Category: Adoption Page 2 of 9

Astray

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On October 20, 2022

In Adoption, Parenting

Last night my stomach tightened as I pulled Johnny’s red jacket out of the dryer. This is the jacket I described to the police officer. Will I ever be able to look at it the same way again?

*

This past Sunday morning at 8, I holler at the kids to get moving. Johnny isn’t in bed, but that is normal. As the youngest, he usually is out of bed before anyone else on weekends. Routine bedlam ensues, with teenagers jostling for the bathroom and grumbling over who ate the last piece of banana bread. At 8:40, Gil and I bellow for all to get into the car.  

Only when everyone is clambering out the door do we realize Johnny isn’t in the house. I huff, questioning why he would go out to play when he knows we are heading to church. 

Johnny is my independent, curious one. He’s the child most likely to make himself a spinach and mushroom omelet for breakfast, experimenting with spices. The night before, he was obsessed with conquering a new Rubik’s Cube. He told me recently that he is too old for hugs and kisses now, and I conceded on the kisses but declared that I will hug him for as long as I live, so too bad for him.

His three teenage siblings are often too busy for him, and Johnny doesn’t like playing by himself. His screen time had been confiscated for this weekend, so that’s likely what drove him outside. He loves roaming the neighborhood on his bike or hoverboard, but today both of those things are still in our garage. Plus, he knows there are three rules: Don’t leave the house without telling a parent. Don’t leave the neighborhood. Don’t go inside anyone’s house. 

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Mothering African Hair

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On September 8, 2021

In Adoption, Parenting, Race and Diversity, Third Culture Kids

Of all the things a new mother stresses about, her kids’ hair is usually not one of them. But for me, it was.

I felt an invisible weight upon me that if I was to be a good mom to my girls, I must get their hair right. This was not a completely imagined pressure. I learned early on that in both African and African-American cultures, well-maintained hair is important. I already knew my competence as a white mother to two black daughters would be questioned in many ways. So I was determined to prove myself capable of at least caring for their hair.

I read Black hair blogs. I watched YouTube videos. I even bought and read a book on the subject. I tried a ridiculous number of hair products. Yet still, I was anxious. It was harder than I thought, and despite my best efforts, I could not turn myself into a Black hair artist. 

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Johnny Can’t Travel With Us: A Lament Over U.S. Immigration

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On May 14, 2021

In Adoption, Leaving Tanzania

All year, we’ve been planning a family trip back to Tanzania in June–the precise window of time when our kids’ new school would be finished and Haven of Peace Academy would still be in session. We had such a traumatic ending last March. All year, our family has talked about going back and finishing better. 

But U.S. immigration won’t let us leave the country with Johnny. So that means Grace, Lily, and I will still go to Tanzania this June–only half of us. I’m excited to go, but this is not what I wanted. So I lament.

Yet this isn’t my first struggle with U.S. immigration. It’s been going on for fifteen years.

I think part of the reason why I have compassion for immigrants is because I have four of them in my family. Maybe this is news to some, but children adopted internationally by Americans don’t automatically become U.S. citizens. In the fifteen years I’ve had my children, I’ve often been prevented from bringing them into the United States. And now I’m being prevented from taking one out. 

This has been a theme of our lives. Here’s one example (of many that could be told):

I still remember the day so clearly: Josiah was two years old. By this time, he had been in our home since he was nine months old and had just been officially adopted. In order to start his U.S. citizenship process, he had to be in our custody for two years. Since we hadn’t met that mark yet, if we wanted to visit the States, we needed to get him a tourist visa. 

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Dear Moms of Littles, Adoption Has Taught Me Your Labor Is Not In Vain

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On May 11, 2019

In Adoption

The other night, there was a lot of screaming in my dining room. A lot of screaming. Like, I’m sure that our neighbors thought someone was being maimed or murdered.

But no. Someone was being asked to share a handful of half-dry markers with a sibling. This was apparently cause for a fight-to-the-death battle that involved wailing and flailing on the floor.

Also, no, this was not a developmentally-appropriate toddler temper tantrum. We are way past the toddler stage in this house.

I put on my calm, firm voice and did my best to stay calm and firm for twenty minutes while rage rampaged through my house. When it was over, the child flipped back to their perky, chipper self, while I felt like I had been run over by a truck.

Several years ago I read an article that told me that a child learns emotion regulation from his or her mother before the age of three. The mother’s sense of calm actually, physically, passes onto her babies, and teaches her children how to calm themselves down.

That was a game changer for me. Oh. My child didn’t have a mother as a toddler. This is why my child cannot regulate emotions. And I’ve discovered that at the heart of the anger is a deep insecurity. We have the same conversations, over and over again. You are valued and loved. You can trust Mom and Dad to give you what you need. People are not out to get you. It’s not you against the world. We are on your side. 



Even though the number of years that child has been in my care has far surpassed the number of years that child spent in an orphanage, it doesn’t matter. Those first three years are so critical that it’s taking years and years to try to reverse that early learning.

