possibly deep thoughts

I've heard a number of different places that other loss tends to bring
adoption loss to the surface for an adoptee. It makes sense.
So I wasn't really surprised to find in the middle of my grandmother's
dying and death, that Miriam and I were confronting her adoption loss at
a new level. Even so I can't say I was "prepared". I'm not sure how as a
parent you are every really prepared cause kids never pick the easy or
convenient times to ask the hard questions. But that's just the way it
usually is.

Anyway, I was hit by some doozies! The toughest of which was "did my
(Ethiopian) mother not WANT to take care of me?" Sigh. "I don't know"
just isn't enough of an answer sometimes! I'm so grateful to the books
I've read that advise when talking with our adopted children to talk
about things you know, things you think, and things you believe. So with
my "I don't know" I added my think and believe. In hindsight, I should
have first asked her what she thinks before sharing my thoughts. Maybe
someday I'll get it all together or she'll ask me this stuff at a
convenient time. Yeah, that last bit probably isn't going to happen! :)

I’ve had occasion to think about loss a lot over the last week.

I lost my grandmother a week ago. My children lost their great-grandmother, their beloved Grandma Katie.

So I’ve found myself thinking and talking a lot about family over the last week, about genealogy. And I find that I am in a rather interesting position.

On one hand, half of my genealogy, my ancestry, is almost completely unknown. The few things I think I know are not even proven. I can relate, even sympathize, with adoptees who feel the sting of close birth records and birth certificates that tell lies. Part of my history is covered and changed or simply left blank.

My knowledge of another fourth of my genealogy and ancestry is severely limited. I know a few names and I know they are fact, but I don’t know stories or a real history. There is no relationship because that part of my family is mostly cut off from me due to the hurt and pain of others.

Three fourths of my story is so similar to the situation my children are in, to the information they have or more accurately do not have. I pray that this will help me in understanding their pain and loss as they grow.

But then there is the other fourth of my genealogy and ancestry, the part that passes through my grandmother. That part I know so very much about. There are numerous (and huge) books that can tell me all kinds of things about my ancestors. I can trace my roots back to 7, 8, 9, even 10 generations to the men who sailed across the ocean from Switzerland to escape religious persecution. I can claim to be a descendant from names like Treyer/Troyer, Hochstetler, Schmucker, and Klopenstine. I know names and details. My great-great grandmother died in childbirth at the age of 38 leaving 8 children. One great-great-great grandfather was an Amish bishop who’s writings were actually published. And standing at the head of my grandmother’s grave I can see the graves of 2 great-grandparents, 3 great-great-grandparents, and 2 great-great-great-grandparents. That’s crazy deep roots, ya’ll.

And when I think about those crazy deep roots, my heart hurts for all my children have lost.

Recently I was accused of "lacking a certain sense of empathy that one mother should have for another" and by "mother" this person appeared to mean the prospective adoptive mother. At the time I agreed: I don't have much empathy for PAPs (perspective adoptive parents) as my focus is on the first/biological family/mother. But as I have thought about it more, I realize my response was too simplistic.

Right now I am both an adoptive parent (AP) AND a prospective adoptive parent (PAP). I am waiting for a little boy a world away from me right now. I know how hard it is to watch a child grow up in pictures. I know now hard it is to wait on paperwork and red tape. I know the pain of unmet expectations. I know the ache of a heart that longs for another child. I get frustrated with the best of them at every paperwork snag and SNAFU. I've cried and stressed out at delays. If something happens and we can not bring Asher home, I promise you I will be a MESS. I will be heart broken. Crushed.

Now let me stop for a minute and look at the above paragraph. Is it all true? Yes. Is it "valid"? Yes. Is it selfish? YES!!! Yet every word is "I, I, I, me, me, me". See, these feelings, while real and even valid, are ALL ABOUT ME! And guess what? I am NOT the most important person here. The most important person is that little boy and the second most important are his birth family.... I and my feelings are a little farther down the list. And that is the way it should be... needs to be.. and, sadly, often is not.

