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Happy "Birth" Day: Love You More Releases Today

People compare writing a book with giving birth. As the mother of four, three by birth and one by adoption, I find the birth/book completion analogy a useful though imperfect one.

As I did with my all children, I was able to name my book. Well, sort of. That is, I gave a list of possible titles to the publisher and waited as a decision was made. But, as was the case with my children, I brainstormed that list with my husband, spoke the titles out loud, and wrote them down to see how they looked.

And, yes, I had the sense - after finally finishing the book and sending it via email to my editor - that I'd just accomplished something rather monumental. I ran my fingers along the spines of the books in my house. They sat silently on shelves, waiting to be opened and to burst into story. I felt impressed by all of the courageous and resilient souls who had managed to perform such a feat and fill those covers with their stories. I felt the same way when, after giving birth, I saw young mothers nonchalantly pushing their grocery carts around stores, their babies sleeping snugly in car seats. How in the world do people manage to go through such a mystical, wrenching, and beautiful experience and then go back to the mundane details of their lives?, I wondered.

There is another way giving birth and writing a book are similar and that is that everyone wants to know - right from the beginning - when it will come out. (Well, generally speaking, people don't ask about a baby's due date so crassly, but you get the point.)

But to the author scratching away at a manuscript that seems to refuse to take shape and to the pregnant woman waiting out long months of heartburn and other discomforts, that date can feel impossibly significant and unreal at the same time. And there is no hurrying to it.

My due date for Love You More is, finally and unbelievably, today! It has been birthed, released, shelved in bookstores, mailed to people's homes, and even delivered instantly by "Whispernet" (Whispernet? What?) to the world.

And, just as I finish writing this post, my computer screen flashes to let me know I've just received email from my priest. The message reads:

Congratulations, again, on this "birth" day.

Family

Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. 

Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly 

to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.

- Jim Rohn

A Video Trailer for Love You More

Thank you to the wonderfully gifted Jason Pearson - check out his work at loudtoast.com.

Intersections...

Yes, it would be a better world if every marriage was happy and lasted, if every community had strong programs to protect and nurture vulnerable children, if every pregnancy was planned and desired, and if all parents had the emotional and material resources to raise the children born to them.

But sadly it’s a broken world.

A world in which adoption can be a balm, a relief, a beautiful gift to all involved.

(Read entire post here.)

Happy July!

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.

- Moshe Dayan

Hope yours was a happy 4th of July! Ours included a parade, several rousing hands of "Go Fish," and a trip to the pool. I love this article by Faheem Younus, an American Muslim reflecting on what makes our country great:

"...our US Constitution sweetens the American psyche towards the principles of equality, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness championed in the Declaration of Independence.
...

I have made it a habit to make room for my fellow citizens wherever I can. It's only my way to reciprocate to you, America, for you have made room for millions of immigrants like me and provided us the opportunity to live with equality, justice, and freedom.

I still get teary eyed thinking about my homeland; particularly with all the mayhem in the name of religion. But, whenever my plane takes off from the Baltimore-Washington Airport, I look down at the rooftops and my heart says, "That's my home, that's my home."

(Read whole article here.)

...

In post-holiday news, I can't believe that Love You More (finally) releases next month! See Goodreads giveaway offer at right of page to enter to win a copy, hot off the press. To read endorsements and excerpts from the book, visit jennifergrant.com.

Enjoy summer!

"Unnatural Selection"

In his review of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (by Mara Hvistendahl), Wall Street Journal book reviewer Jonathan V. Last writes, "...there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls...are missing from the world."

"In nature," Last writes, "105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120."

A more violent society as well as the sexual trafficking of girls and women are two of the consequences of gendercide.

When I began the adoption process about a decade ago, gendercide was one of the many issues about which I would learn more than I ever wanted to know. This knowledge left an unpleasant new awareness in me, a permanent lump in my throat. Bias against girls, of course, significantly affects international adoption.

