According to Cambridge Dictionary, to adopt is "to legally take another person's child into your own family and take care of him or her as your own child". Wow, that's actually a very good definition since that's pretty much what my husband and I are willing to do.

After dreaming about adopting a child for several years, we decided to start the process. On July 8, 2018 I finally went to the forum to ask for official information and discovered that the first step was to participate in a training session with a psychologist and a social assistant. The number of people who are interested in adopting in our neighborhood is so big we could only find a vacancy in December. For a semester, we did nothing but read about adoption and wait for our training.

The training lasted for a few hours and we were taught about how the whole process works. We also met a Peruvian family who adopted two kids. They told us we would not be able to choose our child's name, which was ok for us. It is weird even to think about changing a person's name, after all. We haven't done it with our cats, let alone with a child.

In January we handed in all the required documents and waited anxiously for the psychologist call to schedule our first interview. It felt wrong to do nothing besides waiting again and we joined all the support group for adopters we found in our city. All our Saturdays in 2019 were filled with meetings and lectures.

In May we received a call from the psychologist and she scheduled two separate meetings for us. We had heard horrible stories about infamous psychologists who would trick adopters to say something not appropriate so that they would not be approved. As a proud skeptic, I ignored such stories and talked to her as if I was talking to a friend, which means I was embarrassed by my own Chandler comments far too many times. We basically talked about my degrees and my professional experience. My husband, on the other hand, had to answer some deep questions about his life and his family. I believe she did it because usually men are not really interested in having a child and many times are forced to participate in the adoption process.

We were approved by the psychologist after a couple of meetings and then the social assistant sent us an e-mail scheduling more interviews. Every time my phone rang I would take a deep breath to prepare myself to talk to the person who would decide if my dream was going to come true.

The social assistant was a nice lady and her eyes gave me the feeling they had already seen terrible things. She confirmed our address, our current salaries, and eventually approved us. The last step was receiving an approval from the judge, but this time it was not necessary for us to go there: he would analyze our documents and the reports the psychologist and the social assistant had written about us.

We were finally approved by the judge and now we are on the adoption list. There's nothing we can do but wait. One day the social assistant will call us to say that she found a match and will change our lives forever.