I Would Have Waited a Hundred Years for You

I Would Have Waited a Hundred Years for You is a tender, revealing look at adoption from the parent perspective. Whether you are an adoptive parent, an adopted child, someone considering adoption, or simply curious about adoption dynamics, I Would Have Waited a Hundred Years for You will touch your heart and increase your sensitivity to the challenges and joys that are unique to adoptive parenting.

While waiting to adopt our first child, my husband and I read several books about adoption from the adopted child's perspective and a few from the birth mother's point of view, but we didn't find any books that explored the adoptive parent's experience. The longer I parent, the more I realize that adoption is a profound and lasting experience for parents as well as their children.

For example, biological parents don't wonder if their son's birth mother is still living with her abuser or using drugs or in jail; they don’t have to formulate a response to “Are you going to give me away someday?”, or decide what degree of truth to tell their young daughter who bounds off the school bus and asks for help finding “Rape” on the map, because some older kids told her that's where she came from. But neither do they have the dizzying anticipation of meeting birth parents, the joy of finding birth siblings, or the delicious irony of strangers saying “Your daughter looks just like you.”

As I grow into my Self as a parent I understand parenting and adoption differently than when I first held my newborn daughter, and I realize that being adopted may mean something very different to her at 12 or 16 or 20 than it does at two-and-a-half. I Would Have Waited a Hundred Years for You is the collective voice of over 50 adoptive parents sharing what they want their adopted children to know about their own (the parent's) adoptive experience. The ten chapters of this book represent the most universal responses and include quotes from adoptive parents, adult adoptees, and birth parents.

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