Elena and Zac
Greetings from California!
We are Elena and Zac, and we are excited to expand our family through open adoption! We live in the San Francisco Bay Area with our child, K, and our dog, Maple, just a few miles from where Zac grew up. Zac works as a Paramedic/Clinical Educator and Elena works as a Public Health Consultant. K attends a nearby elementary school and Maple spends her days relaxing contentedly, greeting the postal worker, and catching up with the canine neighbors (what exactly they discuss is still a mystery).
We met in a strength training class at a university gym, and immediately appreciated each other’s wit, sense of humor, and intelligence. This was in 2004, so we are celebrating our 20th year of knowing one another! We became friends through the class, and would occasionally get coffee or lunch when we ran into each other on campus. Our relationship took a turn to the romantic some years later, when due to changes in our schedules, we couldn’t meet for lunch and instead met for dinner. Not sure if it was the dim light or the yummy Indian food, but we talked for hours and felt the spark of romance! After many more dinners and adventures, we married in 2010, and K was born a few years later. Maple joined our family in the Spring of 2021 (yes, she is a pandemic puppy)!
Our life in the SF Bay Area is full of all the area has to offer, from shopping at our local farmer’s market (so lucky to get great produce year round!), to enjoying the outdoors (skiing is a big activity for the boys), to attending local musical theater productions (a new and growing interest for us). The SF Bay Area is full of natural wonders and cultural enrichment; one of our favorite activities on school holidays is to take the ferry into San Francisco and explore all the city has to offer.
Before we married, we talked about the family we hoped to have together, and that included being open to family formation through both biology and adoption. We are drawn to open adoption as it resonates with our values. Our parenting philosophy is to focus on supporting our children to develop into who they are, not to shape them into extensions of ourselves or otherwise markers of our lives. Parenting, supporting and guiding a child in their growth and development, is an awesome responsibility full of joy, sorrow, and hard work, even in the best of times. We believe maintaining family privacy online makes space for our child’s growth, so we have obscured our child’s face in photos here and in our online family book. Versions of our letter and book where you can see the whole family are available by request from OA&SF staff.
While we do not live in the Pacific Northwest (though Elena grew up in Oregon—more about that in our family book!), we wanted to pursue adoption through OA&FS because respecting and supporting individual autonomy and decision-making is something we value. The child-centered focus of open adoption is key. We are committed to supporting our child in knowing where they came from, and to building connections so our child will know who they are as they grow into adulthood. We also appreciate the ongoing support that OA&FS will provide for all of us involved in the adoption relationship, so that we can build our knowledge of and trust for one another in healthy, positive ways.
We are excited to be taking these steps on our journey toward open adoption. We look forward to getting to know our child’s birth family and making our entire family network stronger and richer!