About Me
My name is Rosemary Lucas and I’m the very proud mother of two wonderful adopted children. They are not birth siblings and were adopted separately, but they are brother and sister in every possible way.
The word ‘Mummy’ was something I never thought I’d hear. After a long and winding road full of twists and turns no one could have foretold, my dreams finally came true through the wonder of adoption. I am a firm advocate of adoption and want to be a voice for the reality of what it’s really like – the good bits and the challenges. There are lots of both. I am respectful of birth families and believe in sharing a child’s history with them. Keeping alive whatever has made them who they are. From the very beginning.
I’m keen to share what I’d like to have known before I started our adoption journey, as well as some of the considerations and practicalities we experienced during the adoption process itself. You might be considering adoption, have just started the process, or are lucky enough to already have your own adoptive family. You may be reading this as a friend or colleague might be embarking on their adoption journeys. Or, you may just be reading it out of interest. Whichever it is, I hope you find my website useful.
The content is just my own thoughts and feelings. I’m not a professional in adoption. I’m not affiliated to any organisations or benefiting from mentioning any. I’m just a mum who happened to have her children through adoption and who thinks it might be quite nice to share our story to support others. Check out my Blogs to see how it all began for us and the journey we took.
The Family Fairies
I always wanted to be open and honest about how we came to be a family, but never quite found a children’s storybook that helped to explain the adoption process itself – so I decided to write my own! It was published in January 2019 and “Rosemary Lucas Storytime” was created to open up my support channels for fellow adoptive families.
When my daughter was young, I started making up rhymes to help explain the maze that is adoption. I wanted to do it in a way that would engage her and help lay the foundations of our family make up. So, I created the phrase ‘Family Fairies’ when referring to social workers and foster carers. As the years went by, I developed the story in my mind until I had the confidence to put it down on paper.
It made perfect sense to call my debut book ‘The Family Fairies’. It talks about the how, not the why, in a magical rhyming story. It gently references key stages of the adoption process in a positive and child friendly way, helped with the use of bright, vibrant illustrations. In fact, all the pictures you’ll see throughout the website are taken directly from the book. Overall, it emphasises how wonderful it is when a forever family comes together in this way – and how normal it is.
It was very important to me that social workers and foster carers were recognised for the tireless work they do in bringing families together. Finding safe, secure and loving forever homes for children that need it the most. A fellow adoptive mum once said to me “without them there is no us”. I’ve always held this very close to my heart.
I hope you can use my book with your little ones to show them the special journey you took to make your own dreams come true.
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The Match
And then, only about two weeks after approval confirmation, it happened – the call. A possible link. A potential match. A child to make me a mum. My husband a dad. And yep I totally freaked out! You see, we had been thrown a huge curve ball. We’d actually been approved for siblings. From the outset… Read more
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Time to Prepare
Once we had the official approval, we got on with the real preparations. Collating pictures of ourselves and our immediate family for memory and transition books and aids. There are some fantastic resources out there. Toys, teddies and books that can record your voice messages. We did a video for our second child. I walked… Read more
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Approval Panel
All prospective adopters attend an approval panel where a group of carefully selected people, all with experience and expertise in adoption, decide if you should be recommended to adopt. Unfortunately, proposed panel dates often get “bumped”. Sometimes at very short notice. Sometimes even on the day. This frustratingly happened to us. Even more frustratingly it was due… Read more
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The Waiting Game
I’m often asked –“how long did it take?” Obviously, this differs case by case. From the time I picked up the phone to our little one coming home, was 12 months. Not long at all. Not really that different to a pregnancy. But at the time, going through all these stages, it often felt like an… Read more
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Assessments
Once I had put in the initial call, we were fairly quickly allocated a social worker and our adoption training with fellow applicants was scheduled in (this order has changed since then). The training was thorough and informative. But intense and hard hitting. It focused on the reasons why children needed a home through adoption.… Read more
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Agency Selection
There were basically two main routes we could take – private/charity based agencies or our local authority. This may be a bit of a generalisation, but the former tend to have older children or those that are deemed harder to place. Potentially these could be children with physical, mental of developmental issues or larger sibling… Read more
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Moving On
This is a tricky one. A very personal one. One, which needs you to dig deep and accept the past. To some extent, I think this is the hardest part of the whole process. The realisation that as a woman you cannot carry a child is a lot to come to terms with. It wasn’t… Read more
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