I’ve spoken about adoption on here before, told y’all that that’s what I believe is my path for parenthood but last week’s episode of ‘This Is Us’ really stirred something up in me. If you haven’t seen the show please do yourself a favor and watch it; it’s totally worth a binge watching session just come prepared with a box of tissues. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s about a family that includes a set of triplets one of which is adopted at birth but it’s pretty obvious that he was adopted.
His parents obviously couldn’t hide the fact that was adopted, but as the show progresses we can see that they’ve done their best, showering him with love and providing him the best life they could. Even with all of that we see Sterling K. Brown’s character, Randall (the character who was adopted) pursue his search for his biological parents; in fact that’s how his character was introduced on the show. We see him as a child going around asking people if they were his parents, asking them if they possess certain genetic traits he does. Those scenes got me a bit choked up, but what really did me in was the final karate scene on the last episode. NBC has really pulled my heart strings and got me thinking.
Since I want to adopt older kids there’s a chance that they might know their biological parents or at least one of them, and that would make a closed adoption pretty tricky and possibly unlikely. But in the slight chance that my children grew up in the system and never met their bio parents there might come a time when they want to find them. I had mixed feelings about what Mandy Moore’s character, Rebecca did. I completely understand her not wanting to lose her son, especially since they didn’t do an official adoption. In her mind and heart Randall was her son and she knew that there might be a small chance that he would want to be with his biological father, something her poor heart wouldn’t be able to take it. I think that’s the reason why she didn’t actively help him search for his biological parents. This is a pain that I don’t think my heart would be able to take either. That feeling of not knowing if my love and my (future) husband’s is enough.
This is the part of adoption that people don’t talk about, in fact this is the first time I’m seeing this addressed so well in the media. ‘This is Us’ is just an exemplary show and they’ve dealt with hard topics like co-dependency, body image issues and drug issues with grace. It’s cast is so diverse and full of really strong actors and I’m hoping that it’s one that will be around for awhile. I feel like it’s a great conversation starter especially when it comes to the topic of adoption, open and closed amongst other things.
Please do yourself a favor and check out the show, because it’s about more than just adoption. It’s a show about family and how they stick together through the rough and easy times. It’s a show that we need during times like these.