Ron Reigns:
Welcome, and thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption with Kelly Rourke-Scarry and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad.

Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself you’re definitely not going to be able to take care of that kid, and that’s not fair.

Speaker 3:
And I know that my daughter would be well taken care of with them.

Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion. Give this child a chance. All I could think about was needing to save my son.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
My name is Kelly Rourke-Scarry, I’m the executive director, president, and cofounder of Building Arizona Families Adoption Agency, the Donna Kay Evans Foundation, and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies and human development and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption, and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.

Ron Reigns:
And I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the cohost of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now I work for my wife, who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Happy Christmas Eve.

Ron Reigns:
Merry Christmas, guys.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Merry Christmas.

Ron Reigns:
It’s the holidays.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It is, and we could not let today go by without having a Christmas episode.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah, definitely. It won’t be a long episode today because we’re on holiday too.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes. But we wanted to make sure that we said Merry Christmas to all of our listeners and talked a little bit about adoption and Christmas. And for those of you that are celebrating, we want to celebrate with you. And for those of you that are having a difficult time with Christmas this year, we want to make sure we’re with you as well.

Ron Reigns:
Absolutely.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
So in looking at Christmas, the first thing that comes to my mind anyway is Christmas trees.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah. Well, it’s definitely an image, that symbol of the holiday.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And I love Christmas trees, first of all. I love real ones. Ours is fake, but I love real Christmas trees. I love the smell of them.

Ron Reigns:
The smell indeed. The mess, do you love that?

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
The dropping of the pine needles?

Ron Reigns:
Not as much?

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No. You know, we used to use tinsel when I was a kid on all of our Christmas trees, and that is like a static nightmare.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Now, I can see using tinsel and the icicle things on a real tree. But when you do it on a fake tree it is a nightmare, because you’re trying to put the thing away and get all this stupid stuff off it for next year. And you may not want to decorate it the same next year.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Exactly. So, once you have tinsel, you will forever have tinsel.

Ron Reigns:
Absolutely.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And when we talk about Christmas trees, I always tell myself, “Okay, this year I’m going to have the beautiful Macy’s-esque Christmas tree. And then every year I look at the handmade ornaments for my kids from the time they were one and two, and I can’t do it. I can’t have a Macy’s Christmas tree.

Ron Reigns:
Macy’s doesn’t have that on there, right?

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No, they don’t. They have the bows and the matching bulbs, and ours looks like we found every bulb from 1980 until now and just threw them on the tree and every child’s ornament that they’ve made. And it’s beautiful.

Ron Reigns:
It’s more beautiful in a weird way. Yeah.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes.

Ron Reigns:
While the other one seems aesthetically perfect …

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It is.

Ron Reigns:
The one that’s actually made by the hands that you love is the one that’s more beautiful.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It is. And I have to share a quick, funny story that makes me look like a terrible mom, which we all have our what I call bad mommy moments.

Ron Reigns:
Absolutely.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And this is a bad mommy moment that I am confessing on air. When my oldest daughter, Michelle, was three, she made this ornament at preschool where it was like a circle on construction paper, and then what they did is they glued pretzels around to make a wreath and they interweaved ribbon through the pretzels.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It looked beautiful.

Ron Reigns:
Cool idea, right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. Maybe three or four days before Christmas that year, we’d already hung the ornament on the tree and it was probably 6:30 in the morning, and my daughter came and said, “Mommy, I’m hungry for breakfast.” And I was so tired I couldn’t get out of bed. And I said, “Okay, just give me five more minutes.” And I played the five more minute game for probably a half an hour.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And I was awake enough that I was watching her and making sure she was okay, but not really alert enough to notice that she was eating her ornament.

Ron Reigns:
She was hungry.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes. And by the time I realized it, she’d nibbled on it, because there was ribbon so it wasn’t like she could just pull the pretzels off. It looks like a rat started eating around it.

Ron Reigns:
Nibbling around it.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And it is a reminder to me every year. I hang it on the tree, it’s a little bit like my albatross, just to remind myself to take that moment and …

Ron Reigns:
And take care of the kids.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes.

Ron Reigns:
Even when you’re tired and hard to get up.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
They’re hungry. Because you don’t want them eating their ornaments.

