TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF

Every year as the weather improves, I try to spend more time away from the city.  I enjoy the slower pace and the peaceful feeling communing with nature brings. I try to step away from daily life, which often feels like being on a treadmill with no off button.  Even though, I still take my role as part of a family’s adoption team seriously and I check my phone and emails frequently.

I can easily remember the emotional ups and downs of my own adoption journey. Waiting for calls, hanging up the phone thinking I forgot to ask something important or could I have said something that would derail the relationship with the  expectant mother. Wondering when I would get the call to leave town to meet my child and how long it would take to get interstate clearance to get home again.

What I learned through my two adoption processes and from the thousands of families I have worked with over the years, is that when it’s your time, things will fall into place. The child who was meant to be yours will find you. I’m not sure how this works, but I continue to hear it time and time again.

Yes, you constantly have adoption on your mind.  So, take your phone with you, but at the same time try your best to enjoy family, friends, hobbies, vacations, whatever.  Savor these moments.   Your life will  change soon enough.

Kathy Ann Brodsky, LCSW is a New York and New Jersey licensed social worker, adoptive mom and advocate for ethical adoption practice. Through her private practice and agency affiliations, she has prepared  thousands of adoption  homestudies, counseled  expectant, birth, pre/post adoptive parents and  adopted  persons, as  well  as trained  professionals  to  work  with  adoptive  families. She  was Director of the  Ametz  Adoption  Program of  JCCA and a member of the Advisory Board for POV’s Adoption  Series and the  Adoption  Advisory  Board  of  Path2Parenthood, She is currently a  Adoption   Professional   Advisory  Council  of  HelpUSAdopt , a member of the Advisory Board of the Family Equality Council and  active  in  the  Adoptive Parents Committee in  New  York.  Her  blogs  and  written contributions can be seen throughout the Internet, including  her  BLOG  and  as  Head  Writer  for  ADOPTION.NET   She  was  named  an  “Angel in Adoption” by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption in 2001. You can reach her directly