Adoption in Connecticut
Adoption in Connecticut
Adoption can be difficult if you're not making the right decision. The right decision is to find a partner that you feel comfortable with and can trust throughout the entire process.
These partners can be your social worker who is creating your home study and making you an approved family. This could be your adoption profile expert who is helping you understand the story of your family and how to communicate that in a clear way that makes an emotional connection with an expectant family. Or it can even be your agency or your attorney. If you do not have a good relationship with these individuals, your adoption journey will be more difficult, very unnecessarily.
Today we're having a conversation with Amy. Amy is a social worker who has 26 years of experience in helping hopeful adoptive families become home-study-approved. She's going to share real stories from her experience that have prevented families from becoming approved. And also share with us some tips that have helped other families be more successful in the process.
Amanda: Let's welcome Amy to the show. Amy, thank you so much for being willing to join us today.
Amy: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to have this kind of resource out in the open for families who are interested in adoption.
Amanda: Thank you. I think so too. It's one of those things that I wish I'd had when I was going through the adoption journey. And that's often my North Star and the types of things that I try to provide for our community. But before we jump into all things adoption in Connecticut, I'd love for the audience to get to know you just a little bit better.
Amy: My name is Amy Zajack. I have a Master's of Social Work from Fordham University. I also attended Sacred Heart University for my Bachelor's Degree. I have an LMSW, which I just recently obtained. I have been working in the field of adoption for 26 years. The entire time I've been working with Catholic Charities of Fairfield County in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So it's I've been there throughout my career. I raised my children through that time and helped a lot of wonderful families adopt children and also helped some pregnant women in need of assistance find their path through their journey. In the state of Connecticut, you don't need a license, you don't need an LCSW to conduct adoption caseworker as long as you have an appropriate supervisor. So basically, I never got my LCSW. I just kind of kept doing what I was doing and got more and more informed about the field as I went through the journey.
Amanda: That's amazing. Thank you for helping our community in that way.
Amy: It takes a special calling to be a social worker specializing in adoption because it is such a complex topic and requires such delicate hands and specialty to serve our community the best. When I first started, I was trained by a woman named Estella Chance, who had done it before her passing. She had worked with Catholic Charities since the 50s. And even when she retired, she worked part-time and you'll come across people everywhere who say Estelle did my home study, Estelle placed me. One of our former mayors in Bridgeport, Connecticut was assisted by her she was amazing and taught me everything I needed to know, particularly the fact that mistakes happen. It's paperwork, and you can redo that at any time. But the one thing I want to reflect on is during my tenure, we had the Connecticut Council on Adoption Services here in the state. That was a group of professionals who were working in the field of adoption, and we would get together regularly for conferences, meetings, and luncheons to discuss our practice. But over the years, as I've continued slowly, that group has dwindled. So it's very hard to find professionals who are versed in adoption, it is not just at the state level, but as well as the nonprofit practice.
Amanda: Yeah, it is. It is one of those that are often kind of referred to as the hidden gems in the adoption world. Oftentimes clients come to me that I'm working on their profile for them or they're kind of helping them get their footing into the adoption world. What do I need to do first? Where do I go? And they oftentimes think I've got to default to this idea of self-matching, if my budget is not going to meet one of those national agencies. But I tell them not to forget about these nonprofit agencies, that they're there to provide the support services that you need in the adoption journey.
Amy: Yes. And we're dwindling as well. We say we're a dying breed. We have Catholic Charities in Norwich, the Archdiocese of Hartford, as well as our agency in Fairfield County. And we are the last man standing when it comes to adoption, the other two agencies closed their doors because they just couldn't sustain it. It is very hard to sustain. We are not eligible for private grants. They don't come across our table simply because we're not a state agency. We're a nonprofit. We're a Catholic organization, even though we serve all. Agencies have made some tough decisions about how they work, particularly because it's gotten increasingly difficult with agencies from outside the state coming into the state to do their work. So it's changed drastically over the years since I started 26 years ago.
Amanda: Yeah, for sure. You touched on something there that I do think is important for our audience to understand is, who will you do work with?