In Love You More, I wrote:
I also knew that there were many, many orphaned girls in India. As in other parts of the world, boys are highly prized there. Boys serve as a sort of insurance policy for parents: they carry on the family name, inherit land and care for their aging parents. Girls are usually considered burdens to their families.Organizations such as the United Nations estimate that up to a million baby girls are aborted every year in India. Although it is illegal for medical staff to use prenatal technology to determine a baby’s sex, it is obvious that pregnant women and their ultrasound technicians ignore that law. India has practiced gender-based infanticide for centuries; tens of millions of girls have been killed as newborns. The only place girls outnumber boys seems to be in the nation’s orphanages, where baby girls are brought after being left in public places or in the cribs and cots left outside orphanage walls. Would our little daughter be one of the unwanted girls of India? The thought that our daughter would have every advantage and that she would be cherished as much as her brothers excited me. Adopting her would not stop, of course, what many call “female gendercide” in India, but it would save and empower one little girl. Our girl.

Reviewer Last makes the case that "If 'choice' is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against gendercide" and support abortion. He writes that the book -- unwittingly -- results in a strong anti-abortion message. (One could argue, by the way, that dialog about abortion may often be defined or guided by the notion of 'choice' in countries like ours, but the discussion is very different in other parts of the world. But that is a conversation for another day.)

I haven't yet read the book, but I feel confident that diving into a pro/anti-choice argument isn't the best -- or even really a useful -- response to Unnatural Selection.

Perhaps it would be more effective to talk about addressing the needs of girls and women in the developing world: educating girls, empowering women, and raising awareness in men and women - sensitizing cultures - about the consequences of sex bias, inequities, and gender-based violence.

Want to do just that? Check out World Vision's efforts to empower girls and women, promote girls' education, and to prevent child marriages and gender-based violence in Zambia. I've had the honor to meet Susan, whose story is told in this video and to see, firsthand, World Vision's work in Zambia. Both inspired me deeply.

Challenging and changing harmful cultural practices and empowering girls and women seem to me the best ways to address the tragedy of gender-based bias and violence -- and gendercide.

Review of Love You More

the parablelife: Review: Love You More: "Adoption has shaped my life in ways both beautiful and heartbreaking. We were foster parents with Bethany Christian Services for two years..."

love you more and more

For you see, 

each day I love you more. 

Today more than yesterday 

and less than tomorrow.

- Rosemonde Gerard

Adoption Critics

During the past few weeks, I've received a number of messages from people who are opponents of adoption. They've written, in expectation of my memoir which of course celebrates the adoption of my daughter from Guatemala, that "the term ethical adoption is an oxymoron," that all children who were adopted were ripped from their real families, and...ahem...other things that I can't repeat here.

Like any kind of fundamentalists whose anger, isolation and unbendable certainty in their convictions close their minds and hearts, such anti-adoption voices don't seem able to engage in dialog or to hear other people's stories.

I've been grateful, though, that I made the decision in Love You More to address critics of adoption. I believe we share many key values. 

• We care about the well-being of children and of birth mothers. 
• We want children to grow up in homes where their backgrounds and stories are honestly told and explored. 
• We are offended by policies or practices that have abused, coerced, or otherwise hurt birth mothers.

Unlike the fundamentalist anti-adoption folks, though, I know that (ethical) adoption is a beautiful thing. All around me, I see families with thriving children who were adopted. I know women who placed their children for adoption and who are grateful to have had that opportunity. They didn't have resources and/or the desire to raise a child when they had their babies. For various reasons, they didn't have access to reproductive health education or services. They delight in knowing that their children are happy and loved. It's a situation free of secrecy and abuse. They know who they are, and so do the children to whom they gave birth.

Here's an excerpt from my book in which I explore the tricky territory of anti-adoption voices.

"...not everyone rejoices when they hear that a baby has been adopted. It’s important, as adoptive parents, to hear those arguments, puzzle them out, and continue to grapple with them. 

