Matthew and Danielle

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mother,

Your baby will be surrounded by love, support, respect, affection, laughter, and security. We’re both very curious people and will teach your baby to love learning and experiencing new things. Your baby will live in a home that is filled with music, family, books, amazing food, adorable pets (3 little doggies and 2 sweet cats), and fun. Your baby will thrive in our town where community, kindness, equity, respect, and joy are highly valued. We will include your baby in our church community and foster curiosity about all different ideas, faiths, cultures, and ways of life. Your baby will grow up learning in wonderful schools, traveling the world with family, learning to care for and respect themself, communicate needs, and form healthy boundaries and positive life-long relationships with others. Your baby will always be treated with kindness, gentleness, respect, attention, validation, support, and unconditional love. The future will be wide open and bright for your child.

We want to acknowledge how difficult this time in your life must be for you. We have both faced some huge challenges in life, but the choice you’re facing right now is immense and we won’t pretend that we can relate. We haven’t been where you are, but please know that if you choose to allow us to raise your child, we will support you as best we can, and we will hold space for you in your baby’s life in a way that feels right for you. Thank you for reading this letter and for considering us for the most amazing role we ever hope to fulfill as parents of your child.

Kindly,
Danielle & Matt

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

We’re very blessed and want nothing more than to share our blessings with a child. One of the first conversations we ever had was about how much both of us had always wanted to adopt a child. We are now in a place where we know we can offer a child an amazing life filled with love, support, positive experiences, a great education, a safe and beautiful home, a dedicated family and community, and every resource a child will need in life. We’re ready for the challenges, the lack of sleep, the frustration, the fun, the joy… all of it.

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About Danielle, by Matthew

Danielle is a kind, caring, intelligent, and beautiful woman. She’s one of the most accomplished and generous people I’ve ever met. She has the respect and admiration of our entire community. Danielle’s friends and family adore her, and she is a rock for us all. I’m always able to discuss my personal feelings with her and we regularly have conversations about our lives and feelings. Danielle and I take care of each other, and we take care of our home and our pets together. Danielle is always there for me when I need advice or someone to listen. She motivates me to work hard and become a better person every day. We are very compatible. We’re supportive of each other when things go wrong and celebrate each other’s wins. Danielle and I are a team and I feel lucky to have such a wonderful friend and partner. She is amazing with our niece and our friends’ children, always getting down to their eye level, asking them questions, and listening to them, playing with them, and showing them patience and kindness. I am so excited to see Danielle become a mom.

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About Matthew, by Danielle

Matt will be an involved, loving, encouraging dad. The way he is with our niece and our friends’ children is so lovely. He talks to them like humans deserving respect (no silly baby babble!) and is truly interested in hearing their thoughts and observations. He loves to teach kids new things, especially about fixing things, how things work, and how to make things. Matt is a man of great humor and endless compassion. One of the first things that impressed me about him is how loyal he is. This has led to Matt having lifelong friendships and deep connections with his family members; people who are there for him and who he never lets down. Matt loves to laugh and make other people laugh. He sees the world in a unique way that has expanded my view of everything. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but he doesn’t like the strictures of traditional school, so he constantly seeks out alternate ways of learning. He’s generous with his time, energy, and money when he sees inequity or need. He has strong boundaries, but he’s always a soft place to land. These are some of the many reasons so many people love him, especially me, and why he will be such an amazing dad to our future kiddo

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Lifestyle

Our lifestyle is one of joy, laughter, friendship, community, and gratitude. We both work very hard and we balance that with having a lot of fun. We are very involved with our community and love to attend local events, festivals, concerts, and farmer’s markets. We also love to go on hikes and forest walks, go to the river and the beach, and travel both locally and worldwide as much as possible. We have a weekly potluck dinner with our “friend family,” host many holiday parties, and have dinner with our immediate families often. We have both been blessed in many ways and look forward to sharing our blessings with a child while instilling the ultimate blessings of gratitude and generosity in your child. Our lifestyle is casual and easygoing. We are not intense or formal people. We believe in good communication, active listening, healthy boundaries, and deep empathy. We’ll provide your baby with a life of safety and support where they will always feel loved, seen, soothed, and accepted.

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Home & Neighborhood

We live in a small town with world-renowned restaurants, beautiful art galleries, and lovely stores, but as locals, we enjoy being part of a tight-knit community of caring, engaged, enlightened, and supportive neighbors. We show up for each other in ways big and small, shopping and cooking for each other when we’re sick, running errands or babysitting for each other when things get crazy, celebrating each other’s wins, and being a shoulder and an ear for each other when times are tough. We live in a very safe place that enjoys an almost non-existent crime rate.

