I want to post an e-mail sent to Tony and Tanya Carruthers (the searchers who found my son's birthfamily- link to right "Post Adopt Birthparent Seek") by a young lady who was adopted from Russia and now lives in the US. She has given me permission for this post. Many people often wonder how a child will feel about receiving this kind of information. This may be a little window into our children's soul.
seek, search, & sometimes find
Posted by: "evana"
Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:53 pm
For what reason do we seek, search, & sometimes find? Perhaps for A little piece of mind, or to
discover some sort of truth. I got a chance to find some answers & take a glimpse back in time.
Time and a place i thought no longer existed. like a far, desolate place i would never find.
People that i would never get to see again, memories(vague) i wouldn't be able to
validate/confirm... However the case is, i did find those answers, i found some answers to my
past. Answers to some often pondered questions.With the gracious help of Tony & Tanya, they
found the orphanage i grew up in. They found what i could call "home" for the first 7 years of my
life, and discovered some valuable info. They discovered the orphanage still stands today and
continues to serve needy children, with the help of some dedicated staff. I was surprised to hear
that a few of the staff that took care of me (15+ years ago) still continue to work there today.
Even better, they remembered me!! I honestly didn't even think the orphanage would stands
today. I guess I'm just so use to this fast paste, always changing, culture of America. It was so
comforting/great to see it all again, though. One day soon i would like to go see it for myself. Just
to be back there, i feel it is so much needed.I'm also happy i got out when i did though. I don't
think most of the kids ever get adopted, and I'm sad to wonder what happens to them after they
reach the prime age. Anyway, thanks Tony & Tanya!!
Evana
I also want to clarify that Mary at Russian Search/Translation/ Call Service (link to right) helped me find my son's last sister that was not found on the first search.
Showing posts with label birthparent contact. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthparent contact. Show all posts
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Two Letters, Two Countries, One Family
Its an adventure opening my mailbox these days. Scattered among the bills and sale ads are postcards from Postcrossing, movies borrowed from Netflix and just yesterday two letters from our ever growing family.
Ian's sister Natasha sent us a letter enclosed with two Russian stamps and a picture. I am happy to post that her "new" mother, who is also named Natasha, and her new Babushka are pleased as punch to have her with them. I am grateful to know Natasha is happy, healthy and in a loving home.Ian's other three sisters also wrote a letter filled with drawings and accompanied a box full of cookies made by their own hands. I am so thankful that their mother and father are willing to put up with me in their lives.
It is a bit harder to contact Ian's birthmother but we do get a letter here and there sent to her. We hear more from his Grandmother
in Russia. In fact she sent a message through Yulia, the oldest sister who lives in Delaware, for Ian to send pictures to her.
in Russia. In fact she sent a message through Yulia, the oldest sister who lives in Delaware, for Ian to send pictures to her.
I feel a little lost regarding Ian's younger brother that is still with his birthmother. Ian asks after him quite a lot and has one of his pictures next to his bed, along with a picture of his three sisters in the USA and a pic of his sister still in Russia. He has told me that soon, there will be a picture of all of them together. He even has a specified space on the wall for this picture.
Its hard to explain to Ian why his brother is still with his birthmother while the rest of the children are scattered across the globe. Here is one article I have found regarding one sibling is placed for adoption while another is not.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Reunion - Relative Choices - Adoption - Opinion - New York Times Blog
November 20, 2007, 9:52 pm
Reunion
By Lynn Lauber
In the shady side yard of the adoption equation are birth mothers — silent, mostly invisible women who have given up their children without fanfare and often with considerable grief.
Adoptive babies aren’t hatched in factory farms or dropped from the sky straight into the laps of happy families. They are born by real women — often without counseling, legal advice or public acknowledgment. The bond that is broken at birth has real costs, for adoptees as well as their relinquishers. It is not a simple, sterile transaction, but one awash in blood.
In the late 1960s, when I was pregnant, the United States’s adoption process was secret and punitive. In the religious maternity home where I spent six sodden months, a dose of guilt was dispensed with the daily vitamins: I was bad and should be punished; that was the message up and down the line, and I registered it with my tender antennae. I was meant to swiftly sail through “delivery,” as if it were the tonsillectomy I’d had as a girl. But I remained conscious for long hours as my body initiated a process that startled me with pain and awe. It was only during labor – under lights and woefully ignorant — that the real drama being enacted inside me was finally revealed. This was no impersonal mound of flesh I’d been carrying but a kicking life, fighting to emerge. And it had come from me, who was barely finished myself. But that this child was of me — a continuation of a theme, a chip off a block, an apple near a tree — was a truth that was smothered.
