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What to save for your adoption journey book
If you would like to document your family stories in an adoption journey book, here is a road map for what to save, how to record memories, and when to begin.
It’s been a while since I worked on an adoption journey book, but I have recently gotten a few inquiries about them and thought I would share some helpful tips on how to best preserve your memories of this transformational time in your life.
Including images in your adoption journey book of your child’s everyday moments during the early years (think eating, bath time, reading a book) will help to bring those experiences to life in the most amazing way.
What is an adoption journey book?
While a life book is your child’s story, an adoption journey heirloom book is your story—you as an adoptive parent, and you as a member of your growing family.
Your adoption journey book might include:
memories of the first meeting, the long journey home, first weeks together, first bonding experience...the memories that you don't want to fade
a visual timeline of the adoption process
photographs through the years
maps of your child’s birthplace and where you physically traveled
handwritten notes from your journal, especially during the early days as a new parent
typed or handwritten letter with dreams for the future
thoughts on what it means to be a parent—and a family
memorabilia such as your ticket to your child’s birthplace, or the email alerting you to your approval as adoptive parents
insights and feelings—the inner story of your adoption journey
There are so many paths to parenthood. Your journey, though, is the one that matters to you and your family. An adoption journey heirloom book is a beautiful means of honoring your family’s unique story and of preserving the memories and emotions for your children—and, just maybe, for the next generation.
How to keep track of your adoption journey
Did reading the above list give you palpitations? Angst at realizing you have no idea where you would dig up all that info, or guilt at not having kept a journal? If you are eager to create an adoption journey book but unsure how to access your memories, I can help you.
But if you’re thinking about this earlier in the process, first, I congratulate you; and second, I offer you a road map for keeping track of your journey so documenting it in a book later will be an even smoother process. I generally recommend undertaking making an adoption journey book around the first or second anniversary of your adoption (also called a “Gotcha Day” or “Homecoming Day”).
Some ideas for what to save:
1 - Keep an accordion file of things to help you fill in a timeline of your adoption process:
all adoption paperwork (including email correspondence, postponements, requests for new forms, etc.)
airline boarding passes
postcards from the locations you travel through
ticket stubs or restaurant menus
2 - Save photos of:
your travels, in the airport, at the adoption locale
first family photo
milestones for your child(ren), including new foods, first American travel destination, first friends, etc.
any photos showing you in the country of origin for your adopted child
photographs of special, everyday moments (parents feeding a baby, reading to your children, hugs)
images that show your child’s personality (active kid running, a funny child laughing).
Ideally, you will have a mix of photographs that will help you recall this special time in your family’s life, including both the monumental (the day of adoption) and the everyday (bath time).
Consider keeping a journal.
While a journal will of course help you preserve memories for an adoption journey book down the road, writing about your feelings will also have an immediate benefit: Journaling has been shown to have a positive impact on physical well-being and to be a helpful stress management tool.
A few topics to consider journaling about:
forging bonds in the early stages of adoption
how you choose to share details about your child’s origins
ways you intend to incorporate your child’s culture into his/her life (traditional foods, holidays, language)
moments of grace
moments of struggle
Adoption is a lifelong journey.
Adoption is a lifelong journey. And while an adoption journey book such as I am recommending typically focuses on the process of adoption and the first year of settling in and becoming a new family, you always have the option to delve into your stories later in the journey, too.
I focus on these early months because, for one, they are so emotional and life-changing; and two, because they are often the most difficult to remember in detail in later years—when you will undoubtedly want to share them with your child(ren) as they mature.
For those of you who are in the midst of your adoption journey or who have already made an heirloom book, what other things might you suggest?
Additional reading:
Should you share your full adoption story?
Preserving the full story of your adoption journey may mean sharing some of the pain, too—but how much you include is a personal decision. We can guide you.
Adoptive parents recount memories of wishing and waiting and hoping for their children, but the truth is that the challenges often go well beyond a long wait. So, too, does the joy and fulfillment of adoption. Preserving the full story of your adoption journey may mean sharing some of the pain, too—but how much you include is a very personal decision. We can help you record your stories in a compassionate and meaningful way, preserving your adoption journey exactly how you want to.
When the adoption process is joyful, but not easy…
Your adoption story is worth preserving.
“Adopting one child won’t change the world; but for that one child, the world will change.”
World-changing. That’s what your family’s adoption story has been. And the story of something so profound should be preserved; should be accessible for your family as it matures and grows; should become an origin story so often revisited that it becomes family lore, an heirloom both physical and spiritual.
In a previous post we wrote about 9 Reasons Why Your Adoption Journey Is Worth Preserving. But just because your journey to parenthood was profound and joyful and life-changing, does not mean it was easy.
“I say to everybody: Adoption is not for the faint of heart.” —Mariska Hargitay
Children who were adopted experience feelings of loss, often grieving for the family they have lost and the world they knew before. Transitions to new schools, new homes, often a new country, can be unsettling, profoundly impacting a child’s sense of self. Adoptive children may have histories of trauma, or other types of special needs.
