As an interracial couple we have had a lot of practice talking about both the positives of cultural diversity and the social injustices that minorities experience within our country. In our day to day lives we have helped our families navigate the cultural differences between the different sides of our family and enjoy experiencing other cultures. Because of that, regardless of our child’s background we plan to expose them to the traditions and practices of different cultures and backgrounds so that they can appreciate and empathize with others’ experiences.

If our child is of a different race or ethnicity from us we are excited to learn about, and celebrate, it through food, travel, and experiences with friends. We will make sure that they are connected to role models within their community and incorporate birth family traditions. It is also important to us that they have books with main characters that look like them and consume media that reflects their life experience.

As much as we would like to shield them from the world, we will educate ourselves on the struggles that their community faces so that we can acknowledge and talk about it, and prepare them the best we can to keep them as safe as possible.

We are so excited to add a third person to our silly duo. For us, our top priority is ensuring that our child is safe, is taught the skills to confidently tackle life’s challenges, and knows that they are loved unconditionally. We are excited to play an important role in our child’s development, helping them discover what they are capable of and come into their own as a person.

We are eager to share the things that we love with them, such as cooking together and costume parties, along with learning about the things they become passionate about and their perspective on the world. And as much as it sounds contradictory, we do also look forward to using our life experience to help them navigate the hard moments. Whether that be lifting them up, offering guidance, or setting boundaries.

Mary Kate about Eric:

Eric about Mary Kate:

We both feel incredibly lucky to be a part of the family that we have created. For us that includes the families we were born into, the families we chose, and our military family.

Eric has one older brother but grew up with a very large extended family and his cousins are like siblings. Growing up they would have weekly dinners with both sides of his family, and that tradition still lasts to this day. Any time we go back it is a whirlwind of meals and numerous large family hang outs.

Mary Kate grew up in the military and has two younger sisters and a younger brother, who are now spread out across the east coast. During the holidays we enjoy sharing our new favorite recipes, cookie decorating, and loudly singing our favorite Disney songs.

Because the military often sends families to locations far away from their support systems, the community is unlike any other. Strangers quickly become friends and there is always someone willing to drive you to the hospital at 3am, babysit at a moment’s notice, and start a meal train for a family in crisis. Despite currently living far away, both sides of our family and numerous friends have come to visit us since living in Japan and always make sure we don’t go too long without seeing each other in person. Our families have been incredibly supportive of our adoption plan and are excited to welcome this child as the first grandbaby.

Due to Eric’s career with the Navy we move every few years, but currently live on a military base in Japan. We love where we live. We are in a two story townhouse with a big backyard that overlooks the local Japanese mountains. Our home has a large kitchen and living room where we frequently host friends for dinners and game nights, and a second guest bedroom that we are excited to turn into a nursery.

Our community is very safe and has lots of children of varying ages, who can be seen playing on the many neighborhood playgrounds. The base also frequently hosts family events, has numerous resources geared towards new parents, an indoor and outdoor pool, and a great library with a large children’s room. We also love that it is an incredibly diverse community. The military is full of people from different backgrounds and the level of diversity has created a culture where everyone is welcome and people are open to learning about other experiences.

We are also in a great location to experience Japanese culture. Our town has many cultural events throughout the year and has an airport, high speed train station, and great highways that allow us to take day trips in our car to the local towns.

We want to start off this letter with saying thank you for considering us as potential future adoptive parents. We are excited to be on this road of adoption and all the possibilities that it may bring to grow our family through a child and their birth family. We know that we can’t understand all that you are going through now or how you are feeling about this process but please know that we support whatever decision you feel is best for you and your child. And if you do want to consider us as potential parents for your child, we want you to feel as safe and confident in that choice as possible. We are happy to answer any and all questions that you may have for us.

We met in 2016 while we were both living in DC for work. Although we were both living busy lives, we made a concerted effort to make time for each other, quickly seeing that in addition to having a ton of fun together, our values were also deeply aligned. We strive to be kind people, open minded to new experiences, are close to our families, and have a relationship built on trust and mutual respect. We are also committed to making our own joy, regardless of where we are currently living and what life throws at us.

Eric is now a family practice doctor with the Navy and Mary Kate is a family liaison with the clinic that Eric works at. We both work hard to serve the people in our community and balance that with our personal lives. It is important to us that we provide a good life for our child but we are also present for them.

We want to let you know that we work hard daily to ensure we continue to better ourselves whether that is reading books on diversity, exposing ourselves to new cultures, or learning new skills. Hopefully in turn we can impress this upon our future child. We want them to gain their education not only from traditional schooling, but from what the world and all of its people can teach them. We want to show them cultures across the globe and the myriad of subcultures of America. We want to teach them anything and everything, whether it is costume making for Halloween, cuisine from their background, or classical art. Both of us come from teaching backgrounds (Mary Kate as a former Montessori teacher and Eric as a former tennis coach and current educational director of a medical fellowship program) and we are excited to raise a child who is as inquisitive and excited to learn as we are.

Our greatest hope is to have an open adoption where our child feels connected to and loved by both parts of their family and that our child’s birth family is connected to ours. We strongly believe that there is no monopoly on love and that a child can have more than two parents that love and care for them. Because of that belief, we would love to accommodate all forms of communication. If you want to receive emails, letters, photos, holiday cards, or set up visits, we would be thrilled to do so. We are committed to supporting you and your child’s relationship.

Having said that, we understand that life can present a lot of unexpected challenges. Even if there is a time when you are not in a place to participate in communication, we welcome your immediate and extended family and will continue to maintain a positive relationship with you and of you to your/our child. And you will always have the ability to connect again.

Our priority is making sure that our future child has the best opportunity to know where they are from and be able to identify with a multitude of experiences. We want to tell our child that we were lucky to have them enrich our lives and that it could not have happened without you, the birth parent(s), making a sacrifice and trusting us to raise them to be the best version of themselves.

Eric & Mary Kate