Our home is beautiful and comfortable, but not enormous. It’s clean, comfortable, and usually filled with family, friends, fur babies, and lots of joy. We have three small dogs, Funston, Ella, and Ani, and two cats, Sledgehammer and Princess Sugarbutt. They are all child-friendly! Your future child will have their own bedroom and bathroom, a backyard lawn, and live in a town where they can walk to school and church, ride bikes with their friends, grow up with their cousins on the same block, and go to the playground and park just down the road.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

We are open to adopting a child of any race and ethnicity. If we are blessed with a child from a race different from our own, we will incorporate their culture into our lives and celebrate it with your child. We will include people from that culture in our lives and turn to them to understand how best to handle differences. We will honor your child’s culture of origin in family traditions and as part of their unique story. We are culturally competent and culturally humble people, as are our family members and friends, and your child will never be made to feel “less than” based on their race and ethnicity because we will raise your child to be proud of their race, ethnicity, and culture.

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Our Families & Friends

We live close to Matt’s family home. Matt’s parents still live there and Matt helps his father manage the property’s vineyard. It is a magical place where your child will spend a lot of time. There’s a tree house, a lake with a giant slide into the water, a full-sized wood fire pizza oven, a bocce ball court, a garden, and lots of space to run and play. We spend lots of time there with his parents, siblings, and our three-year-old niece. We have an annual campout with family and long-time friends over Memorial Day weekend. Your child will spend a lot of time in this magical place with us, Grandma and Grandpa, aunties, uncles, cousins, and friends. Matt’s brother and our sister-in-law and niece live four doors down the street from us and we are all very close. We also have a group of wonderful, supportive, and caring friends who can’t wait for your baby to arrive! Your child will be surrounded by people and pets who love, support, and protect them always.

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Our Relationship with You

We will respect your wishes around how much involvement you’d like to have with your baby, but we hope that you will stay in their life. We know your baby will want to know you and we know that you have love to give your baby. We will always leave that door open if you are unsure or don’t want a relationship right away. We will respect what relationship you are comfortable with and remain flexible with you as your comfort level changes. We will always act in the best interests of your child and we know you will too. We are willing to foster the connection you want with your baby throughout their childhood, be that receiving photographs and updates, hosting calls or Zooms, or arranging visits. We will always speak positively of you. Your baby will grow up knowing of the loving sacrifice you made to give them the best life possible. They will know you gave them an incredible gift of love through making one of the most difficult decisions a person can make.

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Family Traditions

We are a family of rich traditions. Danielle is known as “Hostess Most-est”, throwing wonderful dinner parties for family and friends. We have a weekly casual potluck dinner with our close friends. We sit down at the table for a home-cooked meal at home at least four times per week with no phones allowed so we can really talk and listen to each other. We belong to our local Episcopal church, where we (and Matt’s parents!) got married. We derive great spiritual satisfaction from our membership and involvement there. We attend church on Sundays and there’s a coffee hour and breakfast in the church hall afterward. From there we like to walk to the farmer’s market and buy fresh fruit, vegetables, and eggs for the week. We also have a tradition of travel, including an annual family vacation somewhere warm every winter during which we can spend a couple of weeks altogether with Matt’s parents, siblings, grandmother, and niece in a rented house on a beach somewhere, cooking, playing board games, exploring, and laughing. We can’t wait to include our future child in all of these traditions and to make new ones together.

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Our Careers and Callings

Matt has a very mechanical mind and is a fixer and maker of things big and small. He works for two of his family’s vineyards, fixing machinery and tractors, welding, woodworking, and farming. He has always learned from his dad and is now in the process of taking over for him at both vineyards as both employee and co-owner.

Danielle was a lawyer fighting for justice for people who lost everything because of corporate greed. She decided she wanted to work closer with people, so she went back to school for a Master’s degree in social work. She is now a clinical social worker and therapist. Danielle also serves on the board of a non-profit foundation with the mission of creating health access and equity for all people in her county. Matt also enjoys sourcing and fixing old tools as a hobby, while Danielle enjoys writing fiction, singing, yoga, and reading.

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What Kind of Parents We Will Be

As parents, we will engage with and listen to your child, validate their emotions, and let them know that feelings are always welcome and are meant to be felt. We will parent in a way that builds your child’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, and reassures them that they are unconditionally loved, safe, witnessed, accepted, and adored.

We look forward to introducing your child to Christ and Christian philosophy, and we also plan to introduce them to many different schools of thought. We will always encourage them to be curious, ask questions, and think for themselves. We believe in the importance of education, celebrating differences among all people, critical thinking, and living a life of compassion. We volunteer a great deal of our time toward increasing equity, ending institutional racism, and de-stigmatizing mental healthcare for all people, and this is a value we hope to instill in your child.

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Our Promise to You

We promise to raise your baby in a loving, supportive, safe home full of open communication, laughter, fun, learning, adventure, and respect. We will share our many blessings with your child to give them the best possible life, including a beautiful home in a wonderful community, a great education through school, travel, and conversation, and a kind, supportive and loving family who will always put your child’s needs ahead of our own. We promise to honor your wishes around future contact with your child and to raise our child to know the strength and love it took for you to make the decision to let us raise them. Finally, we promise to make every sacrifice necessary to raise your child to be healthy, happy, confident, humble, compassionate, and kind.