Bread and Bread

  The Identified Patient Is crying again Is talking too much Made it all about her Brought up the thing we agreed not to talk about Is letting her child watch YouTube again Is letting him see her tired face, shiny with tears Sent a bitter text and drafted a worse one Ate all the Cheez-Its and drank your Coke Is not over it Is moving on too quickly Is not taking a break Is not asking the pregnant woman about her due date Does not want to be at this party, and it shows Did not keep your work deadlines in mind Is not getting the right kind of therapy Is too much like your mother and her own father Blogged about it Got fat Worried and worried and worried Flew too close to the sun Hates fun Wasted years Is obsessed with productivity Acts like no one suffers but her Nags too much and not enough Can’t win Uses annoying phrases like “I can’t win” Doesn’t see how much she’s won Is steeped in guilt like water becoming the blackest tea Is sorry Apologizes too much Wants her child and someone else

"Go big or go home" is a phrase befitting reality shows more than reality. (Prototyping innovations on a small scale and growing gradually usually works better.) But when it comes to adoption, it's fair to say that this year we went big. We signed on with as many attorneys and agencies as we could afford. We had three matches with expectant moms, none of which led to an adoption.  The last disruption, less than two weeks ago, took us to Reno for three days (more about that at some point). And then we went home. Since our disruption in the fall , we've been working toward becoming a licensed resource family in the foster care system. In addition to a hell of a lot of paper work, it's meant asking myself what it will look like to parent a child I probably won't get to keep. It's meant leaning into being Trauma-Informed, a Helpful Member Of My Community, and a bit of a Badass (resource parents: I think of you as badasses). It's meant leaning away from my