After five pregnancy losses and years of failed fertility treatments, my journey to parenthood felt hopeless. The pain, grief, and loneliness I was experiencing felt too much to bear. It seemed everyone around me was celebrating carefree, successful pregnancies with ease. As my husband and I considered adoption as an opportunity to grow our family, the extensive process quickly became legally, financially, and emotionally overwhelming. Yet adoption seemed to provide hope in a time of darkness and despair. With each step forward on our adoption journey, we found strength to hold on to our desire for parenthood.
Our adoption story met with additional loss and heartache through failed adoptions. As we continued to persevere, we were finally chosen by a loving birthmother. Words cannot express the joy that we felt when our infant son was placed in our arms. The peace, hope, and love that we felt washed away all of the sorrow, pain, and despair that once consumed our hearts. We truly loved and cherished every moment as parents to our newborn son. While we did not want our son to be an only child, we were terrified to return to the adoption path knowing the uncertainty ahead. We chose to put our efforts into a private adoption placement and were found by a beautiful birthmother who asked us to adopt her precious daughter. While our hearts were full of gratitude for our miracle children, we could have never imagined there was more in store for our little family. We continued to be approached by birthmothers and repeated the adoption process over and over and have now adopted 5 beautiful children.
Our hearts are full as we embrace the gift of parenthood. We are committed to giving back to the adoption community through awareness, advocacy, and promoting inclusion. Through our adoption journey we often felt isolated, forgotten, and misunderstood. As a registered nurse and parenting educator, I started Hope in Adoption LLC to provide evidence-based research, parenting education and parenting support to all, including traditional, adoptive, and same-gender parents. My mission is to help everyone find parenting tools that work.
I am also honored to sit on the board of Gift of Adoption’s Arizona Chapter and promote their message. Gift of Adoption Fund is a national organization with a mission to fill the void that separates child from family through adoption assistance grants providing vulnerable children a permanent home. As an all-volunteer board, our goal is to raise enough funds to help complete each of our Arizona adoption grant applications. All of the money raised by our Chapter helps unite children with their forever families.
On Saturday, November 9, 2019, Gift of Adoption Arizona will be hosting its National Adoption Month Celebration at The Living Room at DC Ranch in Scottsdale. We invite you to join us as we celebrate National Adoption Month and families touched by adoption. Dine at The Living Room any time on Saturday, November 9, mention “Gift of Adoption” and The Living Room will generously donate 25% of proceeds back to Gift of Adoption Arizona. Join us from 4-8pm to learn more about the nonprofit and purchase raffle tickets for a chance to win Suns Basketball Club Level seals, Candytopia tickets, local salon gift certificates, a parenting education course from Hope in Adoption, and more!
Amy Stewart MSN, RN, CPN, Secretary for Gift of Adoption Arizona Chapter, Founder of Hope in Adoption
