Continued from here ...

I started to find that tone in the word that now defines the parties to adoption: triad.

This is what I wrote in the preface to the book:

The core group, essential to every adoption, is commonly called a "Triad."

Triad is the word used in the Adoption Community for the intimate grouping of child / PBP / PAP (or after adoption, child / birth parents / adoptive parents) that has in past times been known as the triangle. This term is no longer in favor.

Yes, a triangle has three sides, but that's the problem in using it to convey the adoption image; there's no place in a triangle where all sides meet, and it's often the case that one side is greater than the others. This imagery, although seemingly innocuous, can easily cause relationships within the formation to start out badly.

So, Triad came into use, and although it, too, is discussed and discussed, its use is now commonplace and reasonably well accepted.

The Encarta World English Dictionary defines thusly:

Tri'ad n

1. a group of three people or things

2. a musical chord consisting of three notes, especially a chord made up of a tonic, a third, and a fifth

3. an atom of chemical group with a valence of three

4. a US strategic missile force made up of bombers, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles

5. a form of composition in ancient Welsh literature in which subjects or statements are arranged in groups of three

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Although it sometimes feels like the adoption world is dropping word bombs all over the place, itıs the first definition that characterizes our grouping.

I prefer the musical connotation, however, and like to think of triad members as notes in a chord.

The visual says it all for me - three separate tones forever linked, in either harmony or discord.

There's also the umbilical in the notion of cords that ties it all together in my mind to create the perfect picture imagery.

With advice from birth moms, adoptees, adoptive parents, professionals, legal minds, and as many experts on every level I could find, I put together what I feel is a helpful, fair, balanced and concise guide ... not a how-to -- A to Z -- but rather an offering of paths ... on US domestic infant adoption.

Among many other things, adoption is a dance, and how much lovelier the dance when the music is harmonious and everyone is moving to the same tune.