Happy Thanksgiving from The Salvation Army Children's Services!
"[Adoption] carries the added dimension of connection not only to your own tribe but beyond, widening the scope of what constitutes love, ties, and family. It is the larger embrace."
- Isabella Rossellini
Tomorrow, families across the nation will gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some of these families are fortunate enough to experience this "larger embrace" as part of their celebrations. Through adoption, they have not just added a child to their table but an entire extended family tree, another family's history, new and diverse cultural ties, and so much more love.
As Thanksgiving occurs during National Adoption Month, we are particularly grateful for the amazing families who have taken the courageous path of adoption, including the three families who have adopted with The Salvation Army Children's Services since last Thanksgiving, and the two additional families who are anxiously awaiting their adoption dates next week!
But this "added dimension of connection" is not just limited to adoption. Our hope is that all of our families begin to experience it the moment they start working with us - from building connection with an agency and professionals who will become a close part of their daily lives, to deepening their connection with each other as a family, to ultimately "widen[ing] the scope" to welcome a child or children into their own tribe, whether for a short time or forever.
While foster care and adoption are complex, challenging, and rooted in immense trauma, the paradoxical truth is that while we desperately wish they didn't exist, we are also grateful that they do. As foster care and adoption professionals, we find ourselves shedding many tears and expressing much anger at work as we bear witness to the front lines of child abuse, endangerment, neglect, and rejection. And yet we also savor the glimpses of joy that come along behind it:
- A teenager who had long given up on finding a forever family making a connection with a new family who wants her
- A child who has been wracked with the anxiety of wondering what his future will hold saying goodbye to foster care as he walks out of a courtroom with a new last name and a forever family
- Parents who were unsure of how another child would fit into their family, falling in love with a sweet little girl making her their forever daughter
- A baby given a devastating medical prognosis after experiencing severe abuse surpassing all expectations and thriving in the care of his loving forever family
- A birth parent thanking her children's adoptive family for giving them the unconditional love she had never experienced in her own childhood
From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow, full of the warmth of family and gratitude. If your life has been touched by adoption, our hope for you is that you have a beautiful day of balancing the reality of the trauma with the joy of your family's connection. And if you find yourself with room around your table and a heart with more love to give, we would love to connect with you to share more about how adoption could become part of your family's story!