Jean Minton - All the Sweeter: Families Share Their Stories of Adopting from Foster Care

ALL THE SWEETER

Copyright 2019 by Jean Minton

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published May 2019
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-495-0
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-496-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967213

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

To the families who shared their stories. Thank you.

I n the early 2000s, as a Peace Corps health volunteer in Malawi, I witnessed many children lose their parents to AIDS. Seeing the overwhelming need for families to care for these children opened my eyes to the possibility of adopting. Living in San Francisco a decade later, I volunteered on the board of directors for AASK (Adopt a Special Kid), a fost-adopt agency started in 1972 by Bob and Dorothy DeBolt, who pioneered the idea that a family didnt need to be a man and a woman parenting children who resembled them. AASK supported LGBTQ parents, single parents, and transracial adoptions and fought for all children in the US foster care system, especially those with disabilities. AASKs mission quickly captured my heart and cemented my desire to one day create my own forever family with the help of the foster-to-adopt process.

As I began to consider starting a family, I sought out resources to help me understand the foster-to-adopt system. I wanted to hear families stories, understand whether any fears I had were valid, and, if so, how families managed through their challenges. While there are many valuable resources available, I didnt find any quite like what I wanted. So, when I had an opportunity to spend a year abroad, I paused my career and wrote All the Sweeter.

Researching this project, I read more than thirty insightful books and a much larger number of blog posts and websites on adoption-related subjects: transracial adoption, adoption of older children, adoption of traumatized children, how to talk to adopted children about adoption, foster care, and child development. I reference and recommend many of these in this book. I hope that the forever-family stories contained herein will complement these other resources and will ultimately inspire parents to consider building their families by adopting through the US foster care system.

My greatest hope for this book is that potential parents read these family stories and become inspired to fost-adopt. The families in these stories exhibit endless tenacity, love, and selflessness. As a result of caring for their children, one family received hundreds of support letters from colleagues, teachers, and friends and discovered a new depth of compassion in their community. One mom, after a tough parenting moment, became emotional when she overheard her older adopted son lovingly explain to his adopted sister her adoption story. Another family, who didnt think twice about receiving affection from their four biological daughters, experienced surprise and hard-earned joy when their adopted daughter returned a hug.

Stories like these are inspiring, but raising children (adopted from foster care or not) can also push parents to their limits. My greatest fear is that potential parents will read these family stories and find one that scares them out of taking their next step to adopt children from foster care. In her book, Instant Mom, actress and adoptive mom Nia Vardalos underscored this fear for me when she described her thoughts as she considered adoption. She wrote, I was surrounded by positive stories of adoption, but of course the scary ones kept me up at night.... Its just human nature to pick up on the things that cause us anxiety. I could hear

While some aspects of these stories might be scary and initially discouraging, they reflect a real potential situation. Including these difficult realities allows families to learn from them. Families can then choose to either develop boundaries to avoid such situations or develop strategies for addressing these situations head-on. Throughout these stories, families emphasize that either of these choices is okay. Thankfully, Vardalos overcame her anxieties, adopted a daughter from foster care, and wrote a New York Times best-selling book about her experience.

All the Sweeter tells the stories of families who have adopted one or more children from the US foster care system. Each of the families interviewed has a dedicated chapter in which at least one representative tells his or her familys adoption storyhighs, lows, and everything in between. All the Sweeter provides the reader with information through its subjects actual firsthand experiences. During one of the family interviews, the mom, who is a reporter, said that the highlight of her foster care training was when adoptive parents came in to tell their stories. She said, We all love hearing stories; its part of being human.... The names have been changed, and maybe some of the details, but these are real stories and thats why its powerful.

Families who read All the Sweeter will receive information regarding the potentially complicated adoption process and an intimate glance into the lives of families raising these children. The families interviewed understand that professionals do their absolute best in a very complicated system. However, if professionals are eager and able to improve the system, All the Sweeter will shed light on areas where families desperately need assistance.

Woven through these stories are topical chapters that take a deeper dive into the common challenges in which these families find themselves. These five chapters weave together families experiences with information from literature related to foster care and adoption. The topics include helping children understand foster care and adoption, diverse families changing what we consider normal family structure, transracial adoption, raising a child with a history of trauma, and relationships between birth and adoptive families. These chapters scratch the surface of summarizing research, experience, and literature on these topics. Their purpose is to serve as a starting point for continued research, should families want to learn more about navigating these subjects. They also reference additional sources that I encourage readers to explore.

All the Sweeter provides a resource to families considering adoption, families in the process of adoption, and families postadoption of children from foster care. Each year, more than fifty thousand children are adopted from the US foster care system. My interviews intentionally include families from diverse backgrounds in such areas as religion, sexual orientation, marital status, race, number of biological and adopted children in their families, child age, and parent age. Any family considering adoption will find more than one family situation in this book with similarities to their own. Those considering adoption from foster care will have many of their questions answered, those in the process of adoption will be better able to prepare for their future family, and those post adoption will learn from others experiences. My ultimate goal with this book is to facilitate a better life for foster children.