National Adoption Awareness Month: Celebration or Awareness?

National Adoption Awareness Month was initially intended to raise awareness of the children in US foster care that are legally eligible for adoption. I’ve seen numerous posts about people celebrating this month with pictures of their little ones joined with their families through adoption – domestic and international – and outside of the foster care system. Some may say this isn’t the intent of National Adoption Awareness Month. Some would argue this isn’t staying true to the original mission.

I’ve heard that adoption shouldn’t be celebrated because in order for adoption to have taken place to begin with something was lost or broken or destroyed. But are people celebrating that loss or are they celebrating the new opportunities that adoption has provided? And in that case, why isn’t it possible to celebrate and create awareness at the same time?

Take for example an individual that has overcome serious illness, doesn’t that person have a right to celebrate their life and raise awareness at the same time? I don’t think for one second a person is celebrating the disease, but rather the ability to have overcome the challenge or even the journey. With adoption, isn’t it similar?

The adoption community – or even the general community at large – isn’t celebrating the destruction of a family, abuse or abandonment; they are celebrating the ability to have overcome those challenges and to be afforded a new beginning (not ever omitting or taking away from their past or even having the less-than-good go unnoticed). No one is celebrating the loss of a birth family, but we are celebrating the possibilities and opportunities that can be given through adoption.

The original intent of National Adoption Awareness Month has been expanded upon to celebrate the opportunity of adoption for children from all countries and to simultaneously enhance awareness of the need for more education, more compassion, more love and more positive involvement. The awareness can be to work toward a “cure” to help keep families together, end famine, end poverty, end abuse and end disease. The awareness can also be that amazingly good things can come from less-than-ideal situations. Either way, for me, this month is one to celebrate and increase involvement and awareness of adoption.

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[Adoption Agency]

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