Lifebook!

Addy's Lifebook is officially complete... Well almost! I have it all packed into her little scrapbook but need a couple more pegs so it isn't so tight.

After working on this for what feels like forever, I have recieved many questions regarding what a lifebook is.

So what is a lifebook?

A Lifebook is different than a baby book, different than a regular scrapbook, but is something far more special. A lifebook is the story of how we became a family and about Addy's life before meeting us. Each one is different and people do them all in individual ways. So for Addy's I included everything that I thought was important and that would mean something to her as she grows.

A lifebook is a private book for the adoptee to keep for themself and share with who they want when they want. So if you are wondering if you will get to see it, the answer is I don't know. Right now, no. But when Addy is older she will be able to choose who she shares her whole story with and how she shares it. (Note, this does not mean there is anything in her past to hide, it just means it is her story to share when she is ready with who she wants, it is not a decision we will make for her.) Our close family know most of the details of her adoption story but we keep the story for everyone else more general.

Some adoptees are very open about their adoption and others are more private, just like everyone else, some people are more outgoing and others are shy and more introverted.

Adoption is not something we will sit down with Addy and have a talk about. It is something that is part of our daily lives, our life events, and will be celebrated. It is something Addy will always know, there will be no shame in her story, no worry about what she needs to share with others, and we hope she will be empowered to decide what she wants to share and with who and not feel pressured by the nosey questions of others. We are an interracial family which will raise its own issues and we will face those as a family as well.

So what is in a Lifebook, or more specifically what is in our Lifebook. I tried to put it into sections that made more sense and made her story flow. So the basic sections are:

• Why we adopted
• Our adoption profile (what her birthmom saw to choose to meet us)
• Information about getting the phone call and about our match meeting
• Information on her birth family
• Information on her birth and birthdate (shared birthdays, news headlines, year of birth info, etc.)
• Information on her foster family and her time in the agency foster care
• Information on our agency
• The day we met her
• Our finalization paperwork and pictures
• Our adoption announcement and newspaper announcement
• Letters to her birthmom
• Letters from her birthmom
• extra pages for more!
• I did include our homestudy somewhere in there too but just stuck it all in one page protector so as not to take up too much space
• Also a few other random pages in there too (how we chose her name, what her full name means, pages on getting ready for baby)

So thats it! It turned out pretty good. The picture on the front is one from our finalization party which was the day she was legally ours! I included the picture of the cover and the first page for you to see! OOPS ok, so the first page won't be posted since it has our last name on it, but if you would like to see it (since it is the only page we are sharing) send me an email! It has our signature backwards picture on it!