One word you won't see here anymore

We've been thinking a lot about a recent post on the America Adopts blog that we read this week titled, "How Not to Begin a Dear Birthmother Letter".  This post challenges the convention many people use when starting adoption letters. It makes an excellent point about women faced with an unplanned pregnancy, in that a woman is not yet a birthmother until she makes the choice to become one. While some women will choose adoption for their path, that's not the path all will ultimately choose. This post is an important reminder that it is up to each woman to make the choice that's best for her and to make it in her own time.

As kids we all heard, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It's a great response back to the bully calling you names on the playground, but as adults we learn that language is much more subtle and nuanced than this. This taunt back on the playground is true in that words rarely have the power to inflict the same physical damage as sticks and stones. However, even words and phrases that are well intentioned or don't seem "that bad" can fail to convey what we truly feel and have the power to sting, hurt, insult and limit us.

Our adoption letter was the result of careful consideration and reflection, lots of editing, and many hours of work. We weren't entirely comfortable with the greeting "Dear Birthparent", and in fact, our earliest drafts left this out. We ultimately agreed to go with convention during the approval process as many potential adoptive parents undoubtedly do. When we first started learning about adoption it seemed like a term of respect. It certainly is for the many birthparents who place their child for adoption, but we agree with the America Adopts post that it's wrong to assume a decision has already been made by women (and men) still considering their options.

Learning new things is part of being human and it's one of the joys of life for us. We'll be the first to admit that we didn't know a lot about adoption before beginning this journey. We're still learning and try to learn something new every day. We also do the best we can to make changes when we learn new information. It was never our intention to cause someone looking at our profile to feel we had already made their decision for them by our word choice and we're so sorry if this happened.

Yesterday we made changes to our website, blog, and Facebook page to reflect our new awareness of this old convention. Soon we we also change the PDF version of our adoption letter. Our printed letters still have this salutation, but that's just until the next time we print them.