Amy: Yeah, so Catholic Charities has a model that we serve all. We are guided by the Catholic Church. But I've worked with couples and singles of all faiths, including birth parents. So in fact, one of our soup kitchens down in Norwalk, has a very big Jewish population that regularly helps them out and comes up and serves lunch every Christmas Day, because the Catholics are with their families and at church and whatnot. So the Jewish contingency provides lunch for the guests. It's great. You get to meet people from a variety of walks of life doing this work and with different needs and perspectives.
Amanda: Yeah, that is phenomenal. All right. So let's talk a little bit more about adoption in Connecticut. Can you give us kind of an overview of the process? Maybe from the perspective of someone who's just starting the adoption journey?
Amy: First and foremost, I think everyone should understand there are no federal laws regulating adoption. And that's what makes it difficult because every state is different. And it gets complicated. I always tell people, that when you're thinking of population in terms of the availability of children or families, think of and picture the map of the United States. If you think of a state like Connecticut, which is not big, then you think of Texas and how big Texas is, it varies greatly. So not only do you have to deal with the size of your population, you have to deal with the logistics. I used to do adoption one-on-one training for medical professionals. And we used to talk about then and now and then was back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, early 80s. And adoption was thriving. Then Roe v. Wade gets passed. Women were becoming more educated about birth control and, and how to be safe. Numbers dwindled. Numbers have dwindled drastically since that time. I'm not saying it's bleak. What I'm saying is, that when there's a will, there's a way. And there's a variety of options. You just have to be open and flexible. And also you have to be educated. If you're a couple, you have to be on the same page. That's very important. But what I will say first and foremost, you know, I always tell people, it is an extremely personal process. When I meet with someone, I talk to them about the intimate parts of their lives: how they met, where they came from, their background, their upbringing, discipline in their family, and any issues that might be related to social issues, like mental health issues, or domestic violence, those kinds of things. We're given the task of protecting children in this field. So, you know, society deems and our regulatory bodies deemed that we have to make sure any couple we are placing a child with is safe. The catch-22 in that is, and I get this all the time, teenage kids can just have a baby and no one questions it. And yet, we have to jump through these hoops. No one ever said life was fair. But at the same point in time, there's a reason children who are coming into being adopted have in essence already experienced the loss of their biological family. And when we talk about them moving forward, we want to make sure they are in a safe, secure, and stable family so that they don't have to experience that loss again. So when I tell people it's a personal process. I even reiterate, that if you're not comfortable talking to me, please go find another agency because we are in it for the long haul. We need to like each other. So let me just explain what we do a Catholic Charities. Every agency is different. The nuts and bolts are the same, but we haven't placed a child in 10 years. Now, that being said, we're a small state. Girls have gotten savvy, the teen birth rate has declined. So it's been quiet. And that's why we are the only team of Catholic Charities left. But that doesn't mean we're gonna stop helping people. Okay, pregnant teens, pregnant women, they need someone to come to talk to about their journey and what they want to do. Do we help them by simply referring them to resources to become a parent to help their child? Or have they decided to pursue adoption, and then we help them down that path? We're not going to simply say you're not placing your child for adoption so we can't help you. We've realized that there are so many facets to being a parent, and someone who's unprepared needs help because most of the time, they're in panic mode. How do I get health insurance? How do I get diapers? What about daycare? Am I healthy? So we talk about all those things, and we make necessary referrals. On the flip side, when you have an adoptive couple. I always say first and foremost, decide what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and with whom. And that's where we start. So if someone is already working with the Department of Children and Families in the state system, we can't help them. They have their guidelines and rules and those must be followed. If someone's working for a domestic adoption with an agency out of state, both state requirements have to be met. So we need to interact with that agency ahead of time to ensure that same thing with international adoption. But on top of that international adoption has a lot of protocols related to federal and state policy. So you can't just start and say I want to do a home study and just do a home study. You have to know specifically what you need that home study to look like.
Especially for clients, I worry about the money piece of it. And you don't want to get to a point and say, well, now we have to start all over. And it's going to cost you this much more. You want to be on the right path with a plan. And that's the most important part of it. I will say this, we used to be Hague accredited, and Hague accreditation is the accreditation you're required to facilitate international adoptions. We were one of the first agencies that became HEC accredited, like one of the first 18. But over time as international adoptions declined, and most of our clients weren't interested in that, we realized that since we weren't placing children, we didn't need that accreditation to simply work for other agencies providing those home studies. Again, we don't believe in reinventing the wheel. If there's something we can do in a collaborative effort, we're going to do that. The bottom line is, is we're helping another agency bring a child into a family within our state.
