughtfully and ethically. they are very interested in having the adoption as open as possible, and while i don't think they have thought through all the ethical issues in adoption, i know they are very much open to and trying to have a very ethical adoption. (i know that may be a contradiction in terms; i just mean as much as adoption can be ethical, they would like theirs to be, even if they don't know all of what that means yet.)

they are working with a regional open adoption agency which requires that they create a profile with a "dear birthmother letter" on one side and photos of them and their family on the other.
i've read the first draft of their letter, and it feels pretty typical. they have included all of the things that the agency has told them are important: their thoughts about open and transracial adoption, descriptions of their family, their community, their jobs, interests, etc. the first paragraph is fairly typical: "we admire your courage in making this difficult decision ... we desire openness but want to honor your needs ... if you place with us your child will always know you loved him/her and made this difficult decision out of love..." (this is my paraphrase; i don't have the letter in front of me.)

i have a couple of things i'm wondering and would love guidance from you, especially those of you involved in adoption reform and/or ethical open adoptions:

• i find that it's very hard to share your own insights into anything you've learned through experience with someone who hasn't yet experienced it. sometimes the only way you can really learn something is through experiencing it. one of the things i've learned as a la leche league leader is to give information, rather than advice, to hold judgement, and to try to empower women to make their own good choices. more and more i'm learning that's a good way to approach life (the older i get, the more i find that being a righteous know-it-all has a way of coming back to bite you in the butt!) so i guess i'm wondering what you all think is the "bottom line" of ethical adoption, the stuff you would always be blunt and up-front about with prospective adoptive friends (as opposed to the nuances that folks might need to learn for themselves). i guess another way of saying this is, what do you wish a trusted friend had said to you as you embarked on your first adoption, and what would you not have been able to hear, because you needed to learn it yourself?
• k & p's agency calls k & p's profile a "dear birthmother letter" and probably every other profile in the book will begin "dear birthmother." if you were k & p, what would you do in this situation? how would you advise them if you were their friend?
• what about that ubiquitous "courageous, noble birthmother" paragraph at the beginning of the letter? how would/have you handled that?

thanks internets! i hope you're share your thoughts.

so, micah has weaned...

...and it feels just right. we were both ready, he only needed a tiny nudge from me, and while it feels a teensy bit bitter-sweet, it's a whole lot less so than i expected it to be!

i've been ready for this for most of the fall, but i just wasn't sure whether micah was or not. i had this thought that he really needed to wean -- that our nursing relationship was no longer the beautiful, healthy, nurturning thing it had been for so long, but rather was holding him back in some way. i can't quite put my finger on it, but he seems clearly ready to be moving to a new place (there's been a lot of that totally age-appropriate separating-from-mom stuff that he's doing which is driving me kinda crazy because it's a lot of one step forward two steps back, and the two steps back involve a lot of clinginess on the one hand and lashing out/limit-testing on the other. that, and a lot of night waking. sigh.) my intuition was telling me that our nursing relationship was holding him back in some way. but i wasnt' sure. what if our nursing relationship was actually the thing that was helping him through? what if he really needed his nursies to get through this feeling nurtured and secure?

i had decided i would push a tiny bit over our vacation, and see how it went, but in the end i didn't need to. with all the excitement of christmas -- multiple church services, parties, presents, visiting relatives -- he totally forgot to even ask on christmas eve and christmas day. then we flew to arizona, drove to the desert, and set up camp -- and again, he never asked. on the fifth day, when we went to the library to escape the rain -- he asked once, but i easily put him off. he asked a couple of times when we were backpacking in the desert and he was a little miserable, but again, he was pretty easily put off.

when we returned home, he started asking with a bit more frequency, but it was never very hard to say no, and so i decided we were definitely going to be done. i always offer a cuddle instead, and now he only asks maybe once a week if that.

i decided that if he forgot to ask when things were stressful/exciting/new, and only started asking again when we landed back into our routine ... well then, it seemed to me that this was much more of a habit and less of a coping mechanism. and so there you have it -- we're done!

micah was 15 days when he started nursing, and 3.75 years when he stopped. all together, i was lactating/nursing for 4.25 years. and if i do say so myself, i'm kinda proud of that fact!

