The Normalcy of Open Adoption

Most everyone has read Charlotte’s adoption story and some of the other adoption posts (here, here, here, here, here, here, here) on the blog.  We are very open with both of our children on how they joined our family.  I don’t know what I ever expected with the idea of an open adoption, but because ours is a kinship adoption, I knew absolutely that it would be an open adoption.  It has only been in the last 6 months I have learned what the reality of open adoption looks like.  What is most surprising to me is how very normal it is.

I am proud of my sister and the work she is doing in her life.  When Charlotte asks for contact with her birth mother, my sister, I try to give opportunity for it to happen.  Charlotte is doing fall soccer (and is an impossibly awesome sweeper/goal tender) and she asked if my sister would be coming to her soccer games again.  So I invited my sister and now we see her about once a week, and sometimes also have lunch with her. 

I expected it to be awkward, or strange.  I expected there to be pregnant silences and lulls in the conversation.  I expected to feel jealous that Charlotte was excited to see her birth mother.  And somehow it’s none of those things at all.  It’s my little sister, needing a big sister to listen to her.  It’s a strong woman figuring out how to continue making mature decisions about her life, no matter how broken her heart is.  It is me learning how to forgive, and trust and be vulnerable with someone who could hurt not only me, but also my daughter.  It is my daughter feeling impossibly loved by two very important women in her life.  What else could I ask for in this wholly, very normal, open adoption?

Hair Routine Update

I posted last November about my hair routine.  I’ve had a couple of comments/personal emails asking me if I’m still doing the routine.  Up until about 5 months ago, yes I was.  Here is why I no longer am.

For about 9 months I really loved this method.  My hair was shiny, healthy, curly, full of volume.  Then I noticed that my hair seemed very dry.  I chalked it up to it being February and just due to the dry winter.  I went longer between washes – sometimes 6 days. I just ended up with this strangely unbalanced hair of very dirty/oily roots and very dry ends.  I tried less baking soda, but that only made it impossible to get my roots clean. 

Then I tried using conditioner again rather than Apple Cider Vinegar.  This helped make my ends slightly less dry but caused me to wash every 3 days or so because of the extra oil from the conditioner.  I just ended up with very unbalanced hair that was dry and straw-like at the ends and not clean at the roots.  So I bought no-poo shampoo and conditioner in March when we went to North Carolina.  I used this for about 2 months, washing every 3 days.  My hair became more lifeless and flat, although less dry, and my hair never felt clean.  I was washing every other day.  Out of frustration I went back to my Loreal professional shampoo for colored hair through the summer until I could research some other products.  I could wash every 2-3 days, but my hair remained flat and wouldn’t hold curl without hairspray, which only dried out my ends even more.

In the last month, I started seeing a new hair dresser at Matthew Morris Salon and began using Lush products exclusively for soaps, lotions, and face products.  I learned that Lush also made shampoo and conditioners in solid form.  I received some samples and switched my routine to using trichomania solid shampoo and big solid conditioner.  The shampoo does have sulfates in it, but upon further research (and relying on my somewhat faulty memory of chemistry and reaction engineering from college) this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  A surfactant is necessary to actually clean oil from my hair and sulfate-free shampoos may not be enough to remove the oil (and dirt trapped on the oil).  I will also be trying some Keratase products, per my hair dresser’s recommendation, since I will be going darker in the fall.  I may need some protection from color fading, which can be worse when using sulfates.

With my lighter color, it looks bad to go longer than about 3 days, but my hair is back to the texture/volume/curl of the early days of baking soda use.  My hair is soft and doesn’t feel like straw, but full of volume and has the natural wave back.  It holds curl for several days without hairspray.  I’m only a couple weeks in, so we’ll see how it goes.  I’ve heard good things about this all natural shampoo as well, so I’m going to try that at some point.  I’m also going to switch to a silicone free hair oil.  I use Loreal Mythic Oil right now, and will be trying out Carol’s Daughter Monoi Oil. 

All that to say that I haven’t found the right combination of products for my hair.  I’m not sold on no-poo, or sulfate-free.