Amanda: Yeah, that makes sense. And if those who are listening or watching are trying to decide what type of adoption to pursue, I have a quiz that helps you through that at myadoptioncoach.com/quiz. It’s free and super easy. It'll give you the next step of areas and topics that you need to be researching a bit more so that you're ready to go and call someone to start your home study process. So once they've decided which type of adoption is right for them, then they should call you and get started on the process.
Amy: Yes, but let me explain. I'm gonna jump back to what you just said. Because you made a very good point. Educating yourself is key. You're not going to know what you're getting into unless you research and you educate yourself. And I'm not saying simply Google. Find someone who can explain it to you. I do it daily. I get people calling to say well, we're not sure what we want to do and or how to do it because we don't understand. And I take the time to explain that. And you want to make sure that you're going down the right path. Are you comfortable with domestic adoption? Are you comfortable that with domestic adoption when a child at least in the state of Connecticut turns 18 that child can search for their birth parents or their birth parents can search for them? Race comes into play, are you willing to go outside of your race and adopt a child? Then there’s international adoption. You can simply call an international adoption agency and find out what countries they have. And they'll say, well, you should do this. You shouldn't do anything you are not comfortable with. And if you're not comfortable going to South America to adopt a child or to India or Korea, then that's not your path. You have to realize that, if it's not okay for you, it's not okay for the child you are adopting. You avoid serious issues by making sure that your head on straight with what you can accept and what you cannot accept, including special needs, including gender, all of those things come into play. So once someone makes that decision and contacts an agency like Catholic Charities, you're going to start the application process. The application process is what leads to the home study process. Every state is different. We don't make it easy, but every state is different. So every state has different requirements that have to be met. I can tell you, that when we send out an application packet, we're asking them to put together a package of documents that verify who they are, it runs the gamut. And I have a list of like 26 things. But just to be brief, I will say it includes reference checks from neighbors and friends and medical reports to make sure they're healthy and don't have any conditions that would deter them from parenting. It includes background checks for the safety of the child. It includes home requirements. Does your home meet the requirements? Do you need any future inspections on a pool or the third floor of the attic that was converted into a living space? We also asked for marriage certificates to verify marriage, if that's appropriate. If there was a prior divorce, we check on that to make sure there was no outrageous reach reason why that person might not have access to children from a prior marriage. So we go through these lists of documents for validity and verification. It's kind of funny, we were having this talk the other day about why is it so important to validate who someone is. And I had a colleague who said, Well, look what's going on in Congress right now with George Santos. And not to get political here, but he wasn't verified. So they're coming up with a lot of things that aren't true. In the case of a child, this cannot happen. Our goal is to protect the child. So is the application packet complete? And with us, we then proceed to the interview process. And I'm a lot different than a lot of social workers. I try to make the interview process fun. I do get into it. And you know, I have a section of guidelines that I follow. I have a series of meetings that I conduct. First, I meet with a couple together, and I get to know them as a couple. If it’s a single person that part gets left out. But you know, with couples, I asked a ton of funny questions to not just, you know, how did you meet? How did you get married? Did your family approve? I do ask those things. But then I asked about their relationship. And I asked some questions that are like what is your spouse's most annoying habit? That one is the best. I had a woman once told me she gets annoyed when her husband vacuums. And I couldn't understand that. She said, You just don't understand. He vacuums while I'm watching TV. So he's going back and forth. But you get the idea. I asked those kinds of questions to invoke a little bit of the humor in the process, because it's daunting, and for a lot of people, it's scary. And they're revealing their selves. I talked about how they met, and their views on parenting together as a couple. And then when I meet with them separately, I talk about parenting from their perspective as a child being parented by their parents. So how were you raised? You know, how are you disciplined? Do you agree with what your parents did? Is there anything you would do differently? We get in-depth and that, you know, we get right down to the nitty-gritty. We talk about personal time, what do you do together as a couple, and what do you do separately. What do you want to do as a family and that's very important. What are your childcare plans? Do you need daycare or do you have family that's going to watch this child throughout the process? Is education happening? We're talking about adoption and what type of child they're looking to adopt, how do