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The Family Profile
Your Letter and Photo Collage By Jessica Williams
Getting StartedTo get a summary of your life down on paper, organize your thoughts. Get a few friends and family members together and brainstorm. What do you want to most portray about your family? With the help of the people who know you best, you're sure to come up with experiences, qualities and goals you'd like to express.
After you've brainstormed, it's time for some free writing. Write from your heart and your mind censor nothing. Put down everything you want a birth mother to know about you.
"One of us had an inspirational thought and sat down at the computer and just started writing until it was done," says Stacey Nevara from Chicago, Ill., who just finished a profile of herself and her partner, Laura Adden.
Put the letter away for a few days and focus on the next part of the profile: compiling photos.
Your photos can be displayed in scrapbook format, or you can get creative and find a new way to present your photos.
You'll want to cover a few essential topics: your home, your family, your pets, your lifestyle and yourselves.
Your Home:
Photos of where you call home are an important part of your profile. You want birth parents to be able to imagine you living in this home. Show a couple of photos of you and your family around the dinner table or your nieces and nephews playing on the living room floor.
Your Family:
The people you share celebrations with are likely to be a big part of your child's life. Include photos that highlight those people closest to you. When asked what some of the most important things she was looking for were, Hernon says, "I wanted to see a big, close family and lots of extended family."