I don’t want to sequester myself in a cozy place and simply ignore those who are deeply hurt and offended by my choices. I don’t want to be left speechless if someone approaches my family and shares opinions very different from my own. I don’t want to put myself into a position where I might be written off as a person who just keeps blithely saying that God brought her family together and has never heard another set of opinions about adoption.

Some adoption critics assert that when a child cannot be raised by birth parents, relatives should take charge of the child. Failing that, guardianship relationships with strangers may need to be employed, but they are a necessary evil. Under no circumstances, they maintain, should guardians adopt a child, change the baby’s name or live as though the child is a true part of the family. A child should always remain connected, at least by name, with his or her biological relatives. Some such activists primly note that if everyone used birth control or, failing that, terminated unwanted pregnancies, there would be no need for adoption. This fails, of course, to address issues such as sexual violence against women, women’s access to reproductive health services, and whether or not a woman considers abortion a permissible choice.

Over the years, I have engaged with various people who believe that all adoptions are criminal. In their minds, whether a child is an abandoned baby girl in India, an orphan in Ethiopia whose parents died of AIDS, or an infant who was born anywhere from the Glendale neighborhood of Indianapolis to the highlands of Guatemala, adoption is wrong. 

If you haven’t heard voices like theirs before, it might be hard for you to imagine how they can take this position in a world of more than 150 million orphans and in a country where more than 100,000 children wait in foster care for families.

Personally, though, my decision to adopt wasn’t about statistics or research studies. I knew that I was meant to bring a new child into the family by adoption. Arguments against adoption don’t make me feel defensive. I’ve found that they grow, most of the time, out of a true desire for justice. And, to quote Martha Stewart, this is a very good thing. Some people who speak out about adoption have suffered tragic loss in their lives. Perhaps they were once pregnant teenagers who were forced by their parents to place their infants for adoption and were told that they would forget about these babies – but of course they never did. Some lived their whole lives feeling their children’s absence as viscerally as do amputees who experience a tingling sensation in the invisible limbs that were, decades ago, severed from their bodies.

Others who speak out against adoption are the children of American women who, in the middle of the twentieth century, made the choice to relinquish babies but were not permitted to know where these children went to live. Their children, too, were denied access to information. Secrets and lies shrouded their early lives. Through serendipitous twists of fate (or, you know, God’s providence), some of these mothers and children have been reunited. Some unite in a strong hatred of adoption.

Other anti-adoption activists have seen, firsthand, the suffering of women in some of the world’s most resource-poor places. They have heard stories of coercion and bribes. They know of instances where the desperation of vulnerable women that has been played upon and manipulated in horrific ways so that a rich, childless couple may adopt a healthy baby.

As a reporter accustomed to conducting thorough research, I had examined the problem of illegal and unethical adoptions around the world, including in Guatemala. And, yes, there have been horrific abuses there. Between 1960 and 1996, during the country’s civil war, Guatemalan soldiers stole more than 300 children and sold them to adoption facilitators. The children were adopted by families in the U.S., Sweden, Italy, and France, who believed they were adopting orphans. Sadly, some of them were indeed orphans; their parents were killed so that they could be put in the government-operated system and adopted.

Are all of these instances tragic and completely unacceptable?

Yes, yes, yes and without a doubt.

But I can’t make the leap to saying that some abuse makes all adoptions unethical. It sure is an imperfect world we live in, yes? Do I pretend to understand the problem of evil? (Um, absolutely not.) Can I efficiently explain why bad things happen to the world’s most vulnerable people? (No again.) Do I think God allowed my child’s birth family to be poor and disempowered so that I would be permitted to call her my own? (No, no, no.) In the mystery of faith, I do believe God planned for us to be together. I know that God can make good come from tragic circumstances. I wrangle with it and certainly wish ours were a world where there wasn’t such sorrow and brokenness.