they feel about adopting a child who's not born to them? You know, have they dealt with their infertility issues? Interestingly, the state of Connecticut has a rule that you cannot adopt within the year of a child's passing. So say a couple loses a child, the state will not allow them to adopt within that year because they want the grieving process to occur. Because if it doesn't, there are unresolved issues. We talk about a lot of different things. I talk with a lot of couples about their infertility if that's why they've come to me. We talk about how they dealt with that, and what it was like for them. You know, I've heard a lot of sad stories. I've sat and held hands while people have cried. We get down to the nitty-gritty, and we explore any issue that could be a potential red flag. If I'm seeing a couple that might not be on the same page, maybe one's just along for the ride, so to speak, that gets addressed. You have to address that. The home study interview process is a series of four meetings. I interview the couple, I interview them each individually, and then I go out to visit the home and make sure the home is safe. I've been in homes that are fully lived in and well set up and then I ventured into homes and I'm like, you've been here seven years and you haven't unpacked. That's not gonna work. We look at the state of Connecticut's requirements for safety. We go through that checklist and we make sure there's no peeling paint, we make sure the water is safe, we make sure that they have access to fire, police, medical, everything that's related to the home and its safety, including a pool. You know, the big thing now is pools. If you have a pool, that pool has to be safe. If they have a pet, is the pet safe to be around children? It's the little things that matter. However, I fully respect that for an adoptive couple or prospective adoptive couple, it can be quite daunting and at times feel intrusive.
Amanda: Yeah, for sure that is something I often get feedback on from our community. To me, that's why it's important to be prepared. So when you're feeling that way sometimes not always, in a deeper rooted, you know, reason, maybe you're feeling a little bit insecure about what's to come? Or would you get approved and those types of things? So understanding what's to come to and hearing the questions that you ask and the inspection checklist that you go through in your home and knowing that you can ask those questions ahead of time to your social worker and say, What are you going to be looking for when you come? Can you give me the list so that I can make sure that we're prepared? Can we talk about what types of topics my husband and I need to talk about and prepare for before our conversation?
Amy: I give them a questionnaire. I give each each party a separate questionnaire. One is a personal information sheet. So that includes just the logistics of who they are. The second one is an adoption-specific questionnaire. And it's about the intricacies. What is your experience with children? How long have you been thinking about having a child? I ask a lot of different questions that way first, in the application process, because it seems to make them more comfortable with the interview process. I did have a nice young couple once. I was going to do their home visit the day before the wife called. And she's like, What is this all about? What are you going to do? And I said I'm going to tour your home you're going to give me a tour of your home and I'm going to check to make sure it's safe. She goes, are you going to be looking in my closets and our kitchen cabinets? And I was like Well yes, but not for the reasons you think you know. I look in closets to make sure you know if are there any guns. A big issue you know is families are allowed to have guns in the state of Connecticut but they have to be secured; locked up, permitted, everything. But so I have to look for these things. You know if someone has a hunting rifle out, that's an automatic Yeah, I know that. But this woman's husband was so worried about the home visit. He was telling her he had to organize the kitchen cabinets and pantry. And I said to her I said what and she said he wants to organize all of our closets this weekend. I said, listen, I said we can have a little fun with this and have him alphabetize the canned goods because I think you'll get a kick out of it. I said but honestly, for your benefit, I'm not looking well. I'm not doing a white glove test so to speak.If you have a little bit of dust, if you don't get to do your cleaning until the weekend because you work, that's fine. But I'm looking for the big picture things. If the house is unlivable. And I have to tell you, you'd be surprised. I have gone to two houses where, and that's two houses in 26 years where we had to go back and say this needs to change before we can approve you. One of the biggest reasons people have a hard time is rooms, the allotment, and the placement of rooms. I've had people who live in apartments want to adopt, which is fine, you can adopt if you live in an apartment. But that child needs to have a bedroom. It can’t be a common area. It can't be a living room. It can't be an alcove. It has to be a bedroom with a door, with children under the age of two on the same level as the parents. Well, I've had some instances where the parents were on a different level than the child and they had to move rooms around. Like they had to move all their rooms around. So those are the kinds of things that come up. Versus anything that your viewers might think.
Amanda: There are some really good stories around what could prevent you from getting approved. I love the let's alphabetize the canned goods.
