Family, or some facsimile

When you have a child, you start a family. When you adopt, you become a family AND you become part of a village.

A village that sneaks up on you in the middle of the night. A village of courageous, child hungry people, that have some inkling of really understanding what you are feeling even when you are lacking the right words to express it, and even if they are not feeling the same thing at the moment.

Sometimes it is an invisible village, of connections across continents, states, or worlds. Sometime it is the neighbor next door, or the preschool teacher who shares her story. But while invisible, it is there, it is palatable, and when called upon it steps forward.

There are friends, there are work friends, there are work out buddies, but there is just separate stratum of emotion and bond for my mommy friends and my adoption-mom friends. We stop worlds for one another, we move mountains, and we don't even have to talk regularly.

Tomorrow I take a leap. I'm spending 3 days with four families that share an amazing bond. We have photos of our children together in an orphanage. We live across the country. We have differing religious beliefs, economic realities, family make-up, and style. But we have something in common, a process that chose us to find one another, and we took the call once found to keep it going. So we are gathering.

And on the eve of our gathering, it feels like I'm getting ready go be with family.

I'm not blogging this weekend. Talk to you on Monday.