Introduction
To a very special person,
We’re so grateful that you are considering allowing us to welcome your precious baby into our lives and we are honored that you have chosen to read our letter. We have tried to put into words our wholehearted longing to raise a family, and our only hope is that this letter gives you a glimpse into our hearts, our genuine world and our home.
First of all, we’d love to let you know what we think are some of the most important things about us.
We’ve been together as a couple for over 17 happy years. We have a strong marriage and have learned wonderful lessons from those in our families who’ve been blessed by long, stable and loving marriages. Graham’s parents were married for 50 years before his father passed and Sarah’s parents were married for over 40 years when her mother died. Our siblings, too, have had long marriages. We feel blessed and ready to love children.
Our secure financial situation means that we are able to provide for our child, but we take none of that for granted as we both grew up in modest homes, and we want our child to value their friends and family, happiness and health above anything money can buy.
We originally come from Great Britain, and people tell us all the time they love our cool British accents! But we are settled in this amazing country, and have made our loving home in the beautiful state of Massachusetts – it feels like the perfect place to begin our family. We have no plans to move and look forward raising our child here.
We both grew up with moms right in the center of our homes, and we just know that having that secure and constant presence in our own child’s life can only be a wonderful thing for our whole family. Sarah is really excited about taking on the role as a full-time stay-at-home mom.
Through spending time with the children of friends and relatives, we have always known that we both can love any child. Children need not be biologically related to us for us to delight in spending time on the swings, making art and pancakes in our kitchen and enjoying the unfolding of their lives together. We will love our child unreservedly and we come to adoption with our hearts unbroken and wide open. We have been unable to become parents through pregnancy and this makes our existing openness to adoption all the more tender. We are grateful for the chance to be a mom and dad.
We are respectful of your own hopes and wishes and we would love to talk to you more about ongoing communication and openness. We want our child to grow up with confidence and we want them to always know about the loving and special way our family was created.
We live in a beautiful large home in a family neighborhood, with plenty of space to grow into, a perfect back yard for lots of silly fun, and with city adventures just a short drive or train ride away.
We both value our college degrees and education has opened doors for us. We are already thinking ahead and are well on the way to having money saved for a college education for our child to give them the best possible start to their adult adventures.
We both know how much fun it is to have brothers and sisters. We are excited to begin our family’s story through our first adoption, and our dream is to grow our family further soon in the future.
We know that our child will be surrounded by love and cuddles and fun and support and we know that we can provide a safe and happy home at their core – like a solid foundation on which they can build their own strong lives, and open their hearts and minds to the world.
We hope that you are eager to read more. If so, we’d love to tell you more about…
Our first years as a couple
We met on a chilly English fall evening almost 17 years ago while out having fun with friends in Birmingham, England, at a time when Graham was still studying hard, and Sarah had just left college and had begun the adventure of her very first job. We only met briefly that evening but we got to know each other better over the coming weeks and talked for hours about our families, our upbringing, about humdrum day-to-day things and about our hopes and dreams. We found we had so much in common, similar backgrounds and upbringings and we shared lots of interests.
We soon found ourselves very much in love and it wasn’t long before we were eagerly setting up our very first home together. It wasn’t that we simply wanted to be together, it was just that we couldn’t imagine ever being apart. We settled in a pretty English village and spent long hours together fixing up our new home to make it a welcoming place to spend time relaxing, with friends, entertaining and having family to stay.
On one quiet wintry night, we held each other close at home and talked tenderly about our future together. There was no flamboyant marriage proposal – that’s just not our style – but we decided the time was really perfect for us to get married. We spent a year planning our wedding just the way we wanted it and it ended up being a perfect, simple and relaxed day filled with family, friends, love and laughter. We can’t wait to share our wedding day mementos with our child and to tell them how mommy and daddy love each other even more today than they did on their special wedding day.
Crossing the Pond
Our plans to move from Great Britain to the United States began back in 2009. Graham was given the opportunity for a great new permanent job – a big promotion within his company in Massachusetts.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make because it meant leaving everything that was familiar behind. But the move has been nothing but a blessing and has brought us even closer together as a couple. Not only have we made lots of fantastic new friends, but we’ve managed to still spend lots of time with our friends and family in Great Britain. And we have welcomed so many guests to our home in Massachusetts that sometimes it’s felt like we are running an unofficial hotel.
We are really looking forward to traveling on vacation to Great Britain as a family to spend valuable time with family and friends and we know that our child will take travel in their stride and will grow up embracing lots of exciting cultures and customs. We’ll take vacations exploring London together as a family – not only the famous parks and historic places but also the bustling neighborhoods and the real vibrant city. Sarah’s family lives in the English countryside near Nottingham and we love to visit Nottingham Castle and can’t wait to play Robin Hood games as a family in Sherwood Forest.
We are excited now to have settled in our home in Massachusetts. So whenever we travel we look forward to the best thing of all – returning home and being thankful for the new experiences we’ve shared together. Traveling makes the relaxing times at home even more precious, like curling up on the couch watching TV, lazy Sundays with long, late breakfasts, puttering around at home and neighborhood walks.
