Why Happily Ever Aftermath?

I get it. It's a weird, kind of long name, and also apparently the name of an episode of a TV show I don't watch. Regardless,  it fits. The aftermath is the part after the storm.  Where you survey the damage and assess what to do next. You are joyful to have survived and frightened about what you may find. 

In 2008 Tim and I spent a few months in Mississippi doing post-hurricane Katrina clean up. I remember hearing a story about a house that got absolutely destroyed by the storm surge and hurricane winds. When people were cleaning up they found one perfect China teacup that looked like it had been gently picked up and deposited on  a pile of rubbish. They continued to find odd things. Pictures undamaged in one place but utterly ruined in another. It was all the same storm but it affected every home and every person in different ways. 

Adoption is a lot like that. A family had to be broken for my children to be mine.  Their lives were turmoil and pain interspersed with good and happy times. It is complicated. What hurts one was fun to another. What is broken in one is just fine in another. And so we press on. We make the very best of the blessing of survival and finding perfect treasures that didn't get ruined in the storm. And then we spend a lifetime, piece by shattered piece of each of us, rebuilding what was lost.