And honestly, what I’m dealing with is mild. As an adoptive mom of four, I am fully immersed in adoption books, forums, and friendships. The stories I hear or read about make me realize that I’ve got it easy. Sorry, Beatles, but All you need is love isn’t always true. An adoptive family can be full of love, but it takes a long time to fix what was broken. Especially if it was broken during those first few years.

So if you are in those “fixing what was broken” years with your adopted child, then you have my sympathy. Mothers With Screaming Children…Unite!

But my point of writing today is to encourage those moms who are raising little people right now–the Under Three crowd.

Some of my kids came to me as infants. Now that I’m past that stage, it’s easy to be nostalgic. Those belly laughs and funny first words, the pieces of songs that come out all wrong, the excitement over shiny shoes, the dancing and prancing….because who wants to walk???

But then I remember the sleeplessness. The messes, over and over again. And it wasn’t so much the exhaustion that got to me, but the monotony. The tasks are repetitive and feel endless. Changing. Feeding. Throwing blocks in the air. Reading inanely ridiculous books. Talking about yourself in the third person. Listening to Dora one more time. And praying they go to sleep. Dear God, please just make them go to sleep.

The hardest part about all of this was that it often felt so pointless. So small. So insignificant.

But that’s where adoption has taught me that it’s not. During those early years of sleepless nights and endless messes, you are giving your child a whole lot more than love. Without realizing it, you are teaching her to trust adults to get her needs met. You are giving him a sense of personhood and value. You are teaching her how to regulate her emotions. You are giving him safe boundaries and showing her how to reign in her desires.

Of course, this is not to say that every child who was adopted at an older age is going to struggle with these things. It also doesn’t mean that every biological, home-raised child is not going to struggle. Personality and life circumstances are huge factors. But in general, adoption has shown me that those early years really matter. Centrally matter.

So be encouraged, Mom of Littles. These years will pass, and you will never regret the investment you made in your children in those mind-numbingly long years. Keep at it.

One of my all-time favorite pictures (2007)

What Adoption Has Taught Me About Abortion

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On February 3, 2019

In Abortion, Adoption

Nicole Chung’s birth parents didn’t want her, so they put her up for adoption. She writes about her journey to find her birth family and process her identity in the poignant memoir, All You Can Ever Know.

Nicole found out that her birth parents told her siblings and their family that the baby was born dead. They wanted her erased from memory, as if the pregnancy never happened. But life doesn’t work that way. Nicole writes, “Words I’d once heard from a birth mother flashed in my mind: If there’s something that everyone should know about adoption, it’s that there is no end to this. There’s no closure.”

As an adoptive parent, I’ve learned this tragic truth from experience as I help my own children work through their grief and loss of their first families–a loss that will continue to haunt them as they grow up and start their own families. We can celebrate the redemption and beauty of adoption till we’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t take away the heartbreak.

How ironic that it’s the same for the birth mother. She may even tell everyone the baby died, but she knows, niggling around in her mind, refusing to be ignored, that her baby is out there, growing up somewhere. I think about that often as I look into the faces of my children who spent nine months growing in the body of another woman, their blood flowing alongside hers, listening to her voice, feeling her joy and sadness and fear. My children wish for one glimpse of her face; I wish for one chance to tell her that her baby is okay.

It’s easy for us to judge the woman who wants that baby dead and hands over her money to make it all go away. Perhaps she does it because she knows, by instinct, that adoption won’t grant her closure. Perhaps it scares her to death knowing that one day she may pass a person on the street that mirrors her face. Perhaps it’s easier to just know that the baby is dead, and hope that a dead baby brings more closure than a baby raised by someone else who will someday inevitably want to find the woman who gave her away.

I spent years longing to be pregnant, so I don’t know what it feels like. But I remember talking to a friend who kept getting pregnant despite her and her husband’s efforts to hold it off. She is an amazing mother and adores all of her children, but her pregnancies were unusually harsh, and she noted the irony of hers and my situations. Despite my longing, I couldn’t help but feel empathy towards her. Pregnancy starts with such a seemingly insignificant act but holds incredibly significant consequences.

Pro-lifers keep using the “But it’s life” argument against abortion, without realizing that for many pro-choice women, that’s not a consequential discussion any more. Everyone knows it’s life. Pro-choice advocates are fighting for the right for a woman to choose not to reproduce. Sure, a third trimester baby could just be delivered and whisked off to an adoption agency, but that’s not the point. Because that live baby means that somewhere out there will be a person living and breathing and thinking that has an eternal, inexplicable connection to that mother. Which could be terrifying. Terrifying enough that it’s easier just to destroy it and hope that it brings closure.

It doesn’t, of course. But I’m writing this today because I think it’s important that instead of just loudly protesting (though that’s important too), we need to take a moment to try to get into the heads of these women. Yes, laws need to change because laws shape the worldview of a nation. And laws that destroy personhood and denigrate motherhood are a worthy fight. But changing hearts is equally as important, and that’s got to start by listening, understanding, empathizing, befriending. I pray for those opportunities.

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