A few years before I adopted my Guatemalan-born baby, I wrote a few stories about “street kids” in Latin American countries. I learned about the lives of “glue sniffers” or “resistoleros” (named for a brand of shoe glue that is sniffed by homeless children to provide a high that staves off cold and hunger). Would my child have ended up in that tragic situation? I don’t know, but I feel privileged to be raising four children who desire to improve the economic and health status of people around the world. I’m glad to be able to give my daughter the love, family, food, education, and opportunity her birth mother desired for her."

How do you answer those who believe all adoptions are unethical?

Forgetting the Pain of Labor

So...writing "Love You More" and learning what it really means to have a book in production has been a thrill, an enormous privilege, and truly exhausting.

Each time I've hit send -- first in November when I'd finished writing the book and then again in January after edits were done and then again (and again) after going through other versions of the manuscript -- I've let out a deep breath and thought, "Okay, now I'm done."

But, indeed, I wasn't. In fact, I still have, as Robert Frost says, "miles to go before I sleep."

When I first sent the book to my editor, I went downstairs and, walking through our shelf-laden family room, saw the hundreds of books sitting so calmly and patiently there in a new light. I skimmed my finger over their spines with a sense of admiration for all of those authors that, somehow, had managed to complete their manuscripts. I wanted to throw a party for each and every one of them.

It wasn't unlike a feeling that washed over me after becoming a mother for the first time. I'd see moms and their babies or toddlers and think, "Wow - good for you. You made it through the incredible journey -- and joy and pain -- of labor. Well done!" But, of course, the work has only just begun after a baby is born. Similarly, getting permissions, thinking about publicity, soliciting endorsements, looking over edits and revisions, and so much else is the "real work" that begins after the book is "born."

And, now, like a mother whose baby is a several months old -- the pain of labor mostly forgotten or at least wrapped into the neat packaging of the narrative she's created to describe it -- I can't wait to do it all over again.

May "Love You More" News

The May issue of Love You More: building (happy) family culture is out!  Read about Jung's shadow self, parenting expert Amy Hilbrich Davis, and the myth of the perfect mother. Also in this issue, an excerpt from my memoir, "Love You More" and details on how you can receive a free ARC (advance readers copy). Just click here.

(And happy May - hope it's as beautiful where you are today as it is in Chicagoland. The ice cream truck - playing "Old MacDonald" - is driving past my house as I type!)

The Myth of the Perfect Mother

Last night, after a few nights of feverishly reading it before bed, I finished Carla Barnhill's book, "The Myth of the Perfect Mother." Written specifically for Christian believers, but applicable to all American mothers, the book explores the ways culture, the church, and even other mothers perpetrate what is ultimately a damaging view of what a is a "good" (or perfect) mother. She also proposes a new way to look at motherhood. It's a daring, honest, good read.

I'd borrowed the book from a friend and enjoyed coming upon passages that were starred, underlined, and otherwise celebrated with exclamation points and folded over corners. There were many passages that I wanted to return to as well and, given that one of my friend's children (or maybe my friend herself) had spilled what appears to have been a large mug of coffee on the book, tie-dying its pages, I took the liberty of folding over the edges of pages bearing particularly juicy quotes also. The problem is, now the book looks like a kind of art project or accordion or something, I folded over so many corners. (Um...sorry Caryn.)

As Mother's Day approaches, I recommend Barnhill's book to all mothers who sometimes feel they have to wear "happy shiny faces" all the time, hide their loneliness or depression, or think they must hide or understate how much they adore going to the office every day.  Barnhill honors women who are mothers in this book - not only for what we achieve with our children, but for all the gifts we have been given and the ways we can change the world. (And she says not everyone has to be madly in love with motherhood.)

In a few days, I'll be sending out May's issue of "Love You More" news, chock-full of quotes from wonderful, honest thinkers and writers such as Barnhill and there will even a chance to win an advance reader's copy of "Love You More." (If you don't yet subscribe, use the form along the right side of this blog, or shoot me an email at jen AT loveyoumorebook DOT com.)

And Happy Mother's Day!

