Mother, Blessing.

It's August! We've been active for 225 days so far. That sounds like a really really really long time, but it actually isn't. Weird.

Still waiting, no word.

I vacillate between stressed and almost forgetting that we're even waiting. Money is scaring me, not knowing how much this is going to cost, fear of the cost of travel, of staying in a hotel for a couple weeks. Adoption is an astonishing expensive thing. It is only through our families that we are able to do this - and I feel so grateful that money is not stopping us from expanding our family, as it does for so many people.

I recently had an amazing "mother blessing" hosted by some very dear friends. Some very close friends gathered in a room and shared thoughts, beads, and lots of tears as they wished us speed and luck and strength, and told me they know this will be beautiful. I felt so loved and held up that for days I was buoyed by that love. I have been to many mother blessings myself, hosted a bunch, intend to host many more. I never had one with Adeline - I wasn't at a place in my life where I had so many sisters. After the miscarriages mother blessings became exquisitely painful. Not that I didn't wish joy and blessings on my friends, just that I knew that I would never sit in that place myself, and rub my belly with expectation. But I did (although there was no belly rubbing, just a little drinking!), and it was more than I ever could have expected. And all of these women have been with us on some part of this path, and all of them know the baggage we carry around, and all of them have carried some of our pain around to help share the burden. As each woman shared the bead(s) she selected to be strung on a necklace for me, she explained why, and gave a bit of her heart. It was hugely moving, and I cried through nearly all of it. Some of the tears were just from having these friends open themselves so wide, some were from the deep significance of the beads and thoughts and words they had brought, some were from joyful and painful memories. They were good and cathartic tears.

I am a Mother, and I get to be a Mother again, and I get to bring this child into a family of women that love him or her very dearly already. I am very very blessed.