I feel honored that I have the opportunity to contribute to Families.com by sharing with its readers and members my experience, knowledge, and information about adoption and how adoption has effected my life.
My name is Kathy Sheldon and I am the adoptive mother of my 15 month old son Connor. My husband, Jeff, and I were able to welcome Connor into our lives even before he was born, since we were lucky enough to begin a relationship with his birthmother while she was still pregnant.
My background has been predominately in Social Services. Specifically, I worked for eight year in a Domestic Violence Shelter. However, after going through our adoption journey, I decided that I wanted to become involved with the adoption community in someway. I was lucky enough to spend a year at home with Connor before returning to work. When I did, I turned to American Adoptions, the agency that we adopted our son through. They gave me a position conducting Home Studies for them. I then started to conduct seminars on adoptions as well. I now e-mail and talk to people daily who have questions about adoption and the process of adoption.
I believe that writing for Families.com is a wonderful way to reach a greater audience. My goal and mission is to help others fulfill their dreams of building a family, by sharing my personal experiences, my knowledge, and giving them a direction to help them begin or to continue on in their own adoption journey. I want to answer your questions to the best of my ability, but I have to admit I may not always have all the answers. I also love to here feedback from others and will welcome any comments you have.
I’m fortunate to be co-hosting this blog with Anna who has a very different adoption story than I. But as Anna and I have already discussed, although the stories may be different, often times the feelings, challenges, and concerns are the same. I believe that we will be able to offer the adoption community a voice for many adoptive parents with varied adoption circumstances.
I urge you to continue to read daily as I plan to be writing for Families.com for a long time.