Though PAP/APs often deny it, the persons with the most power in the adoption triad (or whatever your word choice) is the AP. The person with the LEAST power (really no power at all) is the child being adopted. We all hope and pray that everyone involved is doing what is best for this powerless child. But as long as first families are tricked, coerced, and lied to; as long as governments and other officials can be bribed and bought; as long as adoption is a business and an industry; those of us with power, the PAP/APs MUST be uber vigilant! We can not allow our selfish desire for another child or our belief we are "doing good"/ "God's will" to cloud our thinking and our eyes from the truth that adoption may NOT be the best thing for the specific child we wish to adopt. That, in fact, the very existence of adoption and our money may have caused this child to lose his family.

So while I feel all those selfish emotions I mentioned in paragraph two, I work very hard to keep my focus where it should be... on the best interest of the child(ren). And work to keep my selfishness from clouding what exactly "the best interest" is.

I've been thinking about a disconnect I see in people's perception of adoption. It seems to me that many people, both in the adoption "world" and out of it, do not have a complete understanding of what adoption is. When they think of adoption it is "a beautiful, wonderful thing". And in a certain sense they are correct. It is a beautiful thing when it gives a good home and family to a child who would have grown up in an institution or worse.

But adoption is not all sunshine and roses. And it isn't always about children who live in institutions or lack families. See, adoption is rooted in loss. Always. International adoption actually causes loss.  I'm not just referring to whatever caused the need for adoption; the actual adoption itself causes loss. Of course, in many cases the good done by getting a family outweighs that loss but it is there nonetheless. 

A good online friend, Terri, passed along to me an analogy of Gina Pollock's (PEAR president) that she expanded on and now I and Brian have taken even further. I believe this analogy/metaphor is very profound in explaining what I am talking about.

The loss of one's biological family in whatever way (relinquishment, abandonment, termination of rights, etc.) is like the amputation of a limb. Adoption is like a prosthesis. Yes, the prosthesis returns a level of function lost in the amputation. Yes, it is much better then the alternative of, say, spending your life in a wheelchair if you lost both legs. But the prosthesis is not and never can be the lost limb. So we all know that amputation should always be the last option. And we NEVER take it lightly.  Doctors work very hard to save a limb and only when all other options are gone do they turn to amputation.

How ridiculous would it be if you stepped on a nail and it was embedded into your foot, but when you went to the emergency room to have it removed, the doctor just wanted to cut off your whole leg?  What if he said, "Oh, we've got a
room full of prosthetic feet over here just waiting to be used! They are really wonderful and can do all kinds of neat things!"  Would you be horrified and outraged?? Of course!! Yet many think it is okay to offer international adoption as an answer to poverty and lack of resources in the biological family (the nail in the foot).  Sure, there are times when there are complicating factors... maybe an antibiotic-resistant bacteria gets in the wound, or you are a diabetic and the wound will not heal. But NEVER would you accept the loss of your foot without first trying to remove the nail and heal the foot!  

But we need to always remember that the adoption was preceded by a great loss. Would we ever dream of telling an amputee that they are "better off" with their prosthesis than their real foot? Or that they should be "grateful" they lost their limb so they could have this "wonderful" prosthesis? Of course not!! Would we find it in anyway odd that they missed their limb or grieved its loss or were flat out angry about the lost of the limb? Of course not!! Let's offer the same support to adoptees and acknowledge the deep losses they have suffered in order to experience the prosthesis of adoption.

3/24/2011 ETA: I appear to have quite a few adult adoptees reading this which I had not anticipated. I am VERY glad you all are reading! Please give me any feed back on this analogy that you want. I know it's not perfect, but it does seem to be very eye opening to PAPs/APs and the public at large. And please know I talk about IA because that is what I know. I haven't given a whole lot of thought to DA so I don't name it here. I am 100% open to hearing that you believe "last resort" needs to be applied here at home and that that is not being done. 

We have been asked over the years why we aren't adopting from Ethiopia again. In fact, our social worker was surprised to hear we were returning to China but not Ethiopia. After all, don't we realize it is considered important by some for adopted children to have siblings who share their birth culture and racial heritage? Yes, we know this, and would love for Miriam to have an Ethiopian sibling. Is it because we somehow dislike Ethiopia? Absolutely not!  Ethiopia holds a very special place in our hearts. In so much as one can love a country that is not your own, we love Ethiopia. Is it because we are somehow unhappy with Miriam or "don't love her"? Don't be ridiculous!! If Miriam had been born to us, we could not love her more!!

