♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪
- [Crowd Member] There you go.
- [Crowd Member] Look at what you got.
- [Woman] Mwah!
- [Crowd Members] Whoa!
Safe!
- [Narrator] Welcome back to The F Word,
a series about adopting a kid from foster care.
- Three!
- [Narrator] J's just turned one
and while we love being a family of three,
we're also eager to create this open adoption
as soon as we can.
So while we wait to hear back from J's grandma,
we've decided to visit a family
that has created a truly inspiring open adoption.
- Hi guys, come in! - Hi!
- [Narrator] Asha went into foster care at 18 months
and a year later was adopted by her two dads.
But decisions made in court don't define
how they choose to create their family,
and Asha and her dads visit her mother
and siblings frequently.
- Asha, what is this,
what is it like for you to have a family like this?
- A lot of people ask
and I just say I'm living the life of an average child
and it's fun.
- Uh huh.
- Yeah.
- Uh huh.
- So you like to come visit your old mom.
- [Father] What makes it really easy is
we all care about Asha.
- We all call her our daughter.
- [Interviewer] Asha, how old were you
when you were adopted?
- I was three and a half.
Yeah.
- You came to live with us when you were two and a half
and then adopted at three and a half, yeah.
- I remember the first time Don called me
after Asha was adopted,
and said that he wanted to meet
and set up a visit with her.
I get emotional every time I think about it
because I thought that I wasn't gonna see her
until she came looking for me.
- [Interviewer] It's really,
just a beautiful thing you've all done,
opening yourselves up in this way to be this vulnerable
and this generous with each other
and thoughtful about everybody's needs
and most of all Asha's needs.
- You know it was tricky
'cause we didn't know each other.
And we didn't know how it was gonna go,
and we had to kinda start from a place where
we didn't know if we could trust each other,
we didn't know anything, right?
And so it took just kinda a lot of believing
in each other and in what we wanted for Asha.
- I think open adoption is always good
'cause closed adoption is like you're
withholding a child away from their birth family,
versus being open where the child can see their family,
I just think closed adoption is selfish.
- [Interviewer] I agree.
- When they get mad at me,
and I just feel like,
I don't know, like I haven't been listened to,
I say it a lot when I get upset,
like I want to run away
and live with my birth family in Sacramento
'cause I feel like they wouldn't get mad at me
as easily or whatever.
They wouldn't yell at me.
- [Father] Your mom wouldn't get mad at you.
- No.
- I'll get mad at all my kids.
- But I'm like, let her have that dream, daddy.
- [Asha] I can't touch the ground so I can't slow down.
I can see your shadow.
- [Father] I think that the era of closed adoptions is over
because of 23andMe and social media,
I just think the question isn't
are you going to be a closed or open adoption,
the question is how many doors are you going to open?
What kind of home are you going to build
in your open family?
- [Narrator] It's been a while,
and still no word from J's grandma.
But we keep checking in,
knowing that things could change at any moment.
We're so excited that Grandma wrote us back,
but we're reminding ourselves to take a breath
and move one step at a time.
In the meantime we have the perfect distraction,
J's godmother Avery is coming over to visit.
- [Interviewer] Can you believe that we made a documentary
about your transracial adoption ten years ago,
and now here we are?
- No.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Cheers!
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Can I have a cheers?
Thank you. - Cheers!
- Cheers baby!
Yeah!
There's a part of me that just wants to control...
- [Avery] Everything?
- Every outcome, and just learn
from all of the cumulative mistakes
that parents have been making over the years
in transracial adoption
because there have been a lot of mistakes.
- I think even, regardless of how open your parents are,
you still potentially deal with this on your own.
During the hardest part of my life,
I was a complete wreck because of
how I'm being treated at school,
how I feel inside,
how I feel completely lost,
I don't fit in with the black people at my school,
I don't fit in with the white people at my school,
and there's no one that understands what I'm going through.
- I always saw you,
just even as a teenager,
as like carrying the weight of the world.
Like, you seemed to have to take on more
than you should at that age.
- [Avery] Cheers.
- [Interviewer] Are you saying Avery?
- [Avery] That's pretty close.
- [Nicole] Avery.
- Yeah, that's you, yeah!
It smells good, huh?
It's hard to get an adult to open up about
stuff they're going through.
Imagine a kid in high school.
- Are you telling me
there's nothing we can do?
- I'm telling you to prepare that you cannot
control this situation,
that's what I'm trying to tell you.
But you need to be open to other people helping
and you need to be open to listening to them.
- Where's your belly?
- That is a good belly.
- There it is!
Bellybutton!
- [Avery] I love that I'm J's godmom.
- I'm recording.
- Okay, can I open it?
- Yes, open it!
- Okay, so this is from J's grandma.
Hi, we're planning a reunion for all
of my daughter's kids next weekend,
and you all are invited.
- Oh my God!
- Oh my gosh!
- Oh, that's so good.
Aww.
- What should I say back?
- Say we're coming!
- Okay.
- I have a question for you.
When you envision yourself in the future,
are you gonna foster?
Are you gonna adopt?
- I'm definitely gonna adopt,
probably not 'til my thirties.
Probably before I do that
I'll be a foster parent
to give people like my brother what they never had.
So I gotta pay it back.
- I feel like it's my job to give back.
One of my goals is,
as I get older to own property
to just be 24 hours of
if a kid gets kicked out at the middle of the night
hey, just come stay with me
because you know that they have no place to go.
- What drives you to stay
in this system professionally?
Because it would be really easy for you to say
okay, that happened to me,
I'm moving on with my life,
here I go.
- For me, something that I think about a lot
is that nothing that I've ever accomplished
would mean anything.
It wouldn't matter that I graduated college
which only 3% of foster youth get the opportunity to do.
It wouldn't matter that I was in graduate school
at UC Berkeley studying social work.
None of it would actually matter
if I wasn't making it matter for the 60,297 children
and youth still in the quote care of the state.
- Being able to give the opportunity
that I've gotten to somebody else,
to another child who has felt abandoned or alone,
or in a system at no fault of their own, a chance.
- This morning started with soccer practice,
which is basically about watching cute toddlers
trip over each other in uniforms that don't really fit them.
Then we went on a little hike,
'cause this kid loves being outdoors more than anything.
- Oh, you wanna jump on the log?
- [Narrator] And now we're in a park,
where we're about to meet J's biological grandmother
and his siblings for the first time.
We love this kid more than life itself
and we are so happy to be a family of three.
At the same time,
we're grateful to be one step closer
to creating this bigger, fuller,
more expansive family that truly reflects our son.
This might be the end of The F-Word Series,
but it's a new beginning for us.