Instant Family Inspiration

Instant Family Inspiration

       One evening in the summer of 2019 me and my family rented and watched a movie named  Instant Family. Which of course is about a married couple who adopts a sibling set from Foster Care. It shows the trials and victories you can go through and is based on a true story. Well in watching this movie it is where I learned that literally thousands of children in the United States are available for adoption immediately (their parents rights have been terminated through the state). I immediately googled and found https://www.adoptuskids.org/ and also our local heart gallery. Every single day I looked on them and clicked on each child and read their story and watched their videos. I never knew kids would be listed in this way but do understand that is how they find families that may match them. I began researching and reading everything I could read. I would send the kids profiles to my husband to look at and he would ask me why I was sending them. You see we are already parents of 3 girls... One of which we had a time with last year getting her diagnosed with Bipolar including hospitalizations. 

     I started telling friends and family that I was thinking of beginning the steps to adopt a boy through the state from foster care. I was asked if I was crazy... The faces they would make thinking that he would hurt my other kids (at this point just a fictional child as far as they were concerned). A lot of this thinking is because so many people share the bad only that happens. I joined many Facebook groups on older child adoption. There were so many positive stories!! 

   So after much praying and soul searching and speaking to my kids and also to my husband we applied to adopt through an awesome program APAC- Alabama Pre and Post Adoption Connections. They were very responsive and helps me to get all of our information over to them. This was August 2019 that we began the paperwork process.  Normally after paperwork pre approval you can begin your certification classes(tips class)  usually in a group, but the closest one was 2 hours from us and in the evening and just not possible for us to attend. At first I thought that this would be preventative to us and we couldn't continue.... but APAC told me that if they can do the background checks and get us fully approved they would let us do our classes in our home around our schedule with a retired Social Worker! At the end of September we were told everything came back a yes and we scheduled with a wonderful retired Social worker named Wanda. 

   This next part seemed to take the longest we had a couple holidays and delays in between but we began the classes in October 2019 and we took ten diff classes that taught us to be Trauma informed. Wanda would come and bring the kiddos pizza and cookies and teach us the ins and outs of Trauma. It was crazy how much we already knew from our kids situations being that my oldest daughter experienced a traumatic situation at 3 years old with a domestic violence situation between me and her biological father. These classes were provided to us at no cost other than our time. We were FINALLY certified February 27, 2020 and able to then inquire on kiddos.