Embarking on the path of adoption or deciding against it—either one is a journey laden with emotion and complexity. Today, I open my heart to you in a candid narrative of my own experiences with the profound choice of not adopting.
We'll cover the unpredictable adoption landscape, unpack societal expectations, and contemplate the often-overlooked emotional and logistical hurdles that can steer one away from this life-altering decision.
Listen to this episode and also discover:
If you're struggling with the tangle of societal expectations, judgment, fears and your own true desires that keep people from making a decision, DM me "ep 93" on Instagram and I'll guide you through it.
Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca
If you want to create your best life in 2024, even without kids, download my free guide. You'll discover how to find purpose, joy and fulfillment and what might be standing in the way.
Click here for your free guide
Embarking on the path of adoption or deciding against it—either one is a journey laden with emotion and complexity. Today, I open my heart to you in a candid narrative of my own experiences with the profound choice of not adopting.
We'll cover the unpredictable adoption landscape, unpack societal expectations, and contemplate the often-overlooked emotional and logistical hurdles that can steer one away from this life-altering decision.
Listen to this episode and also discover:
If you're struggling with the tangle of societal expectations, judgment, fears and your own true desires that keep people from making a decision, DM me "ep 93" on Instagram and I'll guide you through it.
Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca
If you want to create your best life in 2024, even without kids, download my free guide. You'll discover how to find purpose, joy and fulfillment and what might be standing in the way.
Click here for your free guide
Why don't you just adopt? That question right, if you don't have kids? This question has probably come up in conversation. I see a lot of cheeky answers to this out there on social media and a lot of requests aimed at our childbearing friends to stop asking it. But my approach is a little bit different and I don't think that we talk about the actual why why we didn't just adopt enough. So today I'm going to give you the behind the scenes on my decision not to adopt and also some of the other reasons that didn't come into play for me but maybe did for you, or maybe you're in the decision making process right now and trying to decide. I'm also going to tie this all back to self-worth, as I always do on the Awakening Worth podcast, and I'll tell you also how I ultimately answer this question.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Sherri Johnson, and you are about to discover how to embrace your life as a childless woman who wanted to have a family and never could. This is where we combine mindset shifting tools with practical tips so you can break free of outdated societal norms that condition us all to believe that women without kids just don't measure up to the moms. It's where we take action on processing grief and accelerating the healing journey so you can feel free. When childless women awaken their self-worth, they transform from hopeless and inadequate to worthy, accepting and purposeful. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of lightbulb moments that will shift your perspective, as a childless woman, about yourself, about your any power to change yourself, your future and maybe from the world we live in. If that's what you want, then keep on listening. Welcome back to the Awakening Worth podcast.
Speaker 1:Today, I am sharing my personal story on why my husband and I didn't adopt. Now, before we start, if you are still in the process of considering adoption, there are many outlets out there where you can find accurate information for your country as to the cost, the legalities, the psychological or emotional challenges. This is not a comprehensive guide to adopting a child. I do want to talk about some of the reasons, though, why people in general don't adopt, so let's get some of that out of the way. In case you're someone who's who's listening to, sort of find it what the deal is, or maybe you're someone who never considered it and you're curious, whatever that is. I've broken them up into what I call, kind of the more logistical reasons why people don't do it, and then the emotional reasons, and I'm going to share lots about my own personal story afterwards. So let's talk about the logistical first.
Speaker 1:First of all, the number of years that it can take in the public system to go through the adoption process. It's even longer internationally. So if you're someone who has come sort of to the end of your fertile years you're, you know, maybe in your 40s you might not be willing to wait that long. You know four or five more years to be able to get a baby, even if you're considering an older child. There are actually some limitations depending on what country you're in. There's some countries that won't allow you to adopt a baby if you're over 45. There's some that won't allow you to adopt at different ages that you know. The one I'm thinking of is 45. So you may not have that kind of time.
Speaker 1:The cost, of course this is probably even more prohibitive to adopting than the number of years that it takes this can be. It can be so exorbitantly expensive. In Canada, which is where I am, the public system may be a low cost. In the US it can be up to 30k, and then once you go private which is quite often the case, you know, in the public system in Canada there's only like in the hundreds of children that get adopted every year, if you can imagine how our fertility rates are decreasing in fertility's in the increasing in fertility's increasing, the number of parents that want to adopt is going up. So we're talking, you know it's low, it's not a very good chance. The chances aren't great in the public system. So you're probably going to end up having to go private, which can range between 15 and 25k in Canada, going international anywhere between 25 and 50k. And you know we you've got to think about travel costs, legal costs, all these things that I'm going to talk about in a second. So for public adoption, as I said, the the wait can be very, very long.