Just from Sarah
I work full-time at the moment organizing conferences for doctors and nurses to help them provide the best care for their patients. But, once we are blessed with a child, I will be a stay-at-home mom and invest all of my energy in giving our family the very best and most stable start. I’m excited at the prospect of planning lots of daily activities, getting involved in the active mothers club in our town for lots of outings and playgroups, long walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, story time and arts and crafts at the busy library with lots of little friends, trips to explore the city and big gatherings in our playroom with play dates. I want our child to be proud of me as a strong female role-model, and, only when the time is perfect for our family in the coming years and our child is growing strong and independent, I would love to return to work, maybe part-time or starting my own business from home.
Graham is such a dependable husband who cares so much about working hard to provide for us. He always makes a special effort to devote himself to his home-life, and whatever his day at work has been like he returns home with his big smile and a tender kiss.
He has a heart as big as a cloud and he’s super generous. He loves to think up special, thoughtful gifts for everyone and loves to plan surprise days out and romantic weekends away to spend time together. Our nieces and nephews always excitedly open envelopes at Christmas time to reveal details of special themed days out together to see acrobats, or to marvel at Egyptian treasures or to ride on steam trains. When our nieces and nephews were small they would love his big hugs and he would be an instant toddler magnet from the moment they saw him. He would always be the source of lots of silly and fun playtime piggyback rides around the yard, splashing in a backyard pool, bouncing on the trampoline and enthusiastic ball games.
I love that he’s a really practical person and an engineer at heart and just has to know how everything works. I tease him about it but really I am proud of his inquisitive mind and I know that he will always foster creativity and curiosity in our child. He will be the patient daddy who always answers the questions about how airplanes fly and the seemingly endless questions about “why?” things are so in our mysterious world.
Just from Graham
I really love my job where I manage lots of people to make life-changing medical products and it’s really rewarding to grow a business, create jobs and work with so many people from different cultures and different backgrounds. But there’s no way that I could be so successful at work without the support of Sarah at home. She’s always there with a hug and a thoughtful word when things aren’t going to plan and she reminds me not to sweat the small stuff. Lots of people at work really depend on me, and I feel honored that through adoption I will have the opportunity to always be there for my family too – to love, cherish and support our child.
I’m really grateful that Sarah has chosen to be a stay-at-home-mom and as I work only a couple of miles from home, I will be able to get really involved in our daily family routine. I’m looking forward to being home for dinner and to be involved in our daily routines, including bath time, story time and bed time. And I can’t wait to enjoy dedicated daddy-time during the weekends when we will have fun in the yard or play in the park, take trips to sports games and doing chores together.
We have been such a close part of our nieces’ and nephews’ lives as they have grown up, and I love to see the joy on Sarah’s face when she is making up lots of fun activities, like at Easter when she would prepare elaborate Easter egg hunts and then chase excited wide-eyed toddlers around the yard. I just know she is going to make such a great, active mom and she will be brilliant at creating a comfortable and safe home full of love, support and fun for our whole family. She’s the love of my life and she makes me laugh every day. I admire her for being such an independent woman, always organized and enthusiastic to learn and patiently teach, and she just never gives up on anything.
Our Amazing Family and Friends
We still cherish spending time with our parents, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. Christmas holidays are always special, family times full of life, where we come together to spend time at one family home or another, waiting for Santa to arrive for the children, frantically unwrapping gifts, long noisy meals chatting and laughing around the family table wearing Christmas hats and playing silly family games. We love to take part in special church services at holiday times as a family. Graham was raised a Catholic and I was raised an Anglican Protestant but the differences have never mattered to us. Regularly attending organized church hasn’t always been important to us, but we are looking forward to giving our child exposure to the rich traditions of our faiths with Christian values embedded in our family life.
We also have so many precious friends too – many of them we have held close since we were toddlers ourselves. And we know everyone is excited about surrounding our adopted child with love. Grandma is delighted about welcoming her eighth grandchild and we know she is going to unashamedly spoil our baby like only a grandma can. We know she will be visiting the US often to coo and cuddle. And when we are apart we have long video conference calls on our computer to catch up and share time together. We also have video conference calls with Granddad when we are apart, and we know he will relish playing silly games and tricks and will have a brand new bright-eyed audience for all his funny tales about growing up in England. Our brothers and sisters and our nieces and nephews will welcome our baby into their hearts and homes, to play, to have fun family days out in Great Britain, in Massachusetts and in a variety of interesting places around the world.
Stability and Learning
We both grew up in families where money was really tight but our parents managed, through resourcefulness and taking extra jobs, to provide as best they could. And even though we are fortunate now to be in a really stable financial situation where we can provide for our family without difficulty, we want our child to grow up knowing, like we both did, that the most valuable things in life are the things you can’t buy, like friends, family, love, fun, happiness and health. We want our child to grow up with a generous heart realizing that the things and the experiences they have are ones that many others just can’t afford. We both love to volunteer for non-profit organizations that are close to our hearts and as a family we will work to help others and share amazing new experiences that remind us just how lucky we are.