Amy: I have been tempted to use that to my favor. It's funny because when I got there, I did say to him. After all, this guy was funny. I did say, to the alphabetize your canned goods, I need to check on that. And he looked at me and his face just went like stone cold. I said I'm kidding with you. And he goes, Oh, thank God because I wanted to do it. And she wouldn't let me.
Amanda: When we were going through our process, I didn't know any better. And so I was completely flipped out. I went through and did this massive purge in our house. My husband came home from work one day, and he looked around the house, and he said, they're gonna think we don't live here anymore.
Amy: The hardest thing that I always have to address, and it's really hard, is when I go into a house and a nursery is set up and they don't have other children. So there's no reason for a nursery to set up, but they're preparing for a child that will come into their home. My concern with that is, that even people who get pregnant don't set up that nursery till the third trimester. With adoption, it's a long journey. And to have that room sitting there every day looking at it, you're playing mind games with yourself. The time will come for that. Okay, it will come. But you need to plan for a specific child. And it's not just the nursery. It’s this child's room, and if it's a boy, what do you want it to look like? If it's a girl? What do you want it to look like? What if by chance you get twins? You know, I always say to people don't do that. Like, just don't do that to yourself. And I've had people who've done it, and they'll come back to me and they'll say you were right. We never should have done it. Because it's just sitting there. And it's a constant reminder of what we don't have.
Amanda: I oftentimes get clients that say, Well, I'm not ready to do my profile yet, because I don't have a picture of the nursery. I'm not done. And I'm like, Whoa, you Yeah, you don't need your nursery done. And you certainly don't need to include a photo of that in the profile.
Amy: I will tell you the profile process I find to be very interesting. You know, we've come a long way and 26 years with the profile. There are databases and websites and whatnot. The most important thing we stress during the home study about everything is honesty. You need to be honest with yourselves. You need to be honest in presenting yourself. You need to not make promises you're not going to be able to keep. There's this perception that birth mothers are looking for the Rockefellers to raise their children. And that's not the case. A lot of women come and say to me, I'm not looking for a wealthy family. I'm looking for a family that's going to get down in the mud and play. Yeah. And I have a hard time with people who try to make themselves out to be something they're not. If you can't be honest with your child's birth parent, how are you going to be honest with that child? If you're adopting a child from another country that you don't originate from, or you adopt a child who's of a different race than you, there's no way you can get around the fact that this child is adopted. Okay? There's a clear visual difference. However, the couples that adopt a child of the same race, if they had the intention to not tell the truth, you could avoid the topic of adoption completely as the child's grown up. I am adamant with couples, you need to be honest. And this is how you explain to your child that they are adopted from start to finish. We talk about life books, you know, it's no different than a couple putting together a baby book of a child that was born to that. Instead, it may be this is the agency where we went for our home study, and this is the day we met your birth mother, and this is the day we picked you up from the hospital. And the families that I've addressed in that way, and who followed that guide, their children are doing so well. There's no shame. There's no embarrassment. It's, I'm adopted, this is who I am. And I have two parents who love me. Because the woman who brought me into this world was not able to take care of me. And she not that she loves me. It's not that she didn't love me. She just couldn't do it for whatever reason. And that's very important for people to understand. Respecting birth parents is very important for people to understand. It's I, you know, I, my children are not adopted i. So I have never gone through that. But I've lived through this so much that I understand what birth parents go through. And what adoptive couples go to, I am like the person in the middle, and I protect both parties. But first informed, we talked about the adoption triad, the triangle, and it's, you know, at the bottom on either side is the adoptive family and the birth family. But up at that top, they are supporting that child, whether they're present or not. They're still a factor in keeping that shape. So I can't stress enough for your audience to understand what it means to adopt. You're adopting and bringing into your home, someone not born to you, someone not with the same DNA as you, someone who may not look like you at all? And can you handle that? And then can you handle the tough questions that come up throughout the lifespan? We've all no matter who we are, or what type of parent we are, we've had a child say to us, I hate you. You're not my real mother. I don't care who you are. We've talked about this in our training at the agency. We had a professional come and do a training on international adoption once and she led off with that. She goes, I have five kids to her adopted three or not. And they all said to me, that when you're an adoptive parent, it hits differently. And how you react and how you respond to your child is going to mean the world to them.