Lenten Blog Tour

Today I've been invited to participate in a Lenten Blog Tour supporting the new Common English Bible. During the tour, 41 bloggers offer 41 different thoughts and perspectives. (See all of the reflections here.) For me, this invitation provided a special opportunity to reflect on a passage that is often discussed in the adoption community. Here's Mark 9:33-37 in the CEB translation and a few comments on how – as a mother, a parent by adoption, and a person in midlife this ancient text informs my life.

“They entered Capernaum. When they had come into a house, he asked  them, “What were you arguing about during the journey?” They didn’t respond, since on the way they had been debating with each other about  who was the greatest. He sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all.” Jesus reached for a little child, placed him among the Twelve, and embraced him. Then he said, “Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me.” Mark 9:33-37  (CEB)

--

1. As a mother of four kids, ages 9-14, the fact that the disciples didn’t want to answer Jesus’ question because they had been arguing about “who was the greatest” makes me laugh. 

Well, let me be more clear: it makes me laugh wryly.

Isn’t that often what might be going on when our kids bicker?  Maybe their “Who is the greatest” arguments are veiled in ones such as, “You’re on my side of the back seat!” or “You gave me a mean look!” or “Hey, that was mine!”

But isn't “Who’s the greatest here?” the real question?

What do you say when your kids have such arguments? Do you, like I do – especially when I am not being a particularly thoughtful or deliberate mother – just sort of nag?

“There is a whole box of granola bars – why does it matter whose that one was?”

“Your side of the seat? What?”

“Really, how much does any of this matter?”

But, Jesus is wiser.

And gentler.

Of course He is; He’s Jesus, for crying out loud. He cuts to the chase and tells the disciples that the greatest of them all is the one who serves. The greatest is a servant. A servant with a gleaming, glowy heart that reflects God’s love for humanity.

You see, it’s not great to be small and petty. It’s not glowy to want the best just for ourselves.  But Jesus doesn’t induce shame in his disciples; He just points them in a better direction.

(Good parenting advice, right?)

2. As a mother by adoption this passage holds meaning, too. 

I don’t mean – please believe me that I really, really, really don’t mean – that, because I have “welcomed” a child by adoption, I’ve somehow reached a spiritual state of enlightenment, nirvana, or particular grace never obtained by people who opt out of having kids, who have welcomed kids only “the traditional way,” or whose children came to them after assistance from doctors and infertility treatments.

(Nope.)

Indeed, like most parents by adoption, I’m not interested in comparing my experience to others. And I’m aware that I have been the recipient of so much good from my daughter – laughter, warmth, and happiness. 


Like yesterday when she was practicing the piano and I had to get up from the table and just cover her with kisses because I love her so much. 


I’m not a hero for adopting a child. A hero puts his or her life at risk to save others. In adopting my daughter, she – in ways I try to explore in the book – has made me more … well … me. Saved me in a way. In a good way. And, actually, I don’t think of her as my “adoptive” daughter; just my daughter. 

But because I spent so much time in the past year thinking about telling my adoption story, reading about adoption, looking at ethical adoption, and so on … it is a comfort to me to think about how Jesus identifies so closely with children. Welcome them and you welcome Me, He says.

Once again, that was very parental and loving of Jesus, right?

3. I also like this passage as a person in midlife. Just last night, I was on the phone with a friend who lives across the country from me.  A beautiful, funny, talented friend.  Spectacularly beautiful – inside and out. (If you knew her, you’d agree.)

And my friend, like me and so many of the 40-something women I know, has been dedicated for the past decade and a half or so raising kids making a family and basically being a grown up. Planning meals. Doing the laundry. Making her kids go to church. Reading articles about parenting. Negotiating a marriage. Taking kids to the pediatrician, dentist, orthodontist, and making sure they did their homework. She’s kept her kids in shoes that fit. Encouraged healthy diets and good manners.  (I could go on and on. So could you.)

And, somewhere along the line, like so many of us, she started feeling less like her girl self. 

