Marketing

Sales has never been my strong suit. Ever since I first participated in grade school magazine drives it's been fairly clear. I just didn't have much zeal or talent for the job. In this regard, Ed and I are definitely cut from the same cloth. So in the early days of our paperwork process -- when we found out that domestic adoption requires a profile letter to basically market ourselves to birth mothers -- we set our sights toward international adoption. Our preference was to complete our paperwork and then just wait our turn in line for a referral. But when it came to making the final decision of which way to go, weighing all the information that we had gathered, we chose to stay closer to home. At least for this round.

So we rolled up our sleeves and started crafting our profile letter. We didn't get a whole lot of coaching from our agency. They gave us a couple pages of "do's" and "don'ts" and a few sample letters to look at. We tried to take a laid-back approach. Even so, it was a lot harder than we had imagined. What to say? What to put in? What to leave out? Once we finally pulled it together, we were pleased with the result. Friends who looked our letter over said things like, "I'd totally pick you if I was a birth mother."

Important lesson learned here: don't listen to your friends (unless they are birth mothers* or adoption professionals).
(* A birth mother is a woman who has relinquished the parental rights to her child).

April 2011 marked one year since our original profile letter went out into the world. After a year of being passed over by birth mothers, we got to thinking that it was probably time to spiff up our image. We asked one of our partner agencies that works with birth mothers for some feedback on our letter. The staff gently pointed out several things we might want to change or add. Their comments were helpful and they gave us a better perspective on the perspective of a birth mother. Suggestions included: acknowledge the difficult decision that the birth mother is making, rural life may not appeal to the urban individual, show more pictures of your community, etc. Armed with new information, we were ready to get going on a re-write.

When we pulled out our year-old letter for a look, we felt that sort of cringing pain that comes from listening to one's own recorded voice. We had to admit, this profile letter was kind of lame. When we wrote it a year ago, we had been feeling apprehensive, and it showed. The writing was stiff, the information vague, the pictures too small, and the lay-out was boring.

I thought we could re-work the letter in an afternoon. In the end it took an entire week. We combed through all of our photos again, searching for just the right images. Family members got involved with the photo search and proof-readings. Comments came back, "still too stiff," "sounds formal," "don't like such-and-such a picture for such-and-such a reason." We wrote and re-wrote, swapped out photos and re-formatted. Humbled, we pulled out the example letters our agency gave us last year. . . the letters that we had wrinkled our noses at. At that time they had seemed too patronizing and schmaltzy. This time we tried to pay closer attention to what these folks had put together. Like every other aspect of adoption, putting our best foot forward turned into a team effort.

Through this continual auditioning for parenthood, there are times when resentment starts warping my brain. Most people grow their family without having to repeatedly write essays about themselves and why they want to become parents. One day as I sat stonily at the computer, Ed walked by and asked, "What's wrong?." That's all it took. Tears and frustration poured forth. Which is when he said, "Embrace this process. This is the means by which we will meet our child some day." Those words opened the window I needed to see a little sunshine. I could dive in with my whole heart. When I have a better view, I can see that to take part in this adoption process, though painful at times, is ultimately a privilege.