An autobiography, either written, videotaped, or both, is usually a part of any home study. At our agency, we were asked to complete both a written autobiography and a 5 minute video. The idea was that the written autobiography would be a part of our profile that expectant parents would see first; then, if they were interested, the video would be available to them as well.
An autobiography is a little like the profile that is filled out at the agency at the beginning of the home study process. Rather than being answers to a series of questions, it is more like a narrative. It’s the story of your life so far, in as much detail as you feel comfortable sharing. As our social worker told us with the profile, the more you choose to share, the better match you will have. My husband had an easier time writing about himself than I did. Oddly enough, some of the things that he and I left out were things that our daughter’s birth families and ours had in common. We weren’t given a word count limit, but were told the average was roughly 2-3 single sided pages, hand written as in our “Dear Birthparent” letter. Our agency also supplied us with examples of autobiographies from previously waiting families, with their identifying information removed. Some of them felt more complete than others. Some of them read like a resume, at least to my more cynical side.
My autobiography was roughly 2 1/2 pages long. It touched on some of the highlights of my previous life: early childhood, moving while I was in high school, college, my interest in music and art. I also wrote a little about meeting my husband and our challenges with infertility before making the decision to pursue adoption. My husband’s was a bit different. He grew up in a military family and wanted his own family to have more stability than he experienced growing up, and that was the focus of both his autobiography and his “Dear Birthparent” letter. There was quite a bit that we both left out, mostly because we couldn’t imaging anyone wanted to read about “all that stuff”.
It was strange. The things that we didn’t mention were similar to what we left out of our profile. For example, our growing up as science-fiction geeks, the importance of music in our lives, my husband’s love of writing. All of those and more were things we wound up having in common with our daughter’s birth family. I have no idea what that means, but the fact that we left those things out – and that they found us anyway – means something. I don’t know what just yet.