Imaginary children

For the first time, we attended a support group for ‘unconventional’ parents. That is… a group for gay dads and prospective gay dads. Though it was new to us, the group has been around for a couple of decades.

I loved it. For a lot of reasons I loved it. It meant meeting new people, hearing new stories, having a new system of support. But, I think the most fulfilling thing about it was the fact that some of the dads brought their kids along with them. Not just pretend or hypothetical kids. Not even actors. They were real children with gay dads like us.

It provided a glimmer of hope and helped bring some calm and realness to our situation. Because, after months of paperwork, parenting classes, fingerprinting, reading articles and trying to learn as much as we can, adoption, foster parenting and other non-traditional ways of building families had started to feel like something that just happens in the movies and on tv or at least something that only happens to other people somewhere else. It didn't seem like any of it actually happens in the real world.

Seeing these dads interact with their kids, play with them, correct them when they misbehave. It was pretty amazing. And, what’s more, we got to interact with the kids as well. It gave us a tiny taste and was almost kind of a tease. But, we loved it.

They’re real! I said. They’re not just kids we hear stories about. THey're really here. This really does happen.

It reminded me of the importance to have faith in what’s realistically a dysfunctional system and faith in ourselves to know how to provide the right degree of patience and proactivity to start building our own family.

While it’s painful to wait — and painful to come home to an empty room with no kids in it every night — I’m not losing hope. There are kids everywhere, and they’re people just like we are. They need to know adults care about them, believe in them and are ready to help them become the amazing people they are capable of becoming.

In my career, whenever I've taken on the reigns of a new project, the first step has always been working as a team to create a shared vision. Before you can make it real, you need to be able to see it.

So, while we've seen that the children out there who need us are definitely not imaginary, it is still okay to imagine that some day some of them will come join our family. Because, if we can envision it happening, we’re one step closer to making it real.

That’s where we are now. We’re still closer to the imaginary side of the spectrum. But, with every experience we have, there are hints of realness. That’s what’s comforting and enables us to cope with the waiting, the frustration and exhaustion from pressing so hard to get seemingly nowhere: understanding that we’re not going nowhere. We’re going somewhere. Perhaps very, very slowly with lots of bumps on the road along the way, but we’re still on the journey. It hasn’t ended, and it won’t. In fact, any time now it’s about to begin.