Amanda: You're setting the tone for that when they're tiny. I mean, you just you there are small things that don't happen throughout the day. And I noticed this because in our house adoption is the only way people come into our family. And so it's one of those just second nature things, but we'll be in a situation where someone will say something that's maybe not adoption-positive or adoption-friendly. And I find it a great sense of pride when my children correct them or just like, kind of look at him like they've got a third head like what are you talking about like that? That's crazy talk to me. We were recently reading a book for a district-wide reading challenge. And my daughter and I were sitting there together and she was pre-reading at that stage. I'm reading a little bit ahead just to kind of help her along context-wise. And I see this sentence and it says, Ira had a horrible thought, what if I'm adopted? And I see this sentence coming like two sentences away, and my brain is quickly processing like, how do we handle this? You know, the conversation and it was a first I was like, Okay, let me let her read it, and let's go through this moment together and kind of coach through it. And she reads it and she says, why would that be a horrible thought? I was like, what a beautiful response that she naturally had to this situation. And it's because we have talked since she was tiny about how she grew in my heart and not in my belly. Our Forever Family Day was the day that you were able to be in our family. So we celebrate their birthdays and their Forever Family Day. And we celebrate the sacrifice that their birth parents gave for us. I oftentimes tell them, do you know how lucky I am to be your mommy?
Amy: Yeah, I will tell you. It's interesting because when you talk about birth parents and their sacrifice, I've seen it all. I mean, there's no way I couldn't see it all. I just got an email from a former adoptive couple who adopted a boy from us years ago. And his birth mother did not know she was pregnant. It was a shock to her when he was born. And people say, Well, how is it a surprise, and I'm like, well, denial ain't just a river in Egypt people. But she wanted nothing to do with this child. She was so mentally detached because of the trauma of what she went through. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't even visit him. She had a boyfriend. And this boy, broke my heart in a million pieces because he wanted to parent his son. More than anything, that is what he wanted. And the child was born premature, the child was in the NICU for a while. He came up every free moment he had from where he lived by train, to be with that child in the hospital to make sure his son wasn't alone. And in the end, he was the one who picked the family. She wanted nothing to do with it. It was so beautiful to see his commitment because a lot of times you don't see that with the birth fathers. He was so invested in his son that when we had the horrible incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School, here in Connecticut, he called me to make sure his son was not in that school. And he was the only one who called. I mean, we’ve placed thousands of kids. He was the one who called and told me about his life and how he was doing and that he now knows that he did the right thing placing his son. We have to respect birth parents, we have to it's like you said they provide a gift. And they provide a gift to someone who is in need. Someone who wants something so bad that they ache. And without a birth parent, it would never happen. I've seen some amazing things over the years. I've seen some things that I know fate has a way of playing into it, you know, kids who have the same birthday as a grandparent, or there's this cosmic thing that goes on. But again, most importantly, you have to be educated. You have to be prepared. I can't stress this enough. If you're looking to adopt outside of your race, you need to be comfortable with that. And not just comfortable with the fact that this child is coming into your small little house. But how's the extended family going to react? I've had this conversation with my husband. I don't know if it would work in our family with the older generation. But I had a couple of ones that we did not place a child with. Even though the birth parents chose them. It was a biracial situation, the child was half African American, half Caucasian. And this was a Caucasian couple. And the birth parents chose this family. And when the child was born, and we were talking about placement, the adoptive parents started asking me about skin tone. Is he light? Is he dark? Do they think his color is going to change it was such a red flag, that we had to have a team meeting about how to handle it. And at that time, I wasn't in charge. However, the family was given a serious talking to about how the agency would only be placing a Caucasian child with them going forward. You know, children aren't paint chips, right? They're not paint chips. It's not like you can pick and choose if you're adopting a child that's of a different race or biracial, you can't pick and choose how they're going to look as they grow up. So either you've looked at the big picture, and you're comfortable with all of it, or it's not right for you because it's not right for that child.
Amanda: That's right.
Amy: And that's all that matters the most is what's right for that child.
Amanda: It does.