I was strongly discouraged from seeing the daughter I bore on that July day that seemed to stretch .....
Reunion - Relative Choices - Adoption - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Reunion
By Lynn Lauber
In the shady side yard of the adoption equation are birth mothers — silent, mostly invisible women who have given up their children without fanfare and often with considerable grief.
Adoptive babies aren’t hatched in factory farms or dropped from the sky straight into the laps of happy families. They are born by real women — often without counseling, legal advice or public acknowledgment. The bond that is broken at birth has real costs, for adoptees as well as their relinquishers. It is not a simple, sterile transaction, but one awash in blood.
In the late 1960s, when I was pregnant, the United States’s adoption process was secret and punitive. In the religious maternity home where I spent six sodden months, a dose of guilt was dispensed with the daily vitamins: I was bad and should be punished; that was the message up and down the line, and I registered it with my tender antennae. I was meant to swiftly sail through “delivery,” as if it were the tonsillectomy I’d had as a girl. But I remained conscious for long hours as my body initiated a process that startled me with pain and awe. It was only during labor – under lights and woefully ignorant — that the real drama being enacted inside me was finally revealed. This was no impersonal mound of flesh I’d been carrying but a kicking life, fighting to emerge. And it had come from me, who was barely finished myself. But that this child was of me — a continuation of a theme, a chip off a block, an apple near a tree — was a truth that was smothered.
I was strongly discouraged from seeing the daughter I bore on that July day that seemed to stretch .....
Reunion - Relative Choices - Adoption - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The St. Petersburg Times - Giving Magazine 2007
True Story
Families Reunited
A website set up to help Russian children adopted by American parents find their original families has yielded emotional stories of families reunited. Here are some of them.
BY IRINA TITOVAStaff Writer
The St. Petersburg Times - Giving Magazine 2007
Families Reunited
A website set up to help Russian children adopted by American parents find their original families has yielded emotional stories of families reunited. Here are some of them.
BY IRINA TITOVAStaff Writer
The St. Petersburg Times - Giving Magazine 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Visiting Her Birth Father in Iran
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/07/16/nosplit/ftiran116.xml
A voyage to find my father in Iran
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/07/2007
Given up for adoption at birth, Katharine Rayner spent two decades tracing her Persian roots before travelling to Teheran on an emotional journey
I was born in Leeds and grew up in rural Norfolk but have spent almost half my life searching for my Persian father.
Last year, I found him. Amir Parsei, a 22-year-old student in Portsmouth, had held me just once before he reluctantly signed my adoption documents and relinquished his right to be my parent.
Katharine Rayner spent two decades searching for her Persian father
My birth mother, who was just 19, did not want to keep me but nor did she want to marry him or let him take me back to Iran as he had offered. My father returned home convinced that he would never see me again.
That was nearly 40 years ago.
I was adopted into a loving family with three boisterous older brothers. My dad has Yorkshire farming roots, my mum is of Yugoslav, English and Spanish origins.
I grew up with no knowledge of Iranian culture, aware only that sometimes I felt adrift from my family and peers.
After I graduated, I started a tentative search for Amir, but it wasn't easy. My social worker deemed it "impossible" to track him down, as did the British institution to which he had been seconded for a year.
But an Iranian television director heard of my search and got in touch. With the help of his contacts, we tracked Amir down last March. When he emailed me, my yelp of delight sent my husband and children pelting up the stairs.
We arranged for him to come to London in the autumn and I met him at St Pancras station. The long search was over. Finally, we could get to know each other. That evening, my family and my mum had dinner with him. It was a wonderful but emotionally draining day.
For me, the next step was to visit my father in the country that could have been my homeland. Four months ago, just days before the detention by the Revolutionary Guard of 15 British military personnel, I flew to Iran. It was not an easy journey to make and I was scared as I boarded the plane.
My destination was a city at the heart of the "axis of evil", but my fears were more personal than that.
Following the 1979 revolution my father, like many other Western-leaning Iranians, had been sentenced to death. He served four years in the "Hotel Evin", a notorious Teheran prison.
His younger brother was tortured before being executed. I was an illegitimate child and it was vital that my link with Amir be kept from the authorities. Even now, revealing such family ties could have resulted in another prison term for him.
So I travelled to Iran on a £110 tourist visa and as long as I stipulated the purpose of my journey was to sightsee and visit "friends", I would be safe.
As the plane began its descent into Teheran, the glamorous women around me, clad in tight T-shirts and jeans, began to shroud themselves in black mantoux (obligatory knee-length coats) and headscarves.