Ron Reigns:
That’s beautiful. I love it. Good job.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
All right. So, Christmas trees are our focus in this podcast, and a Christmas tree is very representative of a triangle.

Ron Reigns:
Right. That’s the image, the long, tall triangle. Okay.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. And so, as we look at the Christmas triangle, in my mind it reminds me of the triad. Triangle, triad.

Ron Reigns:
Right. So, the birth mother, the adoptive parents, and the adoptive child.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Exactly.

Ron Reigns:
In whichever order you want to put them, it doesn’t matter.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, exactly. So I thought that when we discussed Christmas today, we would talk a little bit about the highs and lows of Christmas and the holiday season for the adoption triad.

Ron Reigns:
Okay, very good.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
So for the adoptee, I would say from personal experience Christmas was and is always a blast. It is always a time for me that is celebratory. It’s just full of excitement. I would recommend to families that have adopted children to make sure that if you adopt an older child or you do an international adoption, that you include the child immediately in the family traditions. And for those that are adopted at birth or just decide this is the time we’re going to start doing everything correctly, or we’re going to start making sure we check every box and dot every I …

Ron Reigns:
Yeah, this is the year.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, this is the year. Help your child create memorial keepsakes. Remember that all families are different. You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses. One thing that you can do that’s fun is to make your own family advent calendar. And behind each box you can put a different cultural item for each one, if you have adopted internationally.

Ron Reigns:
Certainly.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Another thing that would be fun to do is, if you’re doing a Christmas picture and you have different cultures in your home, is to have each of those children represent those cultures maybe through their clothing or something they’re holding.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Some kind of symbol of that heritage.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, that’s kind of fun. Another fun thing is to create personalized stockings. Let your child help make their own stocking. And I think that’s kind of fun.

Ron Reigns:
And it’s fun whether you’re adopted or not for the kids.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right.

Ron Reigns:
Getting to create something for yourself.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
It is. And not only that, you can make ornaments that are non-edible.

Ron Reigns:
Not pretzel related, okay, fair enough.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Make sure that you prevent yourself from ever having a Macy’s Christmas tree.

Ron Reigns:
Right. Because nobody’s eating the macaroni ones, right?

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
No, no. They’d be at the dentist on Christmas if they were doing that.

Ron Reigns:
Crunch, crunch.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Exactly. So for the birth parents out there, the first year may be the hardest, as the first of anything usually are.

Ron Reigns:
Right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
As a new birth mother, people may have told you this is going to be a hard time, be prepared to be sad. Don’t take that for what it’s worth. If you’re sad, you’re sad. And if you’re not, you’re not. You don’t have to make sure that you are feeling a certain way because that has been pushed on you. Find your own feelings. And if you do need help or you need things to help lift your spirit and you have an open adoption, reach out to your child. Make arrangements in advance to spend time with your child. Send a gift or card. I know we have at our agency lots of birth mothers that have placed previously that will come and bring gifts for us to send to their families.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Even if your child is too young to know that it’s Christmas and you want to make something for them that they can look back on as they get older and as they’re growing up, it would be fun to make them an ornament that they could have for each year of their life. And when they’re old enough to understand about adoption and the loving choice that you made; they can look back at the ornaments that you made every year. Another thing that might help is to ask the adoptive parents for a photo. Write a letter to the child, again, every year. They’re so young now, that doesn’t mean that the adoptive family can’t put them aside.

Ron Reigns:
And the kid can read it later.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
What a gift.

Ron Reigns:
Say you’re 15, 16 years old and you go through that box and go, “Wow, my birth mom always loved me just as much as my adoptive mom.” Right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Because she does.

Ron Reigns:
Right, exactly.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And I can tell you that if I had an album to go back through where I could read it, that would mean the world to me.

Ron Reigns:
Sure.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That would be the best gift ever.

Ron Reigns:
So again, one of those many reasons why it’s so great that adoptions are becoming more and more open through the years. So yeah, I agree.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Agree. Another thing that birth parents can do is to keep a journal. Because next year and the year after that and the after that, studies show, and from the women that I’ve spoken with, it does get easier. And you learn how to appreciate and respect yourself even more. You also learn how to further find peace in your decision. Surrounding yourself with family members and friends is helpful because it keeps you distracted. Connecting with other birth mothers, reaching out to a counselor if you need to. Start a new project. I think volunteering and giving back always helps. When you’re really struggling with depression or you’re grieving, and you force yourself to get out of bed and to start living life again, volunteering and helping somebody else really, really makes a difference for both of you, the person you’re helping and yourself. The holidays are a time for giving. So volunteering, again, is really a good way of paying it forward.

