Molly and Patrick
Hi there! We’re Molly and Patrick, and we live in Oregon with our dorky-champion-snuggler mutt, Diggle. We’ve lived in the Northwest most of our adult lives and both work in the mental health field. It’s impossible to tell a person who we are and what’s important to us in just one page, but we’ll try.
We met in 2006 while in graduate school, and we initially connected over a shared adoration of Radiohead. We became good friends and years later realized there was much love between us. We married in New York’s Central Park in 2013, and we are grateful for our shared adventures so far. We’ve also (as everyone can relate) had our share of unexpected challenges and heartaches. All these experiences have helped us to grow in ways we did not necessarily expect or seek, and they involved relationships with incredible people in our biological and chosen families.
As far as things that we love, in no specific order: travel, hiking, making and eating delicious food, art, music, gardening, swimming in large bodies of water, reading, science fiction, wondering about the world around us, and most of all – our relationships. If Molly could choose only one activity for the rest of her life, it would be a hard call between yoga and scuba diving. Patrick’s passions are running and comic books.
What Molly says about Patrick: Patrick is the best! He’s the person that you want to have with you for what life brings your way. He’s thoughtful, non-judgmental, empathic, and incredibly grounded. He also has a sense of humor that comes at you from the left. Even after knowing him for a long time, Patrick will come out with a hilarious point of view that no one expected – which makes it that much more hilarious. Patrick is extremely loving and committed. He’s a person that makes being in this world a whole lot better. I think without even trying, he’s also a person who just makes others feel safe.
What Patrick says about Molly: Molly is really the best! She’s the strongest, most caring, and most thoughtful person I know. She’s the motor that keeps our relationship and shared life running. She inspires me every day to notice the world around me and to take care of it and the people dear to us.
In 2020, we became foster parents for two sisters. Through that experience, parenting became our greatest adventure so far. We loved parenting with one another, and we made a great team. After our foster children moved, we greatly missed the special bond that had developed. We also realized fostering is not the right fit for us; we hope to become forever parents instead. After more thought and research, we recognize open adoption aligns more with our values and hopes. We both have family members through closed adoption, and we have seen how closed adoption affected our loved ones. We want any child we raise to have a sense of their whole self and all the important people who make up their story. We hope for them to have a lifelong relationship with their birth family and be able to rely on their adoptive and birth families for love, support, and presence.
We recognize the information you see is not a lot to go on when making such an important decision. We know that we’re asking a stranger to place a lot of trust in us. Considering us or anyone is a leap of faith. We don’t know what the future holds or how our paths may zig and zag in ways unimagined. We promise to do everything we can to earn and be worthy of your trust.
We promise to bring our steadfastness, curiosity, openness, commitment, a sense of wonder, and a sense of humor. We promise to bring our supportive community, resilience, and gratitude as well. We promise to honor all of the challenges and joys that come our way. We promise to value relationships and each person’s perspectives and experiences. We promise to be accountable. Finally, we promise to figure it out along the way, together.