ACONE Conference

Well, David and I attended the 37th Annual Adoption Conference of New England this past Saturday. It was our first time going to the ACONE conference and we left with mixed feelings about it all.

We had the opportunity to run into some friends we have met through blogs and at classes we have taken, that was a total plus for us. We also had the chance to see our social worker and share our "matching" excitement with her. The library of adoption books they had set up was really impressive, I had no idea there were that many books focused on adoption!

David and I chose the "path" for the day which was made up of four classes. Our first class was not at all what we expected and a little disappointing (this is me trying to be kind). Our second class was fantastic, the instructor was a mother of six children (two adopted, two bi-racial biological and two step-children) and a book author. Her presentation was informative, her stories were honest and touching and she had a great sense of humor about everything. The third session (which we switched to realizing the one we had signed up with was focused on International travel) pretty much sent me over the edge and we ended up leaving the conference early! Honestly, I think that David and I just could not relate to a lot of the attendees and did not agree with a lot of the teaching. I felt like they were pumping fear into us and providing a lot of worst case scenarios rather than focusing on the joy of adoption. There was hardly any joy or encouragement rather there was a lot of negativity and I just found that it wasn't the right place for us. Maybe down the road we may benefit from that type of surrounding but for now we prefer to be surrounded by positive people and experiences.

More than ever I am thankful for our families that have children, we can talk to them about what to expect at the hospital and what we need for our infant. We can also talk to some family members about their adoption experiences. I find these conversations more meaningful than sitting in a lecture feeling uncomfortable with the content. Maybe we chose the wrong classes, maybe we just simply have different ideas/opinions about this journey; either way we learned a lot. Most importanly I learned that David and I are doing what we feel is right and we have a healthy sense of humor about it all.