Cohabitating

One year ago this week we learned that a family was breaking apart and that a little girl was in need of a home. From the moment we got the call, until four days later when we were driving up to the child protective services office, Miguel and I kept asking ourselves if this was really happening. However, all of the guarded joy we felt at adding to our family was tempered by the awareness of the very real trauma that this young child had endured.

While it is wild to me that Strawbaby has been with us for a year already, it simultaneously feels like she has always been a part of our family. And in a way, she has been: our family was reborn when she entered our lives. This family isn’t better or worse than any other version of our family, but it is wildly different. Certainly, less stressful although significantly louder. So. Much. Louder.

Many people have been asking when Strawbaby’s adoption will be finalized and I’m happy to report we are about to file with the courts! For most of 2021 I had been preparing a home study (a massive compilation of documents that proves we are loving and capable parents), to adopt a child from Colombia. Then the Strawbaby call came and I switched gears to preparing for a custody case. Once we were granted legal custody of Strawbaby earlier this year… and I learned we would have to start our home study process all over again in order to file to adopt Strawbaby… I decided I needed an adoption breather.

Having custody allowed me to sleep easier knowing that no one could swoop in and take her away from us. But also, life was literally happening – we had a new child in our home that needed constant love and attention, I had to write the book I’d sold, and Jackson’s baseball schedule took over our life. Then finally towards the end of the summer I began the necessary work (again) of compiling our entire life story for the home study: background checks, every financial document that could possibly exist, detailed medical and psychiatric exams, etc. It’s been a journey, one that I cannot wait to end with me not having to hide Strawbaby’s name or face.

One that makes her my legal daughter.

Though, this is already evident to anyone that sees our family together: she is ours and we are hers. I was admittedly a little concerned about what this would feel like when attending Epilepsy Awareness Day at Disneyland (EADD) earlier this week. To be around so many other families that so closely associate us, and relate to us through Adelaide. We had walked the path of seizures and medial trauma, disability and delays, but that is no longer our everyday.

I now have a child who can hug and dance and smile with the princesses and characters when it’s her turn to meet them. She squealed with excitement during every ride clapping and yelling, “Again! Again!” On the EADD expo floor she ran in circles through a massive inflatable brain while clutching all the purple swag she could carry. Here was the experience that I had mourned not being able to have with Adelaide and it was incredible. Incredible and confusing and joyful and grief fuel.

And then it settled over me that this current iteration of our physical family is one that I would have been painfully jealous of just one year ago. A healthy family of four with children who were happy, not suffering and would lead typical lives. It has been seriously messing with mind that seeing our family could be someone else’s emotional trigger.

I was hoping that through the act of writing this blog I would be able to find the words to name and process these emotions, but it’s so freaking complicated. We are so fortunate to have Strawbaby in our lives, to be able to experience the joy that comes from watching your child recognize and hug Minnie Mouse, to navigate tantrums instead of seizures. Yet, in that gratitude I must hold space for the trauma and loss that brought Strawbaby to us in the first place – in both her life and ours. We are together now because of our painful pasts.

Now and forever, I will straddle these two very different worlds with these two very different physical iterations of my family. In time I imagine I will get better at cohabitating – for now I will cut myself some slack. After all, it’s only been a year.