whew.\u00a0 after a rollercoaster ride of emotions all weekend, we’re back home, safe and sound.\u00a0\u00a0 on our second San Antonio day, we met 7 people who had worked with our agency in one capacity or another.\u00a0 Most were birthmothers, but there was also a birth grandmother, a birth father and an adoptive parent and her baby.\u00a0 As they each told their stories with heart-rending honesty, I think we all gained a deeper understanding of the emotions that birthparents go through–and not just in the few days after their baby is born, but for a very long time afterwards (probably forever, but no one on the panel had had their baby more than 3 years ago).\u00a0 Some of their stories were absolutely incredible.<\/p>\n
We shared lunch with them (yum, brisket!) and after lunch, they went home and we stayed to listen to some discussions of legal stuff, money stuff, and then did some role-playing.\u00a0 just for fun, there was a crossword “contest” with some of the legal terms and, J and I being eldest siblings and therefore competitive, we won!\u00a0 our prize was a package of onesies and my first reaction was, “great!\u00a0 now i’ve got a shower gift for the next baby shower and don’t have to go shopping!”\u00a0 and my second reaction was, “oh wait.\u00a0 these are for our baby.”\u00a0 wow.\u00a0 it has been a long a bumpy road and i know the bumps aren’t over yet, but at least i believe that we are now on the right road and we will get there.\u00a0 sometime.<\/p>\n
we ended the day with dinner at the Alamo Cafe where the agency staff plied us with margaritas (even I drank one!), Mexican food, fresh tortillas and bowls of queso.\u00a0 Then it was back to the hotel for some late-night chatting with our new friends and then hugs and goodbyes.\u00a0 Who knows when\/if we’ll ever meet again in person?\u00a0 And when we do… will we all have kids in tow?<\/p>\n
For now, it’s back to real life and one more big push of paperwork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
whew.\u00a0 after a rollercoaster ride of emotions all weekend, we’re back home, safe and sound.\u00a0\u00a0 on our second San Antonio day, we met 7 people who had worked with our agency in one capacity or another.\u00a0 Most were birthmothers, but there was also a birth grandmother, a birth father and an adoptive parent and her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riftraft.jayandcarissa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}