When Danny and I were first married, we would have conversations about what our family would look like and how many children we would have. I would daydream about our children looking just like my husband. When we were blessed with Graham, he was a dream come true. He looks just like his daddy and even has some of the personality traits of his mom.
My daydreams have changed with the times. Now that we are adopting, it is hard to imagine what our child is going to look like. We know they will be a boy or girl J but we have no idea what color eyes they might have, what shape nose, how tall they will be, what color or texture hair they might have, or even what color their skin tone will be. Because adoption is so different than having a baby, there is a little more training that is needed to get ready for this opportunity.
The first thing we started doing was reading more about adoption. When reading some of these articles, it would address, in one way or another, that adoptive families have more hurdles to overcome than naturally built families. There was a time when I felt like that those hurdles were going to be challenging enough for us. But, as Danny and I would talk more and more, the race of our future child would often came up.
I am not going to lie; I had some anxiety about adopting a child that was not white. Some of my biggest worries were about what people could say, how we would be able to support the child’s culture, how I would be able to meet their hairstyling needs, and how others could treat us for being a mixed family. When we met with Amy during our meeting in August, I addressed those concerns. She validated that my apprehension was justifiable but challenged me to understand more about my concerns to see if they were something that I could overcome.
After we turned in our application on August 10, we learned that Sunny Ridge has two classes that are offered to prospective adoptive families to help them address and understand the complexities that can be involved in building a family through adoption. One of the classes is a general adoption series that will help us address and prepare for some of the challenges that can come along with adopting. We just registered for this series! The class will meet on November 3rd, 10th, and 17th.
The other class is offered to individuals or families that are contemplating to adopt children outside their race. These classes make up the Transracial Parenting Series. We decided to take this class first to investigate if adopting a child outside of our race could be possible for us. This series started on September 29th.
Our first assignment for this class arrived in the mail two weeks before our first class. It was an 11 page survey called Transracial Adoption Suitability Index. This survey was divided into four areas of focus that were supposed to help us discover a little about ourselves when it came to the subject of race and culture. We scored 355 and our assessment stated that “Transracial adoption will offer many challenges that you are inclined and equipped to handle if you choose to do so.” Again, another choice J.
When we arrived at our first class, we had the opportunity to address the survey and learn more about our results. The facilitators for this series stated that three of the four categories would be easy for a person to work on (attitude, lifestyle, and knowledge) but the fourth category (personality) could not be changed. This actually made me feel better because we scored the highest on the section of our survey that had to do with our personality.
Later on in that first class, we did an activity that really helped me understand some of the lifestyle changes we need to make for our future children, if they were going to be transracial (any race other than Caucasian). We each took an empty cup over to a table that had several containers of beads. Kristi explained that we were going to complete the statements she was reading by placing beads into our cup. The beads were all different colors and each color was assigned to a race. The first statement that Kristi read was “The race of my spouse is…” I placed a white bead in my cup. Kristi continued with statements about the race of the immediate members of our family, doctor, dentist, co-workers, as well as majorities in the stores we shop in, members of church, families in our neighborhood, children in our schools, etc. The last statement was “The race of the child I plan on adopting is…” Since I was trying to be open minded about the race of our future child, I took one of each color bead and placed them in my cup. Kristi then asked “How comfortable does your child look in your cup?” At that moment, I saw how segregated my life had become.
I grew up in up in Dolton, IL. where I started off in the majority and ended up as minority by the start of my high school career. I always considered myself lucky that I got to live in an environment where I got to experience both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in-between. With the different conversations that would come up in class, I challenged myself quite a bit by journaling why I believed the things I did. That helped me really reflect on my life experiences, the feelings I had about my childhood, and the perceptions I had about race. Even though I was surrounded by many different races, I kept asking myself “Was I ever comfortable?” Simply put…no. Growing up in the environment I did, I never learned to how to fit in. I understand what is it was like to be ignored, targeted, bullied, and judged by several races, including my own at times.
When I attended Illinois State University for my undergrad, I only developed relationships with individuals that were the same race as me, partly due to the fact that the swim team I competed on and against was predominately white. That didn’t mean I didn’t socialize with other races but I felt more comfortable with people that looked the same as me. When I graduated, I took at job at a middle school in Oak Forest that was primarily white. After three years, I turned in my letter of resignation in October stating I was leaving the middle school at the end of the school year to seek a position in a high school district for the following school year. In March, I ended up being offered two jobs in the same district. One was a full time position at Oak Forest High School and the other was a traveling position between Hillcrest and Tinley Park High School. I asked the district supervisor to help me make my decision by allowing me a day to visit all three schools so see the different atmospheres those high schools had to offer.
A couple days later, she showed me around and I knew immediately which position I was going to take. The white hallways of Oak Forest and the black of Hillcrest were missing an amazing element that Tinley Park High School had to offer…diversity. I took the traveling position and within three years, I had a full time position offered to me at Tinley Park High School. I am so grateful for my job. I can’t imagine teaching anywhere else because of the unique mix of races and personalities in our high school, truly makes it exceptional.
Going back to my cup, I realized that even though I had developed a level of comfort with my students of all races, I have not pursued opportunities to develop those same relationships with my peers. My cup was proof of that. I know now that there are certain races that I should not consider adopting because I do not have the support or presence of those races in my life. But on the other hand, there are other races that I would be able to support and create opportunities for my future child to be with people of their race and to experience elements of their culture.
Through these classes, I found that some of my concerns were just fears of the unknown and there were reasons to certain doubts that I had. I think about that cup every day because that cup could become my child’s reality. I don’t want my child to feel like they don’t fit in/belong in our lives. So, I am ready to get uncomfortable. I will start seeking out opportunities to learn about different cultures, resources that are available in my area and changing some small choices in my life to help our future child possibly feel more comfortable in the life that they will have with us.