Speaker 1:In Canada, the number of healthy newborns adopted each year is thought to be in the hundreds. They don't have an exact number, you know. It was originally thought that maybe it was thousands, but it's actually not. It's a very low number and there are thousands of people wanting to adopt. That number of parents has grown. The number of birth mothers has shrunk. So the reason for that is is thought to be that we have become more accepting of single moms and so there are fewer mothers out there who are willing to give their babies up for adoption. Another logistical reason why it's so difficult to adopt, and maybe reasons why people don't, is the legal process. It's long and arduous and you need to have some money for that.
Speaker 1:And then let's talk about international adoption. There are so many reasons why this is difficult. You know. I think I've had people talk to me about you know well, if you can't get through the public system here, then go international. You know, adopt a Baby from China, were from some other country where there are more children to adopt out. And international adoption is actually becoming less common for a variety of reasons. First of all, some countries have actually closed their international adoption programs and you can run into issues with immigration, immigrating a child from another country, not to mention that some of these countries there is a lot of fraud and corruption in the system, so they're organized illegal adoption, underground I don't know what to call them like groups that through coercion, bribery, even imprisonment imprisonment of pregnant women will actually that is how they locate babies to then adopt out, which is so like. It just blows my mind that that is even going on, but it is and it's unfortunate. There are internationally, even if you find a country where that is not happening. So Nigeria is one. Nigeria used to be a really popular country to adopt children from, and their birth rate is, like is one of the highest in the world, and yet you have this fraud and corruption that's happening there. That is, they're really discouraging people to adopt from there.
Speaker 1:But there's other issues that you wouldn't even think about. So there's countries that will only allow heterosexual couples to adopt. So there goes the option for homosexual couples, for same-sex couples, for anybody in the LGBTQ community. Some also have physical requirements. So in China, for example, you can't have any mental health issues, you can't even have any hearing loss, you can't have a body mass index above 40. So there's some real restraints from a physical or mental side of things that are gonna prevent you from adopting from certain countries.
Speaker 1:India, for example, has age restrictions. They're one that actually you can't be over the age of 45 if you are adopting a child under four, and the age difference between the parent and the child can't be less than 25. So if you want a newborn, you have to be more than 25. If you want an older child, then you also need to be older. So, and then there's also risk and, of course, the cost. But risk Russia and Ukraine were two of the top countries where Canada was adopting from. And can you imagine? First of all, they're not recommending adopting from either of those countries right now, for obvious reasons. But imagine that you had started the adoption process in, say, 2019 or 2020. And before the conflict really kind of came to a head there and you were in the midst of the process, already sunk in a bunch of money, and then now you can't go over and finalize that adoption. So there's a lot of financial risk.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of emotional risk that's involved in international adoption and that's actually a good segue to some of the emotional reasons why adopting isn't a just sort of a thing, because there is so much emotional risk involved. There's, of course, the emotional risk of heartbreak, so people who tend to get to the adoption path. Of course there are people who go straight there and this may not be the case for you. If that's you, if you are considering adoption because you haven't, because you've already been down other paths, then you may not be able to handle any more heartbreak and the risk of there's a adoption is an emotional roller coaster. There's you find out that you're matched and then you find out that that's not gonna work out, and then you're ready to bring a child into your home and then that doesn't work out. So there can be a lot of emotional risk and heartbreak the risk of heartbreak involved in that. There's other risks as well, emotional risks. So, for example, the risk is much higher when you adopt that the child has been exposed prenatally to drugs and or alcohol, and when I start to think about the number of parents who aren't even willing to take a risk on their own child say having Down syndrome or other anomalies, when you put your name in the hat for an adopted child, you're opening yourself up to that, but also to a child that you won't necessarily know has been exposed to drugs or alcohol, and that risk is just it is higher in those circumstances.
