“A child born to another woman calls me Mommy. The magnitude of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege are not lost on me.” – Jody Landers

My sweet J’s,

Today is the day you became legally free. What this means is that at trial today, and after years of hard work and with the help of handfuls of professionals, a judge terminated rights of your birth parents. It’s a tremendously sad thing – to be legally free – a ward or orphan of the state – but it’s also equally happy in our case because it means we are another step closer to adoption where we will earn the privilege of being your Mom and Dad FOREVER!

Being legally free also signifies that we will have a closed adoption. We get to close the  door on a past in which put your safety and wellbeing in jeopardy, and ensure that’s never compromised. We will get to make ALL the decisions for you, once you’re adopted. We are so extremely grateful for your birth parents, we’ll continue to pray for them to be well, and we will be open to answering any questions you have when they arise. And if later down the road they are sober and safe, and you want to meet them, we are open to that. In the meantime we will continue to talk with the highest regard for them for they unknowingly gave us our greatest blessings yet – YOU!

Today we focused on the good. And we celebrated with “legally free” cake. You requested we sing the “Happy Birthday” song to you so that you could blow out the candles together.

Big J was especially excited to hear about becoming legally free because he can’t wait until the day adoption closes and some of our rules change.  (Like mandatory life jacket in a foot of water or in the hot tub when Mom and Dad are sitting next to you.) “I’m FREE,” he squealed with such delight! “I’m FREE!”

We dream of a future for you that’s so bright. Dream big, my loves!!

The next steps for us will be to wait for our newly assigned Adoption Social Worker to meet with us for monthly Health & Safety Checks (the torch gets passed from our current Social Worker) & to retain an attorney to guide us through the adoption, and we hope to be done in the next 6 months. See you at the courthouse!

❤