Welcome! Meet:

Matthew + Malarie

Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Associate Director of Mental Health Counseling for College Athletics / Registered Dietitian, Nutrition Services Manager

Massachusetts

Caucasian

Christian

All About Matthew & Malarie
Why Adoption?
Gallery
Family and Home
How We Met
Advice to Future Child
Perspectives on Open Adoption
Favorites

All About Matthew & Malarie

Hello! We are Malarie and Matthew and hope that this profile helps you get to know us and gives you an idea of who we are as a family.

Since we started dating, we have both felt strongly that we would one day welcome a child into our family through adoption. For us, adoption has always felt right. We love where we live in Boston, Massachusetts and feel deeply connected to the city and the diversity and culture it offers and are excited to parent a child of any race or culture. Matthew has two sisters adopted from China so we know firsthand what their experience was like growing up in a white family and what it would mean to parent a child who is not white. For Matthew, having diversity within his immediate family has been a rich, challenging and one-of-a-kind experience. We feel very fortunate to have access to so many diverse cultures and peoples and are prepared and committed to honor our child’s birth heritage and help them find and feel a sense of belonging. Matthew’s adopted siblings, unfortunately, had to experience the questions and pain that come with closed adoption, so we are hoping for an open adoption and to foster a positive connection with you.

Why Adoption?

Since we started dating, we have both felt strongly that we would one day welcome a child into our family through adoption. For us, adoption has always felt right.

It took almost 10 years for Matthew's parents to get pregnant with him, and throughout that time, they seriously considered adoption. They eventually had four biological children, but still felt called to grow their family through adoption, welcoming two girls from China. Being the oldest sibling to two adopted sisters profoundly influenced Matthew's life and shaped his understanding of what it means to be a family.

Matthew's experience has given us a deep understanding of the complex emotions involved in adoption. We are comfortable with ambiguity and recognize that the relationships between everyone involved will naturally evolve over time. We hope to build a meaningful relationship with you, but we are also open to any level of communication that feels comfortable for everyone. We want to honor your role in our child's life and create a relationship that is supportive and healthy for all of us, no matter what it looks like down the road.

Family & Home

We share our home with our dog Mookie and our cat Ellie, and love where we live in Boston, Massachusetts. We feel deeply connected to the city and the diversity and culture it offers and are excited to parent a child of any race or culture.

We are surrounded by history and a tight-knit community in Boston. We love having so many amazing places nearby like the Aquarium, Children’s Museum, and many beautiful parks. When we want to get away, we have easy access to public transportation, like the Amtrak Downeaster, or can easily hit the highway out of town. We are spoiled with the many activities and services in our neighborhood. The public library and local community center offer weekly events for children and adults of all ages. There are several wonderful playgrounds right nearby and many local families walk with their children to school. Boston utilizes a ranking and assignment system to place children in schools according to geographic location, family preference, and programmatic offerings. This allows some flexibility in choice and will allow us to foster diverse educational and social offerings for our future child. We feel very fortunate to have access to so many diverse cultures and peoples and are prepared and committed to honor our child’s birth heritage and help them find and feel a sense of belonging.

We are lucky to enjoy season tickets for some of our favorite sports teams and devote some of our free time to cheering them on. Most of our weekends in the winter are spent skiing in Maine and camping on the Cape in the summer. Otherwise, we enjoy birthday get-togethers with the family, visiting Matthew’s dad in Maine, and game nights with Matthew’s brother and sister in-law. We love having family so close and enjoying activities together all year round!

We enjoy spending time with our family both near and far around the holidays. We alternate holidays so that we are able to see Matthew’s family for either Thanksgiving or Christmas and Malarie’s family for the alternating holiday. We have a blast hosting New Year’s Eve at our home in Boston, and consider it our opportunity to celebrate the holidays with our friends. We typically spend Easter in Maine and the 4th of July in Boston. We love celebrating holidays!

Our day-to-day is typically very calm and flexible. Malarie enjoys the ability to spend some time both at the office and at home working virtually. Matthew and Mookie typically commute on the T to work, and have a consistent schedule throughout the academic year. In the summer, he enjoys a lot of flexibility to work virtually and have a lighter case load.