Amy: And it's not that we're calling adoptive couples selfish in wanting a child and wanting a child so bad and they'll do anything to get a child. We're talking about a human being. A baby. Someone who needs to be taught throughout the lifespan, about how to navigate this world. And it's not an easy world for anyone to navigate. But a child that’s adopted might have an additional layer to that to peel off simply because of their origin and how comfortable they feel with that origin. I have many friends who have either adopted or are adopted. And I've had some pretty frank conversations about their intentions, how you feel about meeting your birth parents and their split, and I talk about personal issues. But all of them talk about the feeling of being loved by their adoptive parents, who are simply their parents. You know, an adoptee doesn't go around saying, my adoptive mom. The only time you ever come across questions regarding that is in the China adoption program. And we did a lot of educating around that program to make sure people were ready to bring a child from Asia into their homes. Because there's no hiding it.
I traveled once with a group of families to go pick up their kids and I still see those kids. They're about 23 years old now. They've told me stories about how kids would be like, Oh, is that your adoptive mom? And they'll be like, No, that's my mom. Like, my mom. I also have a funny story. We used to have a colleague of mine come in and do the training. And we called it transracial adoption training. At the time before it was even required. Like before the Hague required it, we were doing it. She would come in and talk about her family because she did adopt from Korea a few times, but she also had a biological child in the midst of it all. And her one son whom she adopted from Korea, she remembers being apprehensive with him just because people would ask stupid questions in front of him. People would ask her inappropriate questions and she felt like she was constantly policing people. One day she was at the library for storytime with her son. It was a rainy day. And he had on his little yellow raincoat. He had on his water boots and they were in an elevator with an elderly woman who kept looking at him and kept looking at his feet. Finally, she turned to the woman she said, I put his shoes on. Because she was anticipating a comment of some sort. The woman goes, that’s lovely. But you put them on the wrong feet. She said, from that moment forward, I realized that someone could be looking at my child for a different reason other than the fact that he doesn't look like me.
Amanda: Yeah. Thank you, this has been helpful. I love these real-life examples because I think that helps our audience learn a lot better.
Amy: It does. And that's how we learn. We learn by our history and by sharing experiences. And I always tell couples or individuals who are looking to adopt, do you know somebody who's adopted? Do you know somebody who is adopted? And if they are, have a conversation, to ask them about their experience. Again, not all experiences are wonderful. Not all of them are wrapped up in bows. But you learn by having those conversations about how to talk to someone who's, that's their life. You know, can I go through what they've gone through? Can I do that journey?
Amanda: Yeah, that is super helpful. So if someone is looking to start their adoption journey and learn more about an option in Connecticut, or even become home study approved, how can they get in touch with you so that they can begin that process?
Amy: CCFairfield.org. I think that's the best way to get in touch with me. Go to our website and go to our adoption page. It's very easy to navigate. CC fairfield.org. It’s Catholic Charities, Fairfield.
Amanda: Awesome. Any final words that you'd like to leave our audience with as we wrap up our conversation today?
Amy: I do. So this is a journey. It is a journey that you have to be able to be flexible. You have to be willing to get educated. There will be ups and downs. I understand that the landscape isn't ideal for families. But in the end, I always say to people, when there's a will, there's a way. It's like any challenge you face or any problem you're trying to solve. If you want to become a parent, and that's your goal, find a way. Figure it out. Learn about different options, and then seek the help of someone who knows what they're doing to help you. Make sure you're comfortable with that person and the process. If you do that, and you're patient, you'll become a parent.
Amanda: That's awesome. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for sharing with our audience. Thank you for giving them some motivation and some real-life examples to help through the journey.
Amy: Thank you for having me. I feel what you're doing is wonderful, because people need someone with this kind of passion to go to to get their answers and to get some help and guidance.
Amanda: Thank you. I appreciate that. I tell everybody, I'm not the end all be all. I don't have all the answers. But if I don't know, I'll point you in the direction of, this type of individual should be the type of resource that you need in this situation. Go talk to them.
Amy: Exactly. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just find the path they need to go down.
Amanda: That's right, exactly. Well, thank you again. I was so thankful for Amy's approach in our conversation today. I think understanding the stories from real people who have been through this process, those that weren't approved those that were, and some common pitfalls in the adoption process will help you have an easier time adopting, no matter if you're adopting to Connecticut or in another state. If you're looking for a ray of sunshine in your adoption journey, then check out my conversation with Mackenzie. Mackenzie is a client who recently matched her adoption.