“Remember when you were…like…twelve?” she asked me last night, trying to find the right words. “And you thought you could do anything?  And then you tried something?  Whatever it was.  And you thought to yourself, ‘Hey, I’m pretty good at this. Look at me!’ You had such confidence? I want to be like that again. Like I used to be.”

And I hear an echo of that in Jesus’ words, too.

You’ve not only welcomed kids, but raised them. And you’ve raised them well.  You’ve served them in making sure they are fed and disciplined well. You’ve changed diapers, made meals, cleaned up all matter of bodily fluids while smiling at them, giving them your love. It hasn’t been easy. 


In other words: You’ve been a servant.

But maybe now we can welcome ourselves as children too. Maybe we can rejoice and explore our God-given gifts in a new way again too. Invest in them.

Let ourselves shine again, all glowy and good.

Like God made us to be. 

You know what I mean?

It's the Weekend, Weekend

Okay, quick - what are your family's favorite movies?

Years ago, when my four kids were six years old and younger, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and educational fare such as Bill Nye the Science Guy made for great movie nights. Fast forward (pun intended) a few years and the videos and DVDs coming home from the library or Target's sale shelves were Hannah Montana, Full House, and School of Rock. Now, though, things are even trickier. With a high schooler who loves the TV show Lost, the Bourne movies and has recently gone on a thriller jag, a middle schooler who loves epic battle scenes (think Gladiator), and two elementary school-aged daughters who love Glee and Tangled, you'll understand why we're in trouble over here when it comes time for the six of us to watch a movie. Never mind that I love old musicals - An American in Paris, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, High Society, On the Town. Gene Kelley: deep sigh. (Have you ever seen him dance with Tom and Jerry, by the way?  'Cause he did!)

I explored the trouble with family movie nights - gave a long list of possible "feature presentations" - in the most recent issue of "Love You More" news.  Also included, an excerpt from my memoir, "Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter." "Love You More" news is a place where I'm working on ideas for what I hope will be my next book, on creating a happy, unique family culture. So send all ideas and responses, please. I keep them all, mull over them, and like to be inspired and challenged as a non-Tiger mom in all my good-enoughness.

If you'd like to subscribe to the newsletter, see the form on this page or shoot me an email at jen AT loveyoumorebook DOT com.

Enjoy movie night!

A Broken System

This morning I spoke on the phone with an acquaintance. She is mother to a seven-year old daughter whom she and her husband adopted as a baby from China. This woman, J., told me about a few of her single friends - a woman who lives nearby as well as a few scattered across the country - and the difficulties they have encountered recently trying to adopt a child. One friend, J. said, was turned down by Poland because she lacked Polish heritage.

"You know how many orphans are in Poland?" she asked incredulously.

(No, I don't, I do know that up to a quarter of Poland's population, according to some recent estimates, live below the poverty line and thousands of children are orphaned when their parents, in desperation, take them to children's homes and leave the country to work elsewhere in Europe. Others are orphaned in more traditional ways - women give birth to children for whom they cannot provide life's necessities, parents die, and so on.)

J's friends have also tried to adopt from Vietnam, Guatemala, and a number of other countries. Being single, when added to the widespread slow-down of international adoption, has resulted in a costly, time-consuming and emotionally painful time for her friends. (One or two of her single friends have tried to adopt domestically, too, but, again, without success.)

"Why is it?" J. asked. "Why in this world of -- how many? -- orphans can people like my friends not adopt children? It's just wrong."

I talked to her about concerns regarding culture, ethical violations, and other issues. These are all matters I dug into - very deeply - as I wrote Love You More. (See Chapter 7: Adoption: A Crime, a Necessary Evil, or a Miracle?) They are issues excellent organizations are trying to address as well.

"Yeah. I get it about culture and that some people have abused the system, but do people know what happens to children when they grow up without families in some of these places? Do they know about the street kids, the prostitution...?"

"It's a broken system," I said.

"It stinks," J. said.



 

Thank You

"And thank you for a house 
full of people I love.  

Amen." 