Speaker 1:There's also the nuances so this is one that goes along with, it could be. It's maybe the chances are higher of this with an international adoption, but also even within your own country the nuances of raising a child that is of another race or a culture or background, especially if you are not adopting a newborn and adopting a child that has already been exposed to another culture or background. It's, you know it's and this is personal opinion. It's one thing to choose a partner of another background or race or culture when you have two adults who are able to navigate the challenges of that. It's another to bring a child of another race or culture into your family. You know, for me, for example, we are white, my husband and I are both white, most of our family is white, most of our friends and family are. We live in a town that is not very culturally diverse, and so we would need to really think about about bringing a child of another culture into our home and how would we handle the challenges that that child may come up against. That we have never experienced. So that's a that's something that can that really needs to be discussed, thought about, digested, before you enter into an adoption.
Speaker 1:There's also foster to adopt, which comes with its own risks. So fostering in Canada at least the goal is most often to return the child to its biological parents. There's the again, the risk of heartbreak. You know. You foster a child for a period of time, you become bonded with that child and then the parent or parents change, have a change in their situation and they're now able to care for that child. That child goes back to the biological parents. So it's it's. There's a risk there that you may not ever get to adopt that child. But then there's also risks where In the foster care system the risks of trauma, neglect are much. They're very real, they're much higher than you would have in a typical, you know, having your own child or even in the adoption system. And you're also more likely to get older children. So that wasn't necessarily a concern for us and I'll get into that a little bit more in a bit. But for some couples that may be something they take into consideration. They really would like a newborn or a younger child.
Speaker 1:And then the other emotional piece of it is that there is home study and training involved. So you don't need to do this to become a parent. You don't have somebody coming into your home. I mean, if you wanted to have your own children, your own biological children, you don't have somebody coming into your home to assess whether you're appropriate parents or whether your home is an appropriate place to raise children. There's training involved because of the emotional toll that adoption can take on parents or a parent. So there's training involved and you have to do that, whether you want to adopt or foster and that can take a long time. In the Canadian system they say six months to a year. In my conversations with people who have gone through the process it's closer to two years, at least in the public system. In the private system you might get through much more quickly, but there is this period where they come in over time to do these assessments and you need to be. You know there's an emotional assessment and a mental assessment piece of that.
Speaker 1:So as a couple, for my husband and I, we needed to both be in a place where we needed to be completely on board. So let's transition to my story, because that's a good segue to our personal story. It was more like I explored adoption. My husband was not that interested. He I would have had to do some heavy convincing to get him on board. And, as I said, when, when adoption agencies do these home studies, they assess the state of the marriage and they will pick up on the fact that one member of a couple is not on board and you won't be accepted through that program if both parents, if there are two, involved in Canada. You can adopt if you're a single parent as well or want to be a single parent. But if you have a marriage to people, whether it's a marriage or a partnership, if you have two potential parents, they both need to be fully on board.
Speaker 1:So I, as I said, I explored adoption, I explored foster care as well, and foster care was something that we both fairly quickly decided against for many of the reasons that I already talked about. The emotional risk there was really the key. Foster care is much less expensive. You're caring for a child but the upfront costs are much lower than adoption. But this was something that we just weren't willing to take on the emotional risk and and so we didn't, we didn't explore too deeply into that.
Speaker 1:I did talk to people who adopted and I heard both positive stories and also some truly heartbreaking stories. One couple in particular that I'm thinking of actually adopted a sibling set and that sibling set was take. Both siblings were taken back for a variety of reasons. They were older children, so they weren't newborns, and so they had already come into that adoption with some past trauma, with some past baggage, I suppose, and so a lot of factors went into that. But that was truly heartbreaking for that couple and they never saw those children again after a long period of bonding with them. So, because that was a example that was pretty close to us, that was a big factor in our considerations of adoption. It was a pretty big negative from our perspective. And then, of course, there were some logistical reasons as well.
Speaker 1:So for us, we ended our fertility journey. I was 44 at the time, my husband's a bit younger than me, but my age was definitely something that I thought about. I wasn't sure that I wanted to wait, you know, two, three, four years and be parenting a newborn at 48, 49, 50. I wasn't sure, you know, once you go through that six to 12 months that they say, or maybe closer to two years of the home study and the training, and then you wait until you're matched, I just wasn't sure that I was up for another. I'd already been through six years of fertility, infertility and another two, three, four years of limbo, of waiting, of pursuing that dream. I just wasn't sure that we were up for it, that I was up for it, and because of that six year infertility journey we had already sunk thousands of dollars into that journey, and so there was this financial risk of sinking more into that process and not ever being a match.