Adoptive parents may face great challenges—emotionally, psychologically, logistically.
Even the adoption process itself may be anything but smooth.
So where does that leave adoptive parents in chronicling their personal adoption journey? Do you include the good, the bad, and the ugly in an Adoption Journey book? Or do you focus on the positive and create an archive of the joys of newfound family, a historical record of how you adopted and how you became a family?
That is up to every family, and the answers may not be immediately clear.
Depending upon where you are in your adoption journey when you make your heirloom book, you may choose to include different things—in particular, different levels of reflection. An adoptive parent whose children are now older may have better perspective to help him talk about the more challenging times with an understanding and open heart. A parent who adopted a child only a year or two ago, on the other hand, may not yet be able to articulate how her own emotions or her child’s challenges are impacting their lives.
Consider what your family will want to remember.
An Adoption Journey book is a record of a milestone in your family's life. It is celebratory, without question, marking a family's reunion with their new child.
But, as with all personal history books we undertake at Modern Heirloom Books, we aim to tell your whole textured story—not every detail, but the experiences that shape and transform you. And, well, life is not all champagne and roses (despite what our Instagram feeds might proclaim!).
Consider that including some of the hard stuff in your book may be revelatory or healing for your children. It may remind you of the anxieties and pressures of the adoption process—but you persevered. Perhaps including glimpses into the struggles you and your children face as you continually evolve as a family will help you better appreciate the joys—and, research shows, it will help your children be more resilient.
What are we talking about here? Some of the more challenging aspects of the adoption journeys we have chronicled in the past include:
agencies that have lost accreditation mid-process
adopted children whose mourning process or transition to their new life was prolonged or painful
lost paperwork (redone only to be misfiled again)
lack of transparency throughout the process
financial, legal, or medical obstacles
We want you to cherish the triumphs, but to appreciate your full journey. That may mean alluding to one or two of your challenges such as these, or delving deeply into one of them that especially marked your family's journey—or rather, focusing exclusively on the good.
Our interviewers are compassionate listeners.
One of the benefits of creating an Adoption Journey Book with us is that you, the adoptive parent, are often able to work out what is best to include through discussions with your editor. Our personal historians have your best interest in mind at all times, and listening is a skill we take seriously. You may even request an interviewer who is an adoptive parent, too, if that makes you more comfortable.
You will recount your story through a series of hour-long interviews, and during those Q-and-A sessions we will hit upon things that may not be right to include. Our editor can make suggestions for ways to present difficult material; or if you simply realize some of the stories are off-limits, then we respect that, as well.
At all times, remember: This is YOUR story of adoption and family and love. We are there to help you tell it the best way possible.
Related Reading:
Why you should preserve your adoption journey in a book—9 compelling reasons!
Have another family story you would like to preserve in a book? Check out our Memories-in-the-Making offerings, our Legacy Books in honor of lost loved ones, and what makes a Modern Heirloom Book special.
No matter where you are in your adoption journey, now is the best time to act: Preserve your adoption story in an Adoption Journey heirloom book. Because you will cherish this story forever.
9 reasons why your adoption journey is worth preserving
Nine reasons why preserving your family’s story in an Adoption Journey book is a worthwhile investment, including making it part of your Gotcha Day celebration.
“On our wedding day, Mike and I vowed willingly to accept children from God. Little did we know on that day how our journey would take form...””
Mary Lou and Mike Engrassia of West Babylon, NY, were amazed, overjoyed, and even a bit overwhelmed as a path to parenthood they never expected unfurled before them.
That journey, and the memories of feelings, experiences, and challenges met, is a part of their life they cherish. Their adoption journey made them who they are as parents, but more importantly, who they are as a family with their daughter.
One way to preserve that journey for the future is to create an Adoption Journey book, highlighting for your child(ren) a side of their parents—and their unique family—that likely wasn’t evident from any child-centric baby books, or even their own treasured life book.
Here are nine reasons why an Adoption Journey book may be an investment well worth making.
1. An heirloom book takes your unique adoption journey into the future.
Whether you have a formal way of presenting your special recollections of your adoption journey or not, you no doubt regularly make the effort to share them with your child verbally. “I have told my children the stories many times,” says Teresa Baldinucci, a mom of three adopted children in Patchogue, NY, who sees the value in preserving those stories in book form, as well.
An Adoption Journey book ensures your family’s precious journey will carry on intact to your grandchildren and beyond. Indeed, pulling it out, like any family memory book, is a surefire way to spark conversation and reminiscing—essentially, keeping the family story sharing going.
2. Your journey to becoming a parent makes the story of your family different.
Once an adopted child is settled into his or her forever family, milestones and the related keepsakes become much the same as for any other family. “It is the journey to that day that makes the story different. And the journey of adoption starts long before your child is placed in your arms,” Mary Lou says.
