Took me 3 years to realize open adoption isn't a verdict, it's a negotiation

Everyone in my support group talks about open adoption like it's a contract you sign and then it's set forever. But my son's mom and I have been rewriting our boundaries every single year since he was born in 2021. First it was visits monthly, then she moved to Denver and we did video calls, now we're doing two meetups a year plus texting. People act like changing the plan means you failed. I think it means you're actually doing the work. Has anyone else had to renegotiate their open adoption terms more than once?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

lisa6714d ago

Yes, this. The renegotiating part is the actual relationship, not some failure of it. People want open adoption to be a tidy little box so they can stop thinking about it, but kids grow and birth parents move and jobs change and you have to keep adjusting to what's real right now. I feel like the families that struggle most are the ones who wrote the plan once and then hold onto it like a law, even when it stops fitting anyone. Two meetups plus texting in Denver is not less open, it's just what open actually looks like from that far away. And honestly, the fact that you two keep coming back to the table and redrawing lines together shows way more trust than a paper agreement ever could. The plan is not the point, the people are the point.

6