Speaker 1:Parents who are, or whether they're single or a couple, when they look for parents to adopt their children, they tend to not want the older parents. They tend to choose younger parents. Maybe that's a story that I'm telling myself, but it's one that, for me, was real, in that I expected that to impact the length of time, but it was going to take for us to be matched, and, of course, there's a lot of other things that sort of come into play when you're making this decision, and fear was a big one. I think that's probably similar for anyone considering this decision. For us, there was fear around. Would this? You know, adoption, the whole process and later can place a pretty big strain on a marriage, and I wondered whether we had what it took to weather that, the place that we were at in our marriage at the time that we were considering this. I wasn't sure. We weren't sure. There's a lot of marriages that break down as a result of going through the process and and later on, so I had a fear that that could ruin us as a couple.
Speaker 1:I also had a fear of regret, and that can go either way. I feared that we might regret adopting, that we may end up with a child that did have issues that we didn't know how to handle as a parent, or that our marriage would be ruined. There was this fear of regret, but then I also had this fear of regretting not adopting, because there's all kinds of fears that come with with envisioning your life as a couple without children or a woman without kids. I also feared more heartbreak. I felt like I had taken a lot of heartbreak over the few years leading up to the, to our consideration of adoption. The years leading up to that decision were filled with heartbreak. I had three miscarriages. I had already been through several fertility treatments that that resulted in nothing. So there was a lot of heartbreak already and I didn't know if I was up for anymore.
Speaker 1:But then I also feared judgment. I feared that people would maybe still see me as different, not a part of the natural birth club, the mothers who had their own biological children and could speak to having a pregnancy and giving. You know that everyone has their birth story and I wouldn't have that. I'd have my own sort of birth story, but I was afraid of that judgment. Would I be accepted as the same? And yet I also feared judgment if I gave up too soon. Did I not want to be a mother as badly as other people did? So fear came into play, whether we, whether it was, you know, on both sides of that coin, do I want to adopt? Do I want to? You know, this is the end of the road. So do I not want to adopt? And all the fears that come with envisioning your future as a childless woman. So it didn't matter. I think that's what makes the decision so difficult is that there's so much fear involved on either side.
Speaker 1:Now I really like to tie things back to self-worth on this podcast, because it almost always comes into play along the journey to motherhood or the journey to to not being a mother. It always comes into play, and that is why I started this podcast, so let's talk about that. Shame is a real propeller of low self-worth, and shame comes up a lot on the journey to motherhood. When I look back on my own journey, my single years, I had so much shame I decided that there must be something wrong with me, since no one wanted me, no one chose me at least, that's how I saw it at the time and so I thought there must be something wrong with me and whenever you feel like there's something wrong with you fundamentally, that instigates shame. Then, even after I met my husband and we, I got pregnant for the first time. I had three miscarriages.
Speaker 1:Then I started to think there's something wrong with my body or maybe there's something wrong with me. I grew up in a religious home. I thought maybe, you know, am I being punished for something, for something I've done wrong, or maybe I just am wrong. There's something wrong with me and that's why I'm not meant to be a mother, and infertility, of course, can can cause shame. I can't, you know, I couldn't do this fundamental thing that all women are supposed to be able to do and that brought on a lot of shame for me. My body wouldn't do what it was supposed to do.
Speaker 1:I was older than most mothers, that was coming into play and then choosing not to move forward. Then I also thought maybe there's something wrong with me. If I don't want kids that badly, I don't want them badly enough to adopt, then why am I not like all these other women who do and are willing to go through that? Maybe there's something wrong with me. I don't have that. Enough of that mother instinct and all of this shame leads to low self-worth, it makes you feel less than it makes you feel like you don't measure up to the moms. It's all of these things that all stem from society conditioning us to believe that this is our most important job, this is the most important thing that we can contribute to the world is a child. And then, even when you do move forward, either you're able to have a baby of your own or adopt all this shame that you felt before just turns into other shame. So for adoption, I couldn't have a baby naturally, or I couldn't have a baby at all. All those triggers about not being able to have a baby become once you adopt. I couldn't have a baby by myself, I couldn't have a biological baby. So some of that shame just turns into new shame. So hopefully that is helpful to sort of uncover maybe some of the things that you're feeling, maybe some of the reservations that you have.
