Gethsemane, Katheryn, Matthew and Verity
It’s not often that we get to talk to a birth mother like Randi and the adoptive family she chose for her child. But with Matthew and Katheryn, we were able to do that and more. They also opened up about opening up their lives and the adoption relationships that brought them their two beautiful daughters.
Matthew and Katheryn have adopted with American Adoptions twice. Their first adoption, which brought them Verity (now 3), began as a semi-open adoption because that was what felt most comfortable for the couple and Verity’s birth mother Jessica at the time. But Katheryn found that, “the pictures and letters come naturally. You look at this amazing, wonderful child and you want to share that.”
When the couple decided to adopt again, Randi, the birth mother birth mother who selected them, wanted a more open relationship. So Katheryn began a blog to help document the adoption journey and to share real-time information with Randi, as well as their own families. The results have been a huge hit.
Like most couples, the idea of an open adoption was intimidating for Katheryn and Matthew at first, but “seeing how healing it was for [Randi’s family] to know they would still be in contact with [Gethey] definitely enhanced the experience for us,” Matthew says.
Gethsemane (1) and Verity (3)
“With the blog, [Randi] can check it whenever she wants, but if she’s going through a time where she needs space, then she just doesn’t have to check it. She knows it’s there if she wants it, but she still has the discretion of what is most healing at the time,” Katheryn says.
The more open relationship with Randi throughout her pregnancy and during their second daughter Gethsemane’s (nicknamed Gethey) first year led the couple to reexamine their relationship with Jessica, Verity’s mother.
“After going through the second adoption being open, I felt it pressing on my heart that I wanted to give her that too,” Katheryn says. “Every day, I think of Jessica, and I think, oh my gosh, she gave this to us. I feel like I have everything, and the least I can do is give her the relationship that is as healing and hopeful and happy as possible.”
Since then, the couple has increased contact with Jessica and shared the blog’s link with her as well. “So it’s kind of for all the families: our extended biological families, birth families, all the aunts and uncles all over… a big extended family out there,” Katheryn says.
And it’s truly special that they’ve decided to share the blog with the American Adoptions family as well.
You can read Gethey’s birth mother Randi’s adoption story on our website.