"oh. my. god. my refridgerator was gross!" and other news since last we spoke

my house is almost always messy. it's pretty small -- maybe 1200 square feet and almost no closets -- and we are a family of four (including one adult with packrat tendencies and one really kinetic three year old boy). another of us (not the aforementioned adult, i'll have you know) cares about keeping some semblance of tidiness, but the other three of us care not one whit. what that means is that the house is almost always messy (and one of us is almost always frustrated).

but messy and dirty are two different things. it is my goal that under the mess, things are relatively ... well, if not clean, exactly, at least hygenic. i'm the first to admit that i fall short of this aspiration more often than i like to admit, but on the whole, i feel fairly confident that if you use my bathroom, eat food prepared in my kitchen, or put your baby on the floor to play, you and your baby will not get ill.

or so i thought until i cleaned out the fridge the other day. oh lord. i knew it was bad, and i was prepared for that, but i had no idea. apparently we had been pushing the leftovers back and cramming more in front for a month or more, because i found stuff i barely even remembered. eww.

i'm choosing to view it as symbolic. cathartic. it was a difficult fall. the fridge is now pristine, the tupperware drawer is full again, the condiments are consolidated, and everything in the fridge is edible. things are looking up!

in other news...

last weekend i took the most decadent trip to visit one of my best and oldest friends, jennie, in chicago. jennie actually lives in iowa, with her husband and toddler, but her very generous sister betsy lives in chicago, and we decided to meet for a kid-free weekend. i flew out friday evening, despite ominous weather in the forecast, and returned on monday (mlk day, so julie and the kids were off), without any weather-related incident. in-between, jen and i stayed with betsy in a lovely, 17th floor apartment over-looking the city and the lake. i slept three uninterrupted nights; walked a lot, shopped (with betsy as my personal dresser) and ate without a kid on my lap; and came home each evening to a bottle of good wine and cheesy t.v. jennie (who is blogless, or i would link to her, hint hint) resolved to finish her dissertation before she begins her full-time job this summer (right jen??), and i came up with multiple schemes for what i'm going to do with this next phase of my life. it was bliss. on a plate. we were definitely cracking betsy up with our simple needs ("are you kidding? this couch is the best bed i've ever slept in!") we plan to do it again soon.

finally, can i just say how much it rocks to be working with two la leche league leader applicants who are smart, thoughtful, organized, dedicated, enthusiastic, reliable, way cool and just plain fun to be around? and how lucky am i that one of them is the inimitable jo? i believe that the lovely and astonishingly well put together mia is currently blogless, i would send you her way as well!

trip pix

new year's resolutions

eat until satisfied, not uncomfortably full

eat more fruits and veggies

run at least three times a week for three miles at a time

train for the broad street run and actually run it

practice yoga at least once a week

spend less time listening to my own voice inside my head trying to figure it all out, and more time listening to what god has in mind for me

go on more dates and overnights with julie

greetings from the border

greetings from ajo, arizona!

we had a whirlwind of a christmas, with julie's whole family visiting for the weekend; three church services in 24 hours (remind me to write about serving communion to a nun at the christmas day, homeless service); our annual "island of the misfit toys" party between the two services on christmas eve; and a chinese food extravaganza on christmas afternoon. we then skedaddled to the airport and flew to pheonix, collected our backpacks and rental car in the wee wee hours of the 26th, stayed the night at an econo-lodge, and then made our way to organ pipe cactus national monument, where we have set up camp in the desert, with the mountains of mexico just to the south.

our plan was to car camp a couple of nights, and then hike back country with our packs for a couple of nights. a cold, dreary rain today has us instead in ajo, eating good mexican food and hanging out at the public library (where, wouldn't you know, they are showing the movie cars! the kids are thrilled.) we've had two days of beeyooouuteeeful day hikes so far, and the kids have been amazing troopers, so i can't complain too much! tomorrow is supposed to be nice again, so we're going to try for a one-night back country packing adventure, probably just three miles or so out, and then back again the next day. we fly home early sunday morning.

look forward to desert reflections and some photos when we return!

"what do you do?"

i get asked this all the time, and i have yet to come up with a satisfactory response. in the first years home with micah, i said simply, "i'm a mom and a homemaker," or "i'm home raising my children." that's what i wanted to be doing, that's what i was passionate about, and that work completely fulfilled me. i loved the work, and i loved resonding that that's what i did.

in the past year, and especially in the past months, however, my work outside the home has exploded. it's very very exciting, and i'm feeling very invigorated by it, thinking about possible new directions for a career when micah is in school full-time, and learning about and honing skills i didn't know i had. it feels very very right to be shifting focus as i am, as my kids enter new phases of their lives, and i do too.

so, these days, the things i do in addition to raising kids and keeping a home include:

• i'm a la leche leader, and i lead a monthly meeting on my own (i don't have a co-leader as yet). i also spend about three months a year (in two week chunks) staffing the helpline, which means i take from 0 to 4 calls a day from moms needing breastfeeding help in all of philadelphia county. i've also just begun leading several leader applicants through the accreditation process, which will involve at least bi-monthly meetings.
• i have several leadership positions at my church. for the past three years or so i have served as church school superintendent (before that i taught sunday school). in that capacity, i recruit and train sunday school teachers; organize regular teacher's meetings; negotiate space so that we have sunday school rooms, and also make sure the rooms are in good shape; evaluate and order curriculum; buy supplies; arrange for substitutes or sub myself; and conduct a 15 minute children's worship service each sunday before the sunday school hour.
• for the past two years, i have also served as a deacon on the official board of the church.
• for the past year, i have met bi-monthly with a small group dubbed the "reorganization task force," charged with proposing a whole new vision of how we "do" church. the culmination of that process finds me on a new administrative council, coordinating partnership-building and fundraising for our outreach programs (homeless shelter, food and clothing cupboard, summer day camp for at-risk youth, and city work camp program for rural and suburban youth groups).
• finally, and by far the most exciting and time-consuming, is that i serve as the chair of the board of my daughter' s charter schoool. in that capacity, i have in the past three months doubled the size (and racial diversity!) of our board; begun implementing an entirely new model of board governance called policy governance; and begun to work with the ceo on launching a capital campaign. i've also found myself pulling out all my connections from my law school and law firm days in order to bring some political muscle to bear on an effort to remedy what started out as an administrative snafu regarding enrollent (i.e. how many students we're getting paid for, as opposed to how many we're actually educating -- the numbers don't match up, and not in our favor), but which has turned into a huge, hairy political nightmare in the midst of a mayoral campaign and a school district budget crisis.

so, that's what i *do,* outside of raising my kids, cleaning my house, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, planning and cooking meals -- all the homemaking, stay-at-home-mom stuff that i l*o*v*e. i estimate i spend between 20 and 25 hours a week on my "outside the home" work. and when it started getting to those levels, i started responding to the "what do you do?" question a little differently. instead of just saying "i'm a mom and a homemaker," i'd say that plus "and i do a lot of volunteer work outside the home." but funny thing, no one ever really asked me about my "volunteer work," and i always got the idea that people thought i was, you know, going on a field trip now and again with my daughter's class.

so i decided recently to respond to the question "what do you do" by telling people what i do, just like every other working mom would. by describing my work, especially with the school, work which has really become my passion. the thing i'm learning, though, is that work outside the home -- no matter how important it is, and no matter how many hours you spend on it -- doesn't really count if you're not paid for it.

for example, on sunday i had a rich, full day -- after church (which for me starts at 9:00 getting ready for church school, and ends around 12:15 when the service is over), i helped julie prepare a lunch for the children's choir, which she directs, before they began a dress rehearsal of their cantata on christmas eve. i then went to a two and a half hour meeting of the reorganization task force, where we hashed out a plan for the church's structure in the coming year, to be presented at the congregational meeting in january. i then rushed to a house party a friend of mine was hosting for a mayoral candidate i support (personally, although doing so too publicly has become a liability for the school, because unfortunately he doesn't currently wield much power, and is probably going to lose...). at this house party, glass of wine in hand, i was introduced to a woman who serves as the treasurer of the local chapter of the national organization of women.

and she asked the ubiquitous question, "and what do you do?"

i replied, "i'm the chair of the board of a k-8, environmentally themed charter school in XYZ neighborhood." she looked at me quizically, and inquired a bit about what i do. i began to talk about some of my work, and she just looked more and more confused.

"but, is this a paying position?" she interrupted, clearly confused about how i could be paid for chairing the board of a charter school (i can't), and equally clearly unable to understand how that could be my "work," what i "do," if i'm not paid.

"no," i sighed, "i'm not paid for that work. i'm home with my children right now, but that's the work i do in the world." inevitably, as everyone does, she launched into the completely patronizing speech, which she no more believes than anyone else who uses it in response to "i stay home with my kids," about how that's just such important work, the *most* important work, really.

that, i have learned, is the signal that you have been dismissed. that is the point at the cocktail party when you are about to be abandonded for greener pastures. and it appears to be true even if, in fact, you are running one of the few highly successful charter schools in the entire city of philadelphia. because if you are not getting paid for it, it just doesn't count.

go figure.

so, has any one else found themselves in this position? how do you handle it?

response from the art museum

i was well pleased with this.

Dear Ms. [last name deleted],

I am the Director of Visitor Services at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I am writing in response to your recent email about your friend's experience. We work hard to ensure all of our visitors have a pleasant experience and are upset when we fall short of that goal. I can only imagine your friend's frustration and concern when she was told that she could not breastfeed her baby within the gallery. I assure you that is not our policy. The Museum is fully aware of the ordinance that permits women to feed their children wherever they wish. This ordinance is reviewed with all of our staff and security personnel during their training. It seems that in this case, this particular officer was not clear on the policy. I cannot apologize enough on behalf of the Museum that your friend was put in that situation. We have reviewed this ordinance in subsequent line up meetings with all of our security officers as well as ensured that the class currently in training is clear on the policy.

Ms. [last name deleted], I am a mother of three and I know and understand how difficult it can be for mothers who choose to breastfeed their children and then have to deal with criticism from those around them. We take pride in welcoming families to the Museum in hopes that our young visitors will continue to explore the Museum, as they grow older. We would not want anything to hinder that relationship.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. We look forward to welcoming you and your friend back in the future.

Sincerely,
[name deleted]
Director of Visitor Services
Philadelphia Museum of Art