Finally a celebrity who gets it....

Normally if a women was compared to Angelina Jolie she would be over the moon but I am becoming so tired of having our family compared to hers. So many people on learning that our family was created through adoption, say 'oh like Angelina Jolie' and while sometimes we take the time to explain about open adoption it can also be difficult especially as Eoin is approaching an age where he will soon start to understand people's glances and questions. We want him to be proud of who he is and so we hope that we are teaching him to deal with these questions and glances in a way that he is comfortable with.

Today however I found a glimmer of sunshine in the vast array of celebrities who are adoption. I have found a celebrity that I can honestly use as an example and who I feel understands adoption. So from now on when someone says 'oh like Angelina Jolie' I'm going to say well no more like 'Hugh Jackman and his wife'.

It was such a great surprise to learn that Hugh Jackman and his wife have also experienced the amazing miracle of open adoption (and also closed adoption) and that they are proud of their children and their ethnicity. In an interview with the English newspaper 'The Telegraph' Hugh was reported as saying 'For Oscar we opted for open adoption because we thought it would be much easier to discuss the whole subject.’ Flouting the rules, they became friends with the birth mother, a young woman from Iowa, and attended Oscar’s delivery. 'It was exhilarating. I remember tears running out of my eyes in the happiest possible fashion.’ With Ava they chose closed adoption; both children are of mixed race. A devoted father, Jackman worries about his children’s right to a private life. 'I tell them the truth: people see me in movies and want to know what I do at the weekend. They don’t really love me, I tell Oscar. Real love is what you and I have and will never go. The interest in me – the fame, the magazines – that will go. I don’t know when, but that means it’s not real.’

Thank you to the Jackman family for being such amazing beckons of light for adoption.