Ron Reigns:
Right. And it just makes you feel like, “Wow, I’m doing something positive. I’m doing something good.”

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Just like with the adoption. It’s the same philosophy.

Ron Reigns:
Same mindset.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah, you’re giving. And that is what a birth mother does, is she’s a giver.

Ron Reigns:
There you go.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Remind yourself about the reasons you placed, and really make sure that you take time to just celebrate you. Because you’re the reason that the adoptive family is having the Christmas that they’re having and you’re the reason that your child is going to have the amazing life that you want your child to have.

Ron Reigns:
And the opportunities that you may not be able to afford them.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Absolutely.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And for you adoptive parents out there, if you’re currently in the adoption process and you’re in the waiting process and you’re having a hard time because it’s the holidays and there’s lots of pictures of families and movies about families and Christmas time …

Ron Reigns:
And you feel like, “I’m just waiting for my family.” Right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes, “When is it going to happen? When is it my turn?” Try not to focus all of your energy during this time on adopting. Take an adoption time out vacation.

Ron Reigns:
You know what? Have a happy Christmas before the adoption finalizes.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yes.

Ron Reigns:
Because the next Christmas is probably going to be really busy and very stressful. So, enjoy it.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Enjoy it. Count the blessings that you have now. Focus on the positives that are going on in your life. And reach out. There’s so many support groups out there for other adoptive parents that are waiting and they’re probably struggling just like you. If you have adopted and you have an open adoption with your child’s birth parents, remember them and honor them during this season. Consider sending a handprint or a footprint of your child or creating an ornament for their Christmas tree.

Ron Reigns:
Okay.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Make sure you include them by sending them a holiday card. Maybe if you have a very open adoption, you’d be comfortable inviting them to participate.

Ron Reigns:
Enjoy Christmas with us, or the holidays. Yeah.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Absolutely. Make sure you schedule a Skype or FaceTime. If they do send a gift for the child, make sure that you send a picture back to them of the child with the gift. Send a text on Christmas morning at minimum. Make sure that you record a holiday message for your birth parents. Encourage your child, if your child was able to write a letter, to share that with the birth family. Maybe send a copy of their Santa list.

Ron Reigns:
Very good.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Before you mail it to Santa. Also, make sure that you are open with your child and you talk to them about the birth family and any traditions that they may have shared with you and what they do. And even take it a step further and incorporate those traditions into your own family traditions so that you can respect and honor the child’s birth parents. Or if you adopted internationally and they have customs in their country, maybe do that as well.

Ron Reigns:
Right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I think sending the birth parents, if you’re able to, maybe a little miniature tree that you and the child decorated for them to have would just mean the world. And I think that this is a time to really show your appreciation and love …

Ron Reigns:
For what they did for you.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Because they’re the reason that your family is what it is today. So, I think these are just some things that you can do to help celebrate Christmas and the beautiful holiday that it is. And from us to you, we hope all of you have a safe holiday.

Ron Reigns:
Absolutely.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
An amazing holiday, you enjoy whatever perspective you are looking at adoption from. And we hope that you’ll stay with us in the upcoming episodes and through the new year.

Ron Reigns:
Very good.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
All right, so Merry Christmas.

Ron Reigns:
We have a pregnancy crisis hotline available 24/7 by phone or text at 623-695-4112. Or you can call our toll-free number, 1-800-340-9665. We can make an immediate appointment with you to get you to a safe place, provide food and clothing, get started on creating an Arizona adoption plan, or give you more information. You can check out our blogs on our website at azpregnancyhelp.com. Thank you for joining us on Birth Mother Matters In Adoption, written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by me, Ron Reigns. If you enjoy this podcast, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. And as always, thanks to Grapes for letting us use their song I Don’t know as our theme song. Join us next time for Birth Mother Matters In Adoption. For Kelly Rourke-Scarry, I’m Ron Reigns, and we’ll see you then