Have you considered adoption?

A question cast out like a net… like a trap… I have got tangled in it before.

Just four simple words.

How can they weigh so heavy? They sink like lead, plumb to the depths of my heart, stirring up the sediment, clouding the water.

Is it possible to answer like for like? With four simple words?

How can I answer?

That’s a heavy question

What can I say?

It’s hard to explain

When I have tried to share the truth of it, I have lifted my very heavy suitcase full of the reasons in my heart on to the tabletop and opened it.

For reasons too heavy

And I start to unpack the suitcase, laying out each reason on the table. As I speak them, each one alone seems tatty, lightweight, flimsy, insubstantial. I rummage to the depths of the case, emptying out one reason after the other, to show you and myself. And my reasons and my explanations, all laid out on the tabletop, seem a heaped jumble sale of excuses. Not one seems to counter the weight of your four words. But together in that suitcase, they were too heavy to lift. I wish now I could tie them end to end, and make a thief’s escape out of the window from this conversation.

And is the voice that I hear, as I make my escape, mine or yours? If you really wanted to have a child, you would have chosen to adopt.

No single solid reason.

So let me try now, to answer like for like, with four simple words. Does a pattern emerge?

Our hearts too broken

Won’t risk more heartbreak

Won’t risk our health

Won’t risk our relationship

We’re not strong enough

We’re not noble enough

We’re missing our mums

It’s not within us

It’s not our path

No more swimming upriver

Not experts supporting trauma

No more battling life

We cannot quest again

We’re choosing to accept

We’re choosing this life

We are enough together

If I gave you four words in response, would I feel the scales balance?

And when I lay them out like this, these grains of truth, I can see a pattern in the drifts of sand. I don’t know if you will see it, no matter how many words I spend in response.

The truth is you don’t choose adoption. You can only choose to try.

So many people, who haven’t lived what we have, believe they ‘chose to start a family’.

No, you only chose to try.

Once, we made that choice. To try. The choice led us on a journey (we thought it would be natural and intimate), that turned into a quest (it was medical and took more strength than we had within us). The quest led us through hope, determination, humiliation, heartbreak, intrusion, tears (so many), defeat, bereavement, self-doubt, frustration, and failure. We paid for it with grief and pain, with our savings, with our trust that things will work out if you try hard enough. We lost a dream; we lost our way; we lost our self-belief; we lost ourselves.

We carefully and tenderly rebuilt our foundations. It’s a life’s work.

And now we have chosen to build this life, our life as two, on those foundations.

We cannot choose to try to adopt. We cannot choose to embark on another quest. One which would, with certainty, lead us through hope, determination, intrusion, tears. One which could so easily lead us through self-doubt, frustration, heartbreak, failure and defeat. We cannot choose that path again.

We’re embracing this life

We have what matters

We’ve chosen our path

We’re already noble enough

Rachel A

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