Tuesday, February 15, 2011

"Walk towards us, our horns don't poke"


It's as easy as one, two, three, four.....four of our children soundly asleep by 6:45pm. My husband is at our sons basketball game with three of our older sons, another son at cadets and I'm sitting up with three more of our children watching "Brother Bear" Having a larger family is not so hard for us. What's difficult at times is the community around us. I've always stated that I understand that other families don't really understand us. I've come to the conclusion that it will always be this way. Years ago I wanted to start this blog and explain why we adopt, why we continue to adopt and how we manage as a large family. Now I'm personally in a comfortable space knowing that our large family is doing fairly well considering what other families might think. Consider this......you're a family with two birth children with no special needs. You have your challenges from time to time but for the most part, life runs smoothly. You have no idea about special needs or adoption. You can't imagine why anyone would want to adopt special needs children and many special needs children. Why on earth would you adopt? There must be a reason, if there isn't a logical reason, you must be completely crazy! With your two physically and mentally healthy children you don't want them exposed to children that might be potentially harmful. Not to mention, you don't want them hanging out at someones crazy house! I completely get this. I can explain until I'm choking up blue spit why, how and who we are as a large adoptive family but some will never understand because they don't live nor want to live it. I know some individuals openly admit that they can't handle their two, so if THEY can't handle their two, how on earth can WE handle twelve or fourteen? I've explained how but what it boils down to is not everyone has that gift to raise several children, several special needs children. Just like I don't have that gift to massage feet or the need to fly an airplane. Ultimately we all have a passion, that's what makes us all unique. Our world wouldn't turn without all our different gifts that we were given. So for example, I wouldn't judge, make an opinion or lift my nose in the air and walk away because you're an astronaut with no children. I have the strength that if I was interested, I would ask and even confirm my possible interest in ones choice in life. Most of us hear rumors, in fact all of us have heard and perhaps believed a rumor to be true at one point or another. What's unfortunate about this is rumors are nonfactual. I on my blog will admit that I've believed past rumors (gossip) to be true because I thought the source was trustworthy. A credible person, so how could I not believe what I was being told? A life lesson; if you don't hear the story from the exact person involved, it's merely gossip. You're probably wondering where I'm going with this? Today I was sitting having coffee with some lovely friends I know, we were discussing our lives and about on how people we've known or don't know walk away when we enter a room. I believe this is because they don't understand our lives (a large adoptive family) a family with behavioral children that are known in the community. Perhaps they have heard about us through the rumor mill, these strange beings from another planet. I often wonder why they wouldn't want to seek the truth? After all, my horns only come out after midnight and only my husband sees me this way! My children's horns that appear during the day are just in the learning stages of their development. We aren't only approachable, we are really interestingly fun to be around. It's a catch 22, either you like us or you don't but we're staying here on earth. Horns and all. I personally think that if it's a rumor or just pure lack of understanding why some individuals walk away, they are missing out on knowing a big bunch of really cool families. Families that not only accept everyone for who they are, they accept everyone in their life, their home and if anything understand being different. I don't know about you but I like to have individuals in our life that can accept a little horn growth.

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