Sunday, November 21, 2010

Pass Along Cards WORK!

Once you dig into the online pro-adoption world you find out it is a very small world.  You start reading a blog and click on a link, and then another link and then you see someone you know!  One day through a series of clicks I read a blog that told the story about how pass along cards matched a couple with their birthmother.  Brittany (the author of the post below) and her husband Que adopted their baby last October.  You can read their blog HERE...she's got lots of good stuff on her blog.  

The one where you learn how it happened

This past month has been amazing and it would not have happened if it weren't for our pass along cards (thank you Jill!) and of course, my mom and Kristina. In short, our birth mother found us when she got two of our pass along cards from two different people in one day! (Pass along cards work, people! I can't stress this enough!) :p

Here is how it happened:

In April, Que and I went to dinner with my dear friend
Kristina and her husband Adam and at the end of the evening I happened to give her some of our pass along cards. A few days later, Kristina said when she went to get her hair done, her stylist mentioned that her roommate was pregnant and was looking at different families, so Kristina gave her one of our pass along cards. (And then her roommate happened to come in the salon and Kristina met her!)

Very shortly after that, my mom told me she had just been to her hair salon and she noticed 3 children come into the salon to get their hair cut. Her stylist told her they were so close in age because they were all adopted. My mom then told her about us, and her stylist mentioned that another stylist at the salon had a roommate who was pregnant and was in the process of looking at families. So my mom gave her our card.


My mom and Kristina had been going to the same salon and didn't know it; and as I said before, our birth mom ended up getting our pass along card twice, from two different people in the same day!


Fast forward about 2 months.


On June 4th (the day before we left for Alaska) our adoption caseworker (Rachel) called me and said a birth mother wanted to meet with us. (This was the first time we had gotten a call like that! We were
so excited!) Rachel said the birth mother had not yet made a decision but still wanted to meet. But because of our vacation and her work schedule, we didn't end up meeting for 3 more [agonizing!] weeks.

After returning from Alaska we found out that the birth mother who wanted to meet with us was the same girl that had months before, gotten our pass along cards from Kristina and my mom.


It turns out she had our cards in her wallet for months and she said whenever she opened it, there we were. :)

~~~

See!  You can do something to help us!!  We ordered a bunch of pass along cards back in February.  Then we were matched with C  so we never sent them out.  When the adoption fell apart I didn't really think about the cards, until I started cleaning up the desk one day and found the boxes of them.  They are so cute...I remember when they came in the mail I was SO excited.  They're small, we chose business card size because they'd be easy for you to carry in a wallet...so they'd be close at hand should you have an occasion to hand one off to someone.  If you'd be willing to keep a few and pass them out for us, I'll throw some in the mail...just email me your address.  (Thanks to those of you who already have some of our cards...Kala, Sterling and Jaime)

Here's one of our designs (I couldn't help myself so I designed five...yes you read that correctly...FIVE designs):

3 comments:

Que and Brittany's Adoption Journey said...

I love, Love, LOVE the owls. Liam's pack-n-play has owls on it and his mobile had owls on it. They are SO cute and so underused. :)

Thanks for telling our story! :)

Salmon Tolman Family said...

I think all of your pass-along cards are awesome! I like the choice of the five card designs you created! You are so creative and cute!!!

Anonymous said...

Holly,
Send me a few more.
LYT,
Mom