small crayon box: Adoption Support Groups

These people are lifesavers. Our friends and family were very sympathetic and helpful, but we drank in all the experience of other adoptive families.

Our local support group is Parent Adoption Lifeline, and Dave especially loved meetings. We attended for 3 years, two of which had a "Candle lighting" ceremony and lunch. We had to light a "waiting" candle, while others lit a "new adoption" candle. Finally in August of 2010, we got to light a candle for Jessica.

We are also board members for the Florida Families Supporting Adoption group, for couples waiting to adopt through LDS Family Services. We mostly talk by phone since we're scattered across the state, but once a year we have a conference in Orlando.

2010 was Florida's turn to host the regional conference for the Southeast U.S. FSA groups. Man it was a lot of work!--months and months. Our co-presidents and friends, the Middletons, decided adoption conferences had too many tears, and we need a fun theme. I volunteered to be in charge of speakers, and molded chocolates (a first for me) as thank you gifts. I thanked myself a lot too.

These thank you bundles also had coconut candles packed inside,

and I spent several hours collecting, transporting, and stringing hundreds of fragrant plumeria blossoms to make flowers leis for the first time. Thanks to our friend Becca, (who's adopted, searching for her birthmother, and may adopt children herself soon) who stayed up til 1 am helping me make these beauties.

And the speakers were great. An adoption lawyer,

a really funny fertility doctor,

and others: Church head adoption lawyer David McConkie, the LDS Family Services President and member of the Seventy, Steve Sunday, the insightful Kite and Satchell families, an online advertising guru/adoptive dad, and 4 amazing birthmoms, all different.

And we also all heard our guest speaker, by far the highlight of the conference: Troy Dunn, the Locator. Long story short: he's a Florida bishop; in his day job, he's reunited thousands of adoptive and birth families; he's good at it; he made us all laugh and cry; and he has an adopted mother and brother.

My favorite parts: doing what is right doesn't always equal doing what feels good; adopted parents shouldn't take it personally when kids search for birth family (and they always do); he doesn't help kids under 18 search; reunions are almost always wonderful; kids are better adjusted to adoption the earlier and more they know; the funniest story was about his company getting launched overnight when a TV plug posted his phone number, and thousands looking for adoptive connections called (because it's all about family!); he once helped locate a birth mother in a medical emergency that saved a little girl's life, without the girl knowing at her request; foster parents have his highest respect; and he loves birth parents.

After some great music, good food, a Polynesian floor show, and lots of talking and a few tears, and a great sigh of relief, we came home from one of the best events I've ever helped plan.