Adoptees Adopting - Join our Journey to Colombia!

Farrin Abbott is organizing this fundraiser.

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You may know, you may have heard, but we wanted to make it official—we are adopting!!

The past 14 months have been a very busy time for us as we’ve prepared our home, our home study, and mountains of international paperwork to make our dreams of building a family a reality.

Adoption is something of a tradition in our families. Mariela was adopted from Colombia when she was a baby and Farrin was adopted here in the US as an older child. There are so many adoptees in our families that we always saw ourselves choosing adoption and we hoped to adopt from Colombia. But when we began our journey over 13 years ago, no foreign country, including Colombia, would adopt to out LGBTQ people at all.

We were disappointed but undeterred in our hope to have a family. We set about trying to have biological kids since that seemed to be the next route and spent about 3 years down the infertility rabbit hole…finally closing that chapter when IVF failed and we had used up all of our insurance, savings, and available funds.

We let go of the dream for several years and focused on our lives, our careers, and building the kind of life that we would want to share with our future kids. We got married, we got married, we got married… (that’s a long funny story that maybe we’ll add to one of our updates). Then, one day during lockdown, while we were trying to figure out what life would look like on the other side of the pandemic, we learned something amazing. Recently, in the last few years, Colombia has opened adoption to all families! Suddenly we were eligible and we knew what we had to do!

We are so excited for you to be a part of the home stretch with us. We are in the final stages of paperwork and then it will be a little more waiting before traveling to Colombia! We will both need to be in Colombia for several weeks to meet our child (or children!?) and finalize the adoption.

That’s where you come in.

We were so excited to learn recently that Colombia has changed their policies and have fully opened adoption to LGBTQ families, and just as exciting— they give preference to Colombian-born natives! Mariela was also adopted from Colombia, so this is an even more special moment in our decades-long journey to build our own family! Some of you may also be aware that Farrin was separated from her siblings in adoption, so we are happy to share that we've also been approved for the possibility of a sibling set!

Below is a list of our completed tasks and our remaining hurdles. Any small amount you can contribute toward reaching these goals will make a huge impact!

Milestones Completed:

- Homestudy

- Adoption Agency Application & Approval, including first half of fees

- i-800A Application

- Colombian passport for Mariela

- Colombian Cedula ID for Mariela

- Reference Letters

- Employment Verifications

- State Clearances

- Letter of Intent

- Colombia Adoption Application documents

- Psychological Evaluations

- Fingerprinted THREE times!

- Medical exams

Break Down of Remaining Cost Estimates:

Document translation fees $4,000
Final agency fees $6,000
Video Production fee - free because Farrin is a video producer!
Child(ren) Visa $2,000
Attorney fees $2,000
In-Country fees $4,000
In-Country Adoption Costs Approx. $1,500
Post-Adoption Visit Reports for two years $3,000
In-Country Room and Board for 4-6 weeks $5,000
Airfare $1,000
Clothing & room updates when we find out the age of the child and if there are two! ???

Whew, you made it! Stay tuned here for updates. And hey, don't worry if you can't donate -- we would love it if you shared it with your social networks to help us get the word out.

Much love,

F&M