For her and Mike, that journey included heartfelt talks about their options, much research, even more paperwork (including numerous rounds of fingerprinting), and a home study before they finally got The Call. “‘It’s a girl!’ Then over the fax at work came a blurry photo of the most adorable baby with full cheeks—Yuan Le Yi—waiting for us in the Hunan Province.” Along with 13 other families, the couple spent 11 days in several different places in China. The endless paperwork was finally capped off with a sealed brown envelope given to them when they left China, along with strict instructions not to open it. “Upon going through customs at LAX, the envelope was opened, and Yuan Le Yi became a United States citizen,” Mary Lou shares.
Now that's a story worthy of preservation in a book!
3. You may forget all the moving parts that synchronized to make you a family.
“When we were going through the process, every day seemed like an eternity. Funny, though, as I try to recall all of it now, years later, I really had to try and think about the timeline,” Mary Lou says. Recreating a visual timeline of the adoption journey can help spark memories, and for children, bring a new understanding of the emotional journey their parents undertook to become a family.
Having an editor who can help recreate the entire adoption process by going through files and stacks of papers, your old date planner and photographs, is a proven way to document your family’s origin story accurately. But going beyond that with interviews of your recollections and feelings during that time is what brings your family's story to life, what gives it power and depth.
4. It’s a beautiful thing to commit the dreams for your family’s future to memory.
While you think you’ll remember Every. Single. Thing. from the time you get home with your child, well...most new parents simply don’t. Sleep deprivation is an equal-opportunity affliction for ALL parents, after all!
During the first weeks at home, emotions run so high that specific, detailed memories may not gel for the long term. Adoptive parents often have the additional challenge of a child who is “mourning” the loss of familiar people and surroundings. Even a baby who came from less-than-ideal circumstances is still undergoing a major adjustment. “Our daughter immediately bonded with me, but it took her longer to bond with Mike,” Mary Lou says. “During those first weeks together as a family, we experienced a wide gamut of emotions: joy, stress, tears, though most of all intense love.”
And it’s not just the whats, whens, and hows that can begin to fade from memory; it’s the notions of what the future may hold, as well. “It's no different than when expecting a birth child. As a parent, you hold dreams for your as yet unknown child, and those are things you want to share with them in the future,” Teresa says. An Adoption Journey book is a wonderful option to not only celebrate your child(ren) and the family you have become, but to reflect upon your dreams for the future. What do your children dream of? What do you hope for them? Including handwritten notes in your book can be a heartfelt way to connect the past journey and the future of your family.
5. It has the potential to become a “holiday” tradition.
Whether you call it Family Day or Gotcha Day, the yearly celebration of the day you all officially became a family calls for a sentimental tradition. Thumbing through an Adoption Journey book is an ideal way to spark memories—and increasingly thoughtful observations and questions from your growing child.
6. It can simplify your life.
Mementos of your adoption journey can multiply, and get misplaced. “An adoption journey book is a great idea, one I wish I had, rather than having to have so many different ‘tools’ that I have used to create keepsakes of our journey. I have notebooks and files, photos in boxes, and more,” Mary Lou says. But even if, like Mary Lou, you’ve already saved your keepsakes in an organized way, you might want to consider having your mementos digitized (to save space) and memorialized in a book (to reveal and preserve their stories, beyond just their sentimental value).
Even digital photos, videos, and other electronic files can be challenging to find years later, especially as platforms evolve and laptops and other personal devices are upgraded. A book is a forever platform, and one that is always accessible for prompting remembrance and joy.
7. Family stories are gifts to our children.
Not only do the stories we tell our kids help them relate and feel like an essential part of the family, they strengthen them and, research shows, make them undeniably more resilient. As author Bruce Feiler wrote in a viral NYT piece:
The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.
By preserving your family’s unique narrative in an Adoption Journey Book, you are giving your child(ren) a valuable tool that, in the long run, will not only help stir memories, but will also help solidify their identity.
8. It may ease your anxiety.
You know that perpetual worry—stoked by your friends’ relentless Pinterest-board updates—that you’re not doing enough in the way of memory-keeping? That your photos are scattered across devices and that you only made a milestone book for your first child, then...nothing?
Creating an Adoption Journey book with a personal historian is a guaranteed way to ease that nagging guilt, to create something worthwhile and meaningful without any of the DIY angst. We do the heavy lifting; you get the heirloom of a lifetime.
Oh, and one more (not-so-little) thing:
9. Remembering is an enjoyable process.
Any family that wants to preserve their adoption journey in a heirloom book must commit to doing two essential things:
Gathering materials (adoption files, mementos such as plane tickets and fingerprint cards, family photos), and
Talking about your memories and journey with a professional family biographer.
The “talking” part is not only easy, it is rewarding. The act of reminiscing about your family's stories with an open-hearted and interested listener can be healing, empowering, and centering. So even before you've received your book, you will have received a real gift: the gift of sharing.
What is your reason for wanting to preserve your family’s adoption journey?
We're willing to bet there are many reasons for preserving your adoption journey as there are reasons for adopting in the first place. Why do you want to preserve your family’s adoption journey in a book? Please share with us in the comments below, or give our founder, Dawn, a call at 917.922.7415 to see how we can work together.
Related Reading:
An Adoption Book Primer: Learn the difference between a life book, an adoption story book, and an Adoption Journey book.
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