There are the three P’s of success, the three P’s of business, but have you heard of the three P’s of adoption? We have put together a list of three P’s necessary to have a successful adoption journey regardless the outcome. Our three P’s of adoption are profile, patience and peace. Everlasting Adoption’s Founder, Director and adoptive mother herself, Carol weighs in on our third P, peace, which was extremely important to her during her own adoption journey.
Profile
If you are at all familiar with adoption, you know how important a profile is to marketing yourself to birth mothers. In a process that is largely outside of your control, an adoption profile is one of the few aspects you can dictate. Whether you create your own or hire someone to make a profile for you, make sure you have put sufficient thought and effort into its creation. Our article on 5 Tips to Create a Stand Out Adoption Profile is a great place to start to gather tips on making the best profile possible. This is the very first impression you make on birth mothers, so it is important to use eye catching, professional looking photos and informative, concise and descriptive text.
Patience
This P is certainly easier said than done. Such a stressful and emotional process doesn’t really make it easy to be patient. The not knowing and waiting can be excruciating. According to Adoption Center it can take between 2 and 7 years to adopt a healthy infant. With numbers like that, patience is key to making it through the process in one piece.
One way to help maintain patience is to recruit your spouse, friend or family member to be the voice of reason. When they see you overly fraught with worry or stress, it is their job to help you relax. However they choose to do this is up to them. It is always helpful to have someone on the outside keep an eye on things that we are unable to see ourselves. Another way to help exercise patience is to keep busy. Immerse yourself in things you enjoy; yoga, reading, home decorating. Whatever your thing is, spending your time in these activities instead of obsessing over getting “the call” will help you find peace, which is our third P.
Peace
With the Christmas holiday fast approaching, the word “peace” is often used. How does peace relate to adoption? Our founder, Carol had some valuable insight on the importance of finding peace during the process and a special message to all waiting families.
“As I went through the adoption journey with my husband, the most significant thing I learned was that you must make peace with yourself, as you are right now, even if you do not reach your dream of adopting. I went through 12 years of infertility my choice and 2 failed adoptions before our miracle came
to us!
Adoption comes with many challenges and can sometimes be an emotional roller coaster ride. You cannot start to travel down this road without making peace with your life as it currently is. If you are unsettled and feeling you can’t go on without a child or another child to fulfill your life, the road will be full of bumps, setbacks and disappointments. If I only knew back then to work hard at starting out with a peaceful mindset, one that has no expectations, our journey would have been a lot smoother; a lot more peaceful.
My best advice to anyone considering or going through the adoption journey right now, is to make a sound decision to be peaceful no matter what the outcome. If it doesn’t happen, then believe, with all your heart, that it wasn’t meant to be. It may be cliché, but it has proven time and again to be so true. If you do adopt successfully, then peace will still be with you because it was there from the get-go.
Adoption and the entire process truly makes you see the world through different eyes. It is amazingly divine. May this holiday season bring you amazingly, divine PEACE.”