Day 2: Counseling

Today, still being jet lagged, I woke up at 4am. It just so happens that with a baby in the household, that’s often about when Reed’s family wakes up too. Maybe this jet lag is working to my advantage? I can tell you that I would rarely be up by 4 or 5 (or 10) under any other circumstance! After Maura’s parents left to go back to NY and Doug left for work, Maura and I sat on the living room floor and had a wonderful time chatting, drinking hot tea and watching Reed keep himself busy with his books and toys.

The big plans for the day, besides Reed’s one year checkup, were to go to the adoption agency we used so Doug, Maura and myself could meet with a counselor. Maura, being a therapist and recognizing my need for support through this whole process, had asked me a couple of months ago if I would like to meet with a professional during my visit, and I thought it was a great idea.

I’ve really been wanting counseling. It’s not because I feel negative about the adoption, in fact I still feel very positive about the whole thing. Even as much as I miss Reed and think about him, I have no regrets. Especially now, seeing how happy he is and what wonderful parents Doug and Maura are! But just because adoption was the best decision I made, doesn’t mean it was the easiest. Just because I feel very positive about how things are going doesn’t mean I don’t feel any pain. Just because I’m not the one raising my own son and I chose not to do so doesn’t mean I don’t miss him so much that it hurts down to my fingertips, and just because I’m genuinely happy and thankful for the life I lead doesn’t mean I don’t shed any tears.

I consider myself a pretty sane, rational and well adjusted individual, so if there weren’t any counseling I think I would still continue to be sane, rational and well adjusted. But oh how wonderful it would be for me to sit with someone who is experienced and familiar with what I’m going through, and talk and cry and sob and share my joys and confess my fears and they would just listen and ask me questions and hand me boxes of tissues and they wouldn’t try to fix my “problems” or pretend to have all the answers, but would just help guide me through this forest of emotions because it can be very dense at times.

Not only would counseling be hugely beneficial for me, but it would be really great if Doug, Maura and I could have guidance together as we’re still getting to know each other and work out our own relationships. They have been so wonderful so far, and again, if we never get any guidance, I’m confident that we can figure things out and make them work because of our love for Reed and for each other. But how nice it would be to have a professional setting with an experienced third party opinion to help us.

That’s what we were hoping for today as we headed off to the adoption agency, who promised life-long counseling as part of the deal. We had the appointment set a month in advance with the professional who is suppose to be able to see to these kinds of things, and I had already been going through in my head some questions I had or issues I would like to address. Just thinking about being able to finally talk to someone about it made me emotional. However that professional forgot about our meeting and was out of town, and we ended up speaking with a couple of other well meaning workers at the agency. As good as their intentions were though, it quickly became apparent that they could not offer us the kind of help and support we were seeking, so we cut the meeting short and left early. Since we’ve already been working on building a strong relationship and have been pretty successful thus far, the three of us agreed that we could do a better job and be more productive on our own. Not that we won’t continue to seek outside help, support and guidance in the future, just not from that source. Unfortunate.

In the car ride home, Maura and I continued to talk about some of the things that were barely starting to be touched on that we would have liked to discuss in counseling. As usual, she was very easy to talk to and we ended up getting a lot accomplished just in the drive home. It’s so wonderful to be working with such open minded and open hearted people! But there will be things that I can’t work out just by talking to Doug and Maura, and for that I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that there will be someone hopefully sooner than later whom I can meet with.