35 Things I’ve Done Because of Adopting

As an adopter of two ‘harder to place’ children I would love to write, during National Adoption Week, about love hearts and happy endings but the truth is less marketable than that.  Parenting our children, loving them, has been the hardest, most brilliant, scariest, most wonderful thing I have ever done in my life.  If you think you may be up to the challenge of adopting children from local authority care then please make the first step and contact the adoption information gateway First4Adoption, or your local adoption charity or authority for information.

Parenting children who have suffered neglect and abuse is utterly life-changing. Here are 35 things that I’ve done as a result of adopting our brilliant children:

Become a mother
Met lots of very nice social workers
Learnt about brain development
Really understood what empathy is
Loved a cat called Ron
Been a school governor
Lost my temper over a broken biro
Been brave, taken risks
Met some really groovy people
Stumbled upon a writing career
Written a book, ‘No Matter What’
Been shortlisted for an award
Hugged a hoodie
Watched a Barbie film
Got really scared
Got nits
Got things into perspective
Changed my views; on parenting, on education, on lots of things
Made a website
Become a tweeter
Become a campaigner
Got nits
Apologised, a lot
Changed my measures of success
Made a bug hotel (not in my hair)
Made a salt dough tutankhamen
Got to know an awful lot about snails
Experienced anger I didn’t think possible
Experienced love I didn’t think possible
Found fortitude I never knew I had
Got nits
Become self-employed
Experienced the best and worst of myself
Taken some big leaps of faith
Really really got unconditional love.

 

A cat called Ron

Actually it is brain science