We have fallen in love with the atmosphere and culture of Boston and have been able to build meaningful relationships here. We enjoy the balance of quiet and liveliness that the city offers, and we look forward to growing our family and making this community our home for many years to come.

How others describe me

Matthew says: I am overwhelmed with excitement at the chance to see Malarie step into the role of being a mom. I appreciate her eagerness for the infant and toddler stages, something she is very well prepared to take on given her experience as a nanny. There will be challenges, but I know that we will work together to care for and support our new child, just as we have navigated other difficult things in life side by side.

Malarie says: Matthew is going to be an amazing father! His thoughtfulness, intentionality, and introspection make him such a kind and relatable person. He is understanding, gentle, and selfless. I have learned a lot in our marriage and cannot wait to be a parent alongside him.

How We Met

We met at a church potluck in Boston shortly after we had both moved to Boston for graduate school. A coffee date was followed by a ski weekend, and before we knew it, our lives were intertwined.

Around a year after we started dating the pandemic hit, and we navigated the changing landscape of living, studying, and working in the city together. We got engaged on the second anniversary of our first date, and planned our wedding just a few months later as a small, intimate ceremony with just our immediate family and a few very close friends. It was everything we could have wanted!

Advice to Future Child

We are writing this because we love you more than words can say, even before we've had the chance to meet you. When you read this, we hope you feel the depth of our commitment to you. We promise to give you the space to grow into the person you are meant to be. As you go through life, remember to:

Be Curious: The world is an amazing place full of wonders. Ask questions! Don't accept things just because they are. Dig deeper, read more, and never lose your desire to learn.
Be Adventurous: Take the leap. Try the new food, explore the path less traveled, and accept new challenges. Adventure doesn't always mean climbing a mountain; sometimes it means starting a new project or speaking up about something that matters to you.
Be Empathetic: Remember that every person you meet has their own story. Be kind, listen with an open heart, and try to see the world from someone else’s perspective. Kindness is a great strength.

We want to make sure you know what you can always count on from us. We promise:

You Are Safe to Make Mistakes: We will parent and discipline with nothing but love. Please know that mistakes are not failures—they are lessons. It is okay to try and stumble; that’s how you learn how to fly. We will always be there to help you dust yourself off.
We Are Your Constant: Life will bring hardships and challenges, that is inevitable. But we will stand by you no matter what. You will always have a strong, loving support network in us and your broader family.
We Will Always Do Our Best: We will not be perfect (no one is!), but we will show up for you and always try our absolute hardest.
We Will Listen and Adapt: We promise to be open, honest, kind, and considerate, and we will teach you to do the same. But we also promise to learn from you. We will listen to your needs and trust your voice.

You are everything to us, and we are so excited to watch you grow and discover the world. We love you.

Perspectives on Open Adoption

Matthew’s sisters’ experiences greatly informed our appreciation for open adoption. We believe that an open relationship, built on love and respect, can be a beautiful way to honor everyone's story.

We are comfortable with ambiguity and recognize that the relationships between everyone involved will naturally evolve over time. We hope to build a meaningful relationship with you, but we are also open to any level of communication that feels comfortable for everyone. We want to honor your role in our child's life and create a relationship that is supportive and healthy for all of us, no matter what it looks like down the road.

Favorites

Matthew

Favorite Movie: Ocean’s 11
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: going skiing on Christmas
Hobbies/Interests: analog music, mountain biking, skiing
Dream Vacation: ski trip to Japan
If I Could Choose a Superpower: control the weather

Malarie

Favorite Movie: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Christmas is really meaningful to me, and I really enjoy the more intimate celebrations of this holiday. Of course, the food takes it to the top of the list. My family makes the family stuffing recipe, turkey + ham, green bean casserole, mac and cheese, and croissant dinner rolls – nothing can compare!
Hobbies/Interests: reading, listening to podcasts, animals and animal behavior, visiting new restaurants, beach days, skiing, hiking, sports
Dream Vacation: National Park Road Trip!
If I Could Choose a Superpower: Temperature regulation. I would want to have the ability to perfectly regulate my body temperature in any weather and the external temperature of objects so my coffee would always be hot and my smoothies always ice-cold!