Speaker 1:It is not that simple. It is never a question of just adopting. It is there is, so it is so complicated. There is so much emotional and logistical and all of the pressure, everything that I've talked about. It's a lot.
Speaker 1:I think that it's a huge misconception out there in the world that adoption is easy and it's always a backup plan. If you can't have your own children, that that's your obvious next step. Why not just adopt? And it's just not that simple. You already know this, probably if you're a woman who considered it or anyone who considered it, but the general public doesn't seem to have a handle on that unless you really start to look into it, and so I'm willing to forgive them for that, because I used to be one of them. I didn't know anything about adoption until I knew that it took a while, but I had no idea how much it cost. I had no idea of what all of these other things the legal fees, the legal process, the physical requirement, like all of these different requirements and the process, the everything that I've already talked about I just I didn't have any idea that that was involved. So I can forgive people for asking that question If you, if you're having a hard time doing that.
Speaker 1:It's one of the key things that we focus on inside of the women of worth group immersion. That is my signature program, because it's actually it's fundamental to being able to get beyond the question. The triggers is really honing in on your inner, inner state, it's your self-worth, it's your, it's your grief, it's your inner state that you are able to change. That is actually going to change how you feel about that question. So at this point in my journey there's as I said in the beginning of this podcast, there's a lot of cheeky answers, you know, sarcastic answers that people are recommending that you give to people who ask this question. And I'm gonna tell you why. I never do that.
Speaker 1:I feel that when I give somebody a sarcastic answer, it only makes them feel bad for asking the question, which you might be thinking. Well, I want them to feel bad. They shouldn't have asked the question. And yet I wanna come from a place of forgiveness, of understanding their side of the table, because I used to be someone who was there. I didn't know that much about adoption and so maybe I would have been one of those people who asked the question if I became a parent with a biological child and I might have said that to somebody else who was struggling. I don't know, and I don't wanna make somebody feel bad, I really don't. I'd rather have compassion for them and for them, you know, trying to understand and asking the question. Maybe that is a legitimate way for them to try to understand what you're going through. So I try to assume the best in their question and it allows me to answer with authenticity, and that's always what I recommend it might be for you. If you're not ready to answer with authenticity, then maybe it's a just I'm not ready to talk about that just yet. Maybe someday not right now, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 1:But if you have it in you or you're talking to a person who you sense might be open, then the way that I like to answer is to just talk about why I actually didn't. I've actually only had someone say this to me twice, and once the person who said it was actually talking about another friend. She kind of said she should have just adopted, and in that particular scenario I decided not to say anything. But another time I did talk about it and said, yes, we actually are seriously looking into it, but there is no just about it. It's so much more complicated than even I realized, both logistically and emotionally, and so it's a really complicated decision for us, or it was a really complicated decision for us and we decided that it doesn't always result in a baby. We've had enough stress and heartbreak, to take the risk, and normally that actually opens up a conversation.
Speaker 1:When I just talk about my experience, then a lot of the compassion comes out at that point and it's much easier to have an open hearted conversation about it. So that's the approach that I take and it feels much better to me when I do that and it actually the conversations that have been opened up whenever I answer any of those questions authentically are worth so much more than the hurt. Look on somebody's face when I give them a sarcastic answer. So that's my approach. It might not be yours. Stick with me if you're someone who likes that approach and wants to learn because I'm gonna have much more coming up on the podcast and within my program as well to really kind of address some of those questions in a way that you feel courageous and authentic and walk away feeling good about yourself instead of hurt and angry. So I think that is all that I have to say on this topic for now.
Speaker 1:If you are someone who is struggling with the decision to adopt you're struggling with all the fears, the regrets, the things that I did and you would like help making a solid, intuitive decision that feels really aligned, just send me a DM with episode 93, and I'll show you how you can make that decision that feels aligned. So DM me episode 93 at Sherry Johnson Coaching on Instagram and I'll show you how to make that decision. Thank you for listening. If you found value in this episode, I would be so grateful if you rated and reviewed the show on whatever platform you are listening on right now, and come back next week. I have another great solo episode in the works for you on how to let go of that fear of regret. That's it for today. Bye for now.