- Terri Guillemets

Will Blog, Will Travel

So, it's not that I'm not blogging much these days, even though this space has been a bit neglected lately. 

I'm not on vacation - although when I did take a few days of a working vacation recently, I found that writing at a big glass table poolside in Palm Springs in companionable silence with friends (except for frequent breaks to chat, comment on the new Bruce Cockburn CD, or eat some of the best cupcakes I've ever had) was a welcome break from solitary days writing in my upstairs room, overlooking the gray squirrels run across the gray roof under the gray sky above the gray street and gray sidewalks. 

Despite the grand view and even grander company on my Palm Springs getaway, I actually got quite a lot of reading, writing, thinking, and interviewing done. Not only that, but my spirit got a little better, defrosted like the Winter Warlock in Santa Claus is Comin' To Town.  A friend read me passages from Rob Bell's new book Love Wins. We swam, sat in the hot tub and talked about the griefs and joys that have shaped the past few years of all of our lives. There was a lot to talk about.

And being able to walk over to the trees by the swimming pool and pick a grapefruit (see above) for a little snack wasn't so bad either. The whole trip was, in a word, heartening. 

But, back to the topic at hand -- adoption.   

I found the adoption process, about 8 1/2 years ago, disheartening at many points. After months of waiting for Mia's homecoming (though, for a time, she was "Charlotte" -- but you can read all about that when Love You More comes out), I was weary, lonely and often found myself hungrily seeking affirmation, information, and some kind of hope that my daughter would, someday, actually be home with us.  

I needed some sunshine, some time away with friends who would help to heal my scraped up heart. But...I was the mother of three young children and, for many reasons, getting away wasn't an option. 

So I slogged on through and -- often -- found encouragement and community online at sites such as those created by Adoption Media. On adoption.com, I read other families' stories, updates on Guatemala adoptions, and put all my fears ("attachment issues," "older child adoption") into the search windows. 

I read and read and read.

Given the lifeline that adoption.com was for me during Mia's adoption process, I'm happy and honored to have been hired as a blogger for their transracial/transcultural family blog. You can find all my recent posts here. (And I invite you to contact me if there are questions or topics you'd like me to address on the blog - what are your fears? Your best practices? Your experiences? What encouragement are you hungry for?) 

Winter is almost over. It really is.  May you find yourself under sunny, blue skies soon, soon, soon. 

Food Glorious Food

Love You More news this month is titled "Food Glorious Food." In it, I look at the pleasures and benefits of family meals and share a short excerpt from "Love You More." The excerpt is from a part of the book that details my daughter's transition to her new home and family in the U.S. after living in Guatemala for the first part of her life. Read the newsletter here. 

I also give titles of a few of my favorite cookbooks - would love to hear what yours are. Comment here if you like.

from "Love You More"

By the time she finally arrived home, Mia was no longer a baby but a toddler who suddenly found herself in house full of people who did not speak her language. We looked different from anyone she had ever known. She now had siblings who were young, loud, and possessive of their mother.

And the food?

It wasn‘t until a week or two after her homecoming that my husband brought home black bean burritos for dinner. I was still setting out the plates when I noticed Mia. She was sitting up straight in her high chair eating the beans I had spooned onto her tray as though they were a delicacy. She looked relieved, as if finally someone had served her some real food. That night I saw her eat like I had never seen her eat before.

"You can keep your quiches, your pasta, and that tofu stir fry," she seemed to say. "This is what I‘m talking about!"

(excerpt from Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter by Jennifer Grant)

Blog Talk Radio

With radio, the listener absorbs everything.

Bob Edwards

I enjoyed chatting with therapist and adoption expert Janice O'Leary who hosts a Canadian blog radio program. Be patient for the first few seconds - I was in a holding pattern.  Not in cyberspace exactly, but maybe hovering above Niagara Falls until I was connected.  It was good fun to talk with Janice about adoption, parenting and Love You More. Give it a listen when you're washing out sippy cups or folding laundry. Listen by clicking here.