Finding a therapist that I don’t hate hasn’t been an easy job. I have been searching for over two years at this point. To have found one that doesn’t immediately offend me with an off color comment needs to have trumpets sounds and confetti falling from the sky.

Therapist one: saw once. She was a tall lady, professionally dressed with a lazy eye. (Remember: I have a photographic memory.) She supposedly, from my screening phone calls, had adoption experience. What she should have said was, “I have experience telling adoptive parents that they are good people for taking in others’ children.” She knew absolutely nothing of open adoption and thought that it sounded “peculiar.” And, near the end of the first visit when she was going over a game plan, she said that “these emotions of mine should be easy to get over.”

I did not go back to her. Obviously.

I switched to a male in the same practice. While he didn’t have open adoption experience, he did not say that it sounded peculiar and at least had experience with birthparents (closed and/or lost to state care). I saw him a total of five times. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a great guy but he wasn’t willing to do any research on open adoption to help me with any of my specific issues. I referred James L. Gritter’s book “Lifegivers” to him and, while he said he would read it, he never did. He was nice to talk to but he did not help me with anything. (Though, side note: he was Polish!)

And then came a year of nothingness though issues continued to build, however much I tried to deal with them on my own and/or ignore them.

After the birth of BigBrother, a lot of “stuff” that I thought I had deal with came to the forefront. It was upsetting to me that i thought I had “gotten over” these things only to find that I had merely made them look pretty enough to ignore. And the search began again. I had some great birthmother friends online helping me with my search. We came up empty handed.

And then the best thing in the world happened. J’s employer switched our insurance. Usually, that’s a bad thing. (We still don’t have a primary care physician says the woman with a horrid cough.) I was in the middle of my search and thought, “Why don’t I log onto their website and see what they have to offer?” Well, our insurance company has a specific website for mental health (Liveandworkwell). I logged on to find that they had a therapist search and one of the issues you could check for them to have experience with was, gasp, adoption issues. It brough up a small list but a list nonetheless.

Well, I did a bit of research and soul-searching and decided to see a woman this time around. (With therapy I tend to go woman-man-woman-man, back and forth.) Unfortunately, it was a month wait because she is only in the office on Thursdays. I sucked it up and scheduled the appointment.

Physically GOING to the appointment was awful. It was a late-running kind of morning in the first place. (You know, BigBrother pooped, my hair wouldn’t dry and, oh, I had a cold that caused me to stop and hack up a lung every three seconds.) And then I left the directions at home. And then, as I pulled in, I thought I would throw up. But I walked in. To find the door to the office… locked. It was a SIGN! If you want to talk about panic attacks, holy crap, panic attack. Thankfully the receptionist came and unlocked it telling us that someone must have bumped it on their way out. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a sign. Just someone with busy elbows.

The wait was longer than I would have liked because my anxiety kept building and building. Eventually, my name was called. As I walked into her office, my nerves calmed. A little. She was wearing a gray suit, fun (not super stylish but FUN!) shoes and, yay!, a brunette. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you but I feel awfully self-conscious with blondes; I feel like the ugly duckling! The walls were covered with her diplomas and certificiates.

And you know what? She knew to ask whether or not I see Munchkin. She knows about open adoption. I had this plan in my mind to walk out when she said it was “peculiar.” But she didn’t think so. And she didn’t say it was easy. She said that grief was grief. She said, at the end, that my issues can be worked through with, ya know, work and that, most likely, dealing with my anxiety will most likely mean dealing with issues that will cause more anxiety in the process (joy?) but that I(we) can do it.

I left with a smile on my face.