"I Look Just Like My Mom!"

While spending time thinking about Mother's Day. (You might want to read my thoughts in my previous post.) I was a more than a little irritated to read about a Mother's Day photo contest in our local paper. People would vote for the picture that had the mother and child who most closely resembled each other. I mean...how COULD they come up with such an insensitive contest!?!?!

Which led to a hastily posted status on Facebook. Oh my...did that open up some great conversation! There were those who agreed with me, and those who raised some really interesting thoughts. I mean, does EVERY contest have to include EVERYONE? And the more I read, the more I calmed down. I mean, the newspaper didn't mean any harm...while maybe a short-sighted contest idea, it wasn't meant to be anything but fun. (I also thought it was interesting that my friend, heart-sister and Mom-Blogger tackled this issue on her blog: A Musing Maralee, and while I don't necessarily agree with all of her thoughts, she addresses them as usual in a loving, thought-provoking way.)

And so the next day, I called the supervising editor of the local paper. I asked some questions, like who thought of the contest? Who was the target audience? What was their goal? How would the contest play out? (I had visions of page after page in the local paper of moms and their mini-mes. I could picture Dayna looking through that and wondering why she couldn't be a winner. She's pretty sensitive about appearances right now, and the idea of this contest wasn't sitting well with her at all.) Well, it turns out it was an internet contest (not to be published.) The editor was very nice and admitted that they hadn't thought through the ramifications of adoptive families, foster families, biracial families, step-families....all those families who don't necessarily share DNA or physical similarities. She was grateful for the feedback and encouraged our family to find a way to enter the contest anyway.

So Dan got to work with his camera and took some great shots. This is the one we decided to enter:

Not to underestimate the power of the adoption community, I shared the contest link with some of my adoption networks on Facebook. The response was overwhelming. The comments were so positive (and there were SO MANY of them!) My goal was accomplished: to use a positive method to raise awareness of families and the things that really matter: the heart.

Little did I know when I submitted my very late entry (2 days before the contest closed) that it would garner so much attention. We actually WON!!!!! (see results) But really...the bigger win is that I have an awesome mom myself, and two pretty incredible daughters.