We were both the very first generation in our families to get college degrees so we don’t ever take it for granted because it’s given us opportunities that our parents never had. We’ve already got a significant college fund set aside for our child because if they are able we want them to have the very best academic start and the opportunity to grow in independence and confidence. But above all we want to encourage our child to do the best they can on whatever path they ultimately take.
Growing our Family
We’ve always talked about adoption as a wonderful way to grow a family, and after some years of infertility and miscarriage it feels like the perfect path for us to take, and we can’t wait to become parents.
We want our child to always grow up with confidence knowing that our family was created through strong choices and without secrets. We’ve already started collecting photos and jotting down our adoption adventures to share even with our tiny baby, and as we flick through pages of happy photographs and read together as a family, we hope the story about the special way our family came together will be one of their favorites to hear over and over again.
In whatever way you feel most comfortable, our hearts are very much open to you being a special part of our child’s life as they grow up knowing that you made an adoption plan with amazing love and generosity right at its core. We would love to talk to you more about what your heart is telling you about ongoing communication and openness. We are open to visits, providing you with photographs and letter updates, videoconferencing if you have this on a computer and also posting photos on a private on line site, if this is something you could easily access. We would like your child to grow up knowing that you care and for them to feel nourished, at the roots, by all of us.
Parenting and our Promise
We have had some really great parenting role models and look forward, in addition, to creating our own traditions, ways to encourage our child to be confident and creative. There will be joy and delight and triumphs big and small.
Being parents is the thing that we desire most in the whole wide world. Our promise to you is that we will surround your beautiful, growing, child with love. We’ll show him or her what’s right and honest and lovingly set limits so they move easily in the world. We’ll play silly, funny games with them, and encourage them with their homework. We’ll teach your child to value kindness to others, health and honesty above owning things and we’ll show them what it means to be loving and tolerant, open-minded and generous. We’ll help your child learn the benefits of persistence over aggression, and we’ll show them how to be quick to help and slow to judge. We’ll snuggle with them at bedtime and share the exploration of the extraordinary worlds that live between the covers of books. We will be there for your child. Always. When they say their first word and take their first steps. We’ll hold your child tight when they are sick and cuddle them when they are sad or when disappointments come along. We will feed their curious mind and your dreams, we’ll expose your child to the magic of music and art and science, and we’ll answer your child’s mind-blowing questions. We’ll watch the wonders of nature as the sunflowers in our yard grow tall and baby birds grow strong in their nests, and when winter comes we’ll giggle and make a whole family of snow angels in the yard. We’ll celebrate your child’s achievements and show them what independence looks like. You,as your child’s birthmother will always be the first person who taught her or him just what love, selflessness and courage is, and as your child grows, we’ll give them a strong sense of your love and courage.
Our Neighborhood and Our Home
People flock to New England from all over the world to visit and we have to pinch ourselves to really believe that we live right here and have so many opportunities. We love playing in the outdoors, skiing and snow-shoeing in the mountains and in the local parks. We can’t wait to all build sandcastles on the local sandy beaches, watch the seals sunbath on the rocks, peer into tidal pools for crabs, splash in the ocean and swim in the warm calm ponds. There are so many safe places to bicycle here, and lots of fun family places to kayak, paddling in and out of the cranberry bogs and tidal inlets.
New York is only a train ride away and as a family we will be able to fly kites in Central Park and see the big scary dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum. We will enjoy playing in Boston’s waterside park as a family and watching excitedly as the stream of Boston’s famous colorful ‘Duck Tours’ with their noisy drivers one-after-another splash in and out of the Charles River.
We carefully chose our special neighborhood in a southern suburb of Boston because we know it’s a great place for families to grow. Our home is on a leafy quiet street with lots of families out walking dogs, moms with strollers, people tending their yards, riding bikes and jogging. We are excited about trick or treating as family when hundreds of kids flock to our street for the special Halloween parade.
We live in a beautiful large home with a sunny farmer’s porch to laze on and a big shady yard with lots of hide-and-seek trees. Kids love to run from our deck and play on the swing-set in the back yard and zoom along on the zip line as they shriek and whoosh into the arms of a grown-up.
Our sunny and welcoming nursery will be filled with bright furniture, happy pictures, lots of bedtime books and cuddly creatures. And the wide open playroom leads right onto the garden and we know it will be great for racing around and playing with lots of friends and plenty of toys and games.
We share our home with our beautiful cat, Bertie, who travelled with us when we moved to Massachusetts. He’s a true gentle giant and very affectionate and loves to cuddle up on our laps and watch TV. He can be a little shy and is totally lazy. He loves to roll over and purr and demands to have his big white fluffy tummy tickled.
Your baby is blessed to have a mother who loves him or her so much to make an adoption plan – to give life once and then to give it all over again. We are really thankful to you for reading our letter as you seek to make the very best decision for you and your beautiful baby. If you would like to find out more about approaching this next phase of adoption together with us, with grace and love and confidence, then we would love to hear from. All we ask is that you contact our adoption agency, Full Circle Adoptions 1.800.452.3678.
Sincerely from our hearts,