Taking things personally...

...and letting go!

I am guilty as charged. I am one of those people. I do take things personally. I read this post on Agnostic Adoption's blog. (I think it needs to make it into my adoption resources page!) and it made sense! 

I loved the graph, I loved the advice and I sorely needed it. But what really resonated was one phrase. Here it is: " If your referral/match doesn’t work out I recommend thinking of the event as “what happened” as opposed to “what happened to me”."

Oh my goodness this rang some bells! That is exactly how I think. Not just in the adoption process, but in everything in life (here is a link to the insanity in full swing in my post The Queue of Life). Everything is personal. My dad's illness and death. D's two years of unemployment. The losses we suffered while trying to become parents. The adoption wait. At some point, it has all become personal. At some point, however, I have also had to let it go and move on.

The main way for me to move on seems to be to get away from the personal, get away from this "what happened to me" and see things simply as they are: "what happened". 

I had one of those moments a couple of days ago. After more waiting and phonecalls with out lawyer, and with adoptive parents in-country, after yet another setback and moving of our court date further into the uncertain fogginess of the future, I broke down. The thinking was just that: "Look what has happened to us!"
Sensitised further by our prior losses, carrying our baggage firmly on our backs, we questioned whether we are "meant to" become parents. Once more. 

D spoke to me with more patience and more wisdom than I have ever possessed (and this is how I know he is meant to become a parent...). He soothed me and presented the facts, just as facts, taking the ego out of it all. This is simply what happened. We move on.

I feel lighter. I have admitted to myself that I have no control, apart from taking my response to this and "fixing" it. I wait and I march on. I have taken the personal out of it! I, at least for now, have let it go!