So WHY are we not adopting from Ethiopia? Short answer? There is far too much corruption, far too many unethical adoptions, and far too many other questionable gray areas for us to be comfortable considering Ethiopia. (Please note what I did not say. I did not say there are NO ethical adoptions from Ethiopia.) 

For sometime now we have not felt comfortable recommending Ethiopian adoption to anyone. If you ask us, we will tell you to look elsewhere. If you spend anytime in the Ethiopian adoption world, you will quickly learn there are a number of horrible agencies that are to be avoided. An Australian documentary called Fly Away Children helped with that. But we have known for a long time that the problems in Ethiopia run far deeper then "a few bad agencies". The agency we used in 2005 for Miriam's adoption is still listed as an "ethical agency", one of the good guys. And compared to the worst of the worst, I guess they are. But over the years, we have learned story after story that forces me to put the word ethical in quotes when referencing them. (Because those stories are not mine, I am not at liberty to share them; please do not ask me to.  Those stories belong solely to the families who still suffer the effects to this day. Some of the stories are out there if you look for them.)

Honestly, even the few agencies who are still generally considered ethical (there are only 5) have stories connected to them that lead me to believe that any agency can end up facilitating an unethical adoption. And if you look at this PEAR post, it is obvious the problems are not limited to the US only. Even Ethiopia is beginning to admit there is a problem. In this recent article a judge admitted there is little the ET courts can do to prevent fraud, even when they believe the paperwork and witnesses in an adoption case are fraudulent. And if the recent information from Vietnam is any indication, the US embassy/USCIS is also relatively powerless to stop fraud and corruption.

Okay, corruption aside, (assuming you can actually stay clear of it), what about all the children in Ethiopia who do need new homes?  Well, we have come to believe that most of those children do not actually exist... at least not in the age range most adoptive parents are willing to adopt. By this I mean most children who truly have no family are over the age of 10 and most adoptive families want an infant or young toddler.  We see that many adoptees coming out of Ethiopia are "created orphans" (meaning that if international adoption, or IA, did not exist they would still be with their families) and few are "true orphans" (who have lost both parents to death or absolute abandonment).

In a recent article an Ethiopian official had this to say:

This says to us that Ethiopia has reached a point where there is a culture of adoption, where children are placed for adoption because it exists. Very few children actually sit in institutions waiting for adoption. They are mostly coming straight from their first families and going straight to International Adoption.

We see adoption as often being a long term solution to a short term problem in Ethiopia. Yes, Ethiopia has a lot of issues and there is no social safety net, but we do not believe that adoption should be that safety net in most cases. If we can reach families to tell them that they can place their children for International Adoption, why can we not also reach them to help them with family preservation? (Yes, I realize this is all very complicated, and our beliefs are more nuanced than this but if I spelled everything out in this post it would be too long to post! Basically, we are not anti-adoption, but we ARE pro-family preservation!) Again, we believe adoption needs to be moved to its rightful place... the LAST resort. We realize there are many adoptive families out there who are okay with all of these gray areas. We are not.

We as a family have committed that we will only adopt a child who has no other option than international adoption to avoid life in an institution or on the streets without a family. This is actually part of a promise we made to Miriam. Furthermore, we are Christians and as such try to follow the Bible. James 1:27 tells us we are "to look after orphans and widows in their distress".  We do not see how rushing in to take her child away forever is helping the widow in distress. We believe this is in fact causing her and her child great harm. Instead, caring for her, looking after her, and loving her as Christ would means helping her care for her child so she can raise that child right where that
child was born.  We believe THAT is the religion which God "accepts as pure and faultless".

Due to these beliefs we hold, the gray areas mentioned above, and the high levels of corruption in Ethiopia, we feel that we can not in good conscience adopt from Ethiopia nor can we recommend the program to anyone else.

ETA: 8/15/11 Here is a blog that tells just a few of the stories coming out of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Adoption Truth

ETA: 4/30/12 A typical story involving the agency we used for Ethiopia. Inside Ethiopia's Adoption Boom 

I am a nurse. I have been a labor & delivery nurse... I have seen hundreds (thousands?) of births. They are all different, all special, all moving on a certain level. But I find that I struggle to "get into" the births hidden inside the whirling medical world of elective c-sections, epidurals, and doctor-focused care. The births that move me, inspire me, fill me with awe are those where the woman knows she has wrestled with God and, walking on the very edge of the abyss, she has won another life to join the ranks of the human race.