Let’s Talk Adoption – One Family’s Experience
A guest essay from Tom Tracy
Welcome to the first A Wonderful Mess guest essay! If you missed the update last week, you can read it here. The short version is that I am getting some help from the community of Substack writers in the coming months while I recover from shoulder surgery. A change in plans has meant the opportunity to bring in new voices and more stories.
Stories can expand and bring us new understanding. We can learn about others, see others, and, in turn, others seem less like others. Families come in many different shapes, all with their unique origins. Today, we get the privilege of learning about one family’s beginning.
November is recognized as National Adoption Month in the United States. In honor of this,
, our guest writer, is sharing his family’s experience with adoption. Tom is a proud dad of two daughters, an award-winning children’s book author, and a licensed clinical social worker. Tom’s Substack is .Thank you, Tom, for hanging out in the mess with us. And here is his family’s story.
A Brief History of National Adoption Month
This year marks the 29th year that adoption awareness has received national recognition. Here’s a quick recap of how National Adoption Month began.
1976 – Introduced by Governor Mike Dukakis, Massachusetts issues the first state-level adoption recognition, dedicating a week in November as adoption week.
1984 – President Ronald Regan officially declares National Adoption Week to occur in November.
1995 - President Bill Clinton expands the recognition beyond one week, declaring November as National Adoption Month.
Currently, it is estimated that between 4.5 – 5 million people in the U.S. have been adopted and about 1 out of every 25 families have a child who has been adopted. National Adoption Month promotes awareness of the number of youth in foster care awaiting adoption, but it also brings visibility to all types of adoption.
Our Story
My husband and I have two daughters, ages 7 and 3, who joined our family through private, domestic adoption. They say when you’ve experienced one adoption, you’ve experienced one adoption, as no two adoption experiences are alike. This couldn’t be truer for us in adopting our girls.
When we first decided to pursue growing our family, we explored all the possible options that would be available to us as a gay couple. It was all together overwhelming and exciting at the same time. There were countless “happily ever after” stories associated with each option, yet an equal number of stories that ended with “shattered dreams.” I can personally share that it takes a lot of emotional fortitude when pursuing “alternative” family planning strategies and your strength as a couple is tested more often than a sixth grader learning vocabulary words. Yet, we endured and opted to pursue adoption as our path to build our family.
Next came the ordeal of researching the different types of adoption (i.e. open vs. closed; domestic vs. international; private infant adoption vs. foster to adopt; etc.). Then we needed to determine which agency would be right for us – some agencies do not serve same-sex couples. Because there is no playbook and nothing we’d done before this had prepared us for the decisions we’d need to make on this journey, each new decision was associated with a tremendous amount of second-guessing ourselves. Ultimately, you need to trust your decisions and then write that first check to formally initiate the adoption process. Gulp! That’s a giant leap of faith. But leap is what we did.
The odds must have ever been in our favor with our first adoption because, within 30 days of writing that first check, we were matched with a birth mother! She chose us because we were gay and also felt we could provide a quality life for her baby that she was unable to provide. She was local and in her first trimester, so there were many opportunities to meet face-to-face with her and her family before she gave birth. Our bond with her was instant and it was clear, that our family wasn’t about to grow by just a child; we were being embraced and welcomed by a whole other family as well.
We later came to learn our experience was rare and fit the category of “fairy tale.” This would be proven again with our second adoption.
When our daughter was three years old, we decided to pursue a second adoption. We felt like pros at this point and went into the process confident about a quick match. Again, we wrote a check, marked the calendar, and eagerly awaited our “you’ve been matched” phone call. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. And the months turned into two long years of waiting.
One evening, my husband and I had a conversation about withdrawing our application and resigning ourselves to having only one child. It was a sad resignation, but we were at peace with it, until …
The next evening, we received the call. We had been matched! But there was a catch. The baby had already been born and was awaiting discharge from the hospital. If we wanted to be this baby’s adoptive parents, we would need to present ourselves to the hospital, which was a six-hour drive two states away, by 8:00 am the next morning.
Frenzied, we rallied our family to watch our now 5-year-old. We secured a dog sitter. We grabbed a car seat and some previously used baby supplies from the attic and hastily packed the car, hoping there’d be a Wal-Mart near the hospital so we could pick up anything else we needed and had forgotten. My husband drove through the night while I researched hotels through my cell phone so we would have a place to stay. We arrived at 2:00 am, exhausted and all together exhilarated, knowing that we’d be meeting our baby in the morning.
And we did. And it was beautiful!
We were fortunate to be able to hold both our daughters within hours of their birth and we haven’t stopped letting go since!
As a children’s author, it’s been a privilege to memorialize my daughters’ adoption experiences in book form and share those stories with the world. My oldest’s is captured in the book “Scoochie’s Adoption Story” and my youngest’s is captured in the soon-to-be-released “Wonderfully You: An Ode to Adoption.”
You can find more about Tom on his website. He can be found on Instagram and Facebook. His Substack is
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As always—Just a little reminder: The content on A Wonderful Mess posted by Dr. Kathryn Barbash, PsyD is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical, clinical, legal, or professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk. Always seek the advice of your licensed mental health professional or other qualified health provider.
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Thank you again for sharing your family with us, Tom!
Wow, Tom, what a story! From reading both experiences it’s pretty clear it was meant to be and the four of you were meant to become a family. So happy it worked out so well for you but wow, what a wild ride!