Losing Hope and Finding Faith: An Adoption Memoir
Tuesday, January 15th, 2019 -- 10:57 AM
-A Stetsonville family has shared their emotional journey in adopting a child from overseas.Adam and Jamie Schanbel faced a multitude of hurdles in trying to adopt their daughter Sofia from Bulgaria. Adam found an outlet by writing a blog documenting the process and this morphed into his book “Losing Hope and Finding Faith: An Adoption Memoir.” Adam explained in more detail how the book came to be.
“We started the adoption a little over three years ago now and there was just so many hurdles that caused a build up of every emotion you could think of, anger, excitement, frustration. And last year, about this time, I started writing a blog and getting things out there. There was a lot of positive feedback from the blog and it had followers from 14 different countries and I just realized that I should put this into a book.”
“I had an editor reach out to me and asked if I would be interested in converting this into a book. It was an easy transition. Some blogs are pretty conversational and laid back. And when you think about publishing a book, being somewhat formal and actually having to worry about spelling errors and everything, but it was originally started to be an outlet to get rid of a lot of the frustration that had built up from all the hurdles we went through.”
He then talked about some of the hurdles they ran into while trying to adopt a child.
“So we had seven, what I call in the book, failed adoptions. Everything from being matched to a child and not having it pan out, or whatever the case may be, to dealing with a corrupt agency, which readers can find out in the book what happened with that. We were told by our social worker, who’s been doing this for years, that what we went through is so incredibly rare. She’s never had any family ever go through what we went through.”
“When she told us that, we realized that there was a plan for us somewhere that we were supposed to endure everything. It’s everything from education we had to do, a bloated 3 inch binder of information and webinars and a 10 hour web based class and it’s an incredibly overwhelming process.”
Even with the difficulties, Adam said they would absolutely do it again, but they would do things differently.
“My wife and I both agreed that, absolutely, we would do this again in a heartbeat. Now that we have the knowledge of going through this, and that’s kind of the reason behind wanting to get this book out there, is not only to advocate for adoption, but to have something current. That’s one thing when we were going through education for the adoption, everything was news articles from the early 2000’s or late 90’s. Textbook style education and there was nothing that I felt was current that this is something you could experience.”
”Everything, and it should be, focused on the child that you are possible going to adopt, but there was really nothing regarding some of the emotions that you could feel or this is what you could possibly go through. And we really wanted to get something out there that a reader or a family that is thinking about adopting had an idea that this is a real possibility and we should mentally prepare ourselves for this. And now that we’ve gone through it and we’re not naive to the fact that it could happen all over again, what we went through.”
Adam offered some advice to those who may be considering adopting.
“I would tell them that if they’re going through this process alone, because you can adopt as a single person, or if they’re going through this process as a couple, finding that strength in each other and the faith in their relationship and having a strong relationship through that process, having that close friend or that parent that you can fall back on as a rock, especially if they’re doing it alone, because at any point in time during the process, you need that somebody there to cry on their shoulder or just sit with them.”
“Couples have that advantage of having their spouse. My wife and I did that. There was a week straight when we had a pretty rough failed adoption, I held her crying in bed every night to go to sleep. I can’t imagine going through that alone. The best advice I can give is having that rock to fall on.”
He also offered some resources for those considering adoption.
“Definitely reaching out to the social worker for their county. They might direct them to other agencies. There are a lot of, throughout the state, throughout the year, seminars or small little conferences you can go to for, whether it’s adoption through foster, international adoption, domestic adoption, taking advantage of those. And even, just going online to there’s an adoption magazine, finding an adoption blog to learn. Blogs especially because they’re personal. They’re coming from someone’s personal experience typically. And when you can get it right from the source it’s pretty handy.”
Adam ended our interview talking about the book, some upcoming speaking events and what the future holds.
“The book can be purchased on Amazon, both in paperback and for Kindle. Right now, when I looked this morning, the book is holding three, top 50 new release spots. Number one in sociology of marriage and family. And then three, top 100 new release spots. And then two top 100 best seller spots. So, if you have a Kindle Unlimited Membership you can read it for free.”
“I will also be having, if they follow me both on Facebook or on Amazon, I’ll be posting all the event I’ll be going to. As of right now, for this month, it will be January 19th in Colby at the Coffee Coop. Nine to Noon will be the book signing/book release and then at the Colby Community Library on the 31st at 6pm. I’ll be doing, basically like a book talk, talking about the process and talking about the highlights of the book. And then I’m hoping, I’m working with a lot of the local libraries, Neillsville included, trying to line something up. When something is in the area, we’ll definitely get it out there on social media and the Amazon author profile.”
“If the public continues to follow me, this isn’t the last book. There’s more in the future coming. Definitely the theme of adoption is going to be the focus. My next project is I think it’s awesome if we can talk with children about adoption. That’s one thing that we learned is having that open conversation with our daughter about adoption. She’s going to be in, almost a state of constant grieving, from the loss of her home where she was and her caretaker. So, talking to children about it at a young age. The next adventure is a children’s illustrated book. So, we’re working on that right now.”
Again, the title of the book is call “Losing Hope and Finding Faith: An Adoption Memoir.”
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