“You must be so secure.”
“You are so brave.”
“Your situation is so unusual.”
“I could never do what you’re doing.”

I get these comments all the time when I tell people about our open adoptions, which include regular visits with two sets of birth families.

Interestingly, the comments come only from people who have never met our sons’ birth parents. As soon as they meet them, they say, “Ohhhh. I get it now!”

Our sons’ birth parents aren’t strange creatures from outer space. They are not ogres. They’re not “losers.” They’re nothing like the stereotypical picture most people have of birth parents.

In fact, they are normal, hard-working people; people whom I have the privilege of calling “friends.” In fact, they’re more than friends; they’re family.

So, how did we all get to the point of being in a healthy relationship?

Here are three things that worked for us:

We met, in person, before our child’s birth. This isn’t always possible, but in our case, our sons’ birth families lived in the same state. We met with our oldest son’s birth parents (both of them) once before he was born (he was born unexpectedly, four days after we met, making multiple meetings impossible).

We met with our younger son’s birth parents several times before his birth. Our oldest son’s birth mother and her husband accompanied us to at least one of those meetings. Those early meetings got our relationship off on a positive foot and began creating the “familial” bonds.

We are honest. When we negotiated our communication agreement before the birth of our sons, we mutually agreed to stick with it. And we have. With our first son, we had a “semi-open” adoption at first (exchanging letters and photos through our agency). But we and our son’s birth parents left open the possibility of meeting again in the future. Two years later, once our relationship with our son’s birth mother was firmly grounded, we mutually agreed to begin meeting again.

We opened our lives to one another. No good relationship is one-sided. We are committed to sharing our joys, as well as some of our struggles, with one another. We don’t share everything, but we share enough to keep one another connected. If our son’s birth family (and that includes grandparents and aunts and uncles) needs a “Ben fix” or a “Josh fix,” they tell us. We do the same for them.

In the early days of our adoptions, we discovered that something happens when everyone makes a sincere effort to communicate with one another: you begin to like each other.

Other posts in this series:
Part 1: Maintaining Your Open Adoption Communication Agreement

Part 2: Problems That Arise Between Birth/Adoptive Parents in Open Adoption

Part 3: The Adoption Power Shift