But, perhaps in an act of defiance, they also touched up their lipstick and donned designer shades. Nervously, I joined the line for foreigners at passport control and, within minutes, had been pulled aside and taken to a darkened office.
Two officials scrutinised my visa. Looking me up and down, one said: "Tourist, yes?" I nodded. He stamped my visa and let me through. I was free to go, a stranger in my own land.
During the years I had searched for Amir, I had mourned the loss of an idealised Persian childhood - the sight of the mountains that ringed Teheran, the sound of Persian poetry, the taste of apricots on a child's tongue.
But my first impressions were far less romantic. I gaped at the empty vastness of the Ayatollah Khomeini's mosque as my taxi sped past and at the fluttering banners proclaiming the glories of the Islamic revolution.
I listened to a language I could not understand - shamefully, the only phrase of Farsi I managed on that first day was: "Shoma ingilisi baladin?" (Do you speak English?)
Later, I met Amir at my hotel. It was only our second meeting and we were both still too shy to embrace. Besides, kissing or hugging someone of the opposite sex who is not a relative is haram (forbidden) in Iran, so we shook hands instead. My father had instructed me to explain to hotel staff that he was the father of a friend.
We ordered hot chocolate and settled down to talk. Before long, Amir had launched into an attack on Islamic mores.
He railed against girls being married off before puberty and told me how he hated the hypocrisy of middle-class life in Iran, whereby children whose parents openly drink or play cards at home have to pretend that their parents are good Muslims when they go to school.
And when I asked him about the mourning flags that were draped everywhere, he exploded: "We love the dead more than we love the living. We are never out of mourning for some imam or other."
He made me nervous, but it became clear that such feeling against the Islamic state was not unusual.
The next day I met a television director, Arash Minovi, and quizzed him about the kind of life I might have lived as a middle-class woman in Iran.
We ate lunch at a traditional chelo kababi (a kebab house): tender lamb flavoured with saffron and served with buttered rice. We were unmarried and therefore should not have been there unchaperoned, but no one seemed to care.
The ladies who lunched alongside us in their Chanel headscarves were immaculately made up, their peeping hairlines hinting at glossy highlights, their coats - which, by law, should have been loose-fitting and worn to the knee - were sharply tailored, some barely grazing the thigh.
When I expressed my surprise at the relaxed scene, Minovi replied: "We are not all one-eyed women and sweaty men here, you know."
This, he reminded me, was uptown north Teheran, where the parties are legendary and frequent, the black market in alcohol and opium is booming, and where couples can live together if their landlord will turn a blind eye.
The coffee shops are full of handsome young men in leather jackets and jeans, flirting with beautiful women. The malls sell silk lingerie and strapless dresses.
The young, Minovi told me, have their own ways of overcoming restrictions on their freedom, sculpting their hair into artful quiffs in the usual teenage quest for individuality and arranging amorous liaisons on buzzing internet chat rooms.
But this world is in stark contrast to the other Iran - the Iran of bellicose Islamists who deny the Holocaust and defy Western imperialism. This image has more truth in southern, downtown Teheran, where government stooges gather for demonstrations lauding their hardline president.
Women struggle home with the shopping from the bazaar, shrouded in their chadors, which they have to clutch to their faces, leaving just one eye open to the outside world.
The two worlds are often bizarrely juxtaposed. A billboard confiding (in English) that "I am closer to Allah than his jugular vein" sits close to a Benetton concession.
An advertisement exhorting faithful parents to send their children to a madrassa (religious school) is just 50 yards from a full-length poster of David Beckham in a sports shop.
I was keen to explore outside the capital and, later that week, caught the midnight train south to Esfahan, a cornerstone of the ancient Persian empire and one of Iran's largest cities.
I had booked a sleeper compartment to be shared with five other "sisters".
One, a beetle-browed youngster, frowned furiously at me when she discovered I was English. A theology student with impeccable language skills (in her spare time she liked to translate the Koran into Farsi), I think she suspected me of being a spy.
The others were far friendlier. Sahar, a student of English literature, was a Jane Austen enthusiast.
"The relationship between men and women here in Iran now is very similar to Jane Austen's time," she told me. I was intrigued.
"So do you live in modern times?" I asked her. She looked flustered, wary of the others listening in, and suggested we meet up the next day.
I woke in Esfahan, breakfasted on eggs, and refused the offer of a smoke on a qalyan (a hookah pipe) with my glass of tea. I had arranged to meet Sahar and her brother, Karim, who sells air-conditioning. We strolled over Bozormeghr Bridge and I asked her again about Jane Austen.
"Sometimes we live in modern times, but religion divides us," she told me.
"You cannot discuss so many things with the religious."
Her brother, spying a mullah ahead, spoke with a sudden passion.
"She is right. Those people use religion like a needle. And they stab us in the eye with it."
Later we visited the Imam mosque, one of the most beautiful in the Islamic world. Karim told me that once worshippers were so plentiful that they would spill out into the vast square outside.
"Now nobody comes - except the tourists."
I heard this many times; how the intellectuals have turned their back on Islam as a once-proud and ancient Persian culture has become tarnished by Islamic extremism, and by the aggression of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide victory two years ago.
The violent demonstration outside the British Embassy during the hostage crisis, when students from the University of Teheran threw petrol bombs, were symbolic of a very different Iran from that which I saw during my visit.
Back in Teheran, Amir showed me Evin Prison, where he spent most of his stay blindfolded and where he was beaten regularly while the guards played Koranic recitations to "re-educate" him.
It is a forbidding, sprawling complex, surrounded by barbed wire and we dared not stop or take photos. Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian journalist who did so in 2003, was arrested and beaten to death.
On my last day, we ate at Amir's favourite Armenian restaurant. "The next time you come," he said, "you will stay with me. You won't need a hotel."
I was so touched by his words. I do want to return - and not as a tourist. Physically, I fit in. I lost count of the times that I was asked for directions in the street. But, on occasion, I also felt like Mr Bean on holiday, forever fiddling with my coat and headscarf, feeling that, at any moment, I would commit some horrendous gaffe.
All my life I have wondered whether I was lucky or unlucky to have been given away as I was. I will never know. I know I am lucky now, though, to be loved by all my parents, and forced by none to choose between them. England is my home but Iran pulls me to her as well.
The fates of both countries matter to me - those I love live in both, and part of me is always where I am not.
But, most of all, I grieve that the warmth, the kindness and the intelligence of so many of the Iranian people is unknown to most in the West - and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
Names have been changed and faces disguised to safeguard identities. Katharine Rayner is writing a book about her experience of being adopted from a Middle Eastern background
A voyage to find my father in Iran
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/07/2007
Given up for adoption at birth, Katharine Rayner spent two decades tracing her Persian roots before travelling to Teheran on an emotional journey
I was born in Leeds and grew up in rural Norfolk but have spent almost half my life searching for my Persian father.
Last year, I found him. Amir Parsei, a 22-year-old student in Portsmouth, had held me just once before he reluctantly signed my adoption documents and relinquished his right to be my parent.
Katharine Rayner spent two decades searching for her Persian father
My birth mother, who was just 19, did not want to keep me but nor did she want to marry him or let him take me back to Iran as he had offered. My father returned home convinced that he would never see me again.
That was nearly 40 years ago.
I was adopted into a loving family with three boisterous older brothers. My dad has Yorkshire farming roots, my mum is of Yugoslav, English and Spanish origins.
I grew up with no knowledge of Iranian culture, aware only that sometimes I felt adrift from my family and peers.
After I graduated, I started a tentative search for Amir, but it wasn't easy. My social worker deemed it "impossible" to track him down, as did the British institution to which he had been seconded for a year.
But an Iranian television director heard of my search and got in touch. With the help of his contacts, we tracked Amir down last March. When he emailed me, my yelp of delight sent my husband and children pelting up the stairs.
We arranged for him to come to London in the autumn and I met him at St Pancras station. The long search was over. Finally, we could get to know each other. That evening, my family and my mum had dinner with him. It was a wonderful but emotionally draining day.
For me, the next step was to visit my father in the country that could have been my homeland. Four months ago, just days before the detention by the Revolutionary Guard of 15 British military personnel, I flew to Iran. It was not an easy journey to make and I was scared as I boarded the plane.
My destination was a city at the heart of the "axis of evil", but my fears were more personal than that.
Following the 1979 revolution my father, like many other Western-leaning Iranians, had been sentenced to death. He served four years in the "Hotel Evin", a notorious Teheran prison.
His younger brother was tortured before being executed. I was an illegitimate child and it was vital that my link with Amir be kept from the authorities. Even now, revealing such family ties could have resulted in another prison term for him.
So I travelled to Iran on a £110 tourist visa and as long as I stipulated the purpose of my journey was to sightsee and visit "friends", I would be safe.
As the plane began its descent into Teheran, the glamorous women around me, clad in tight T-shirts and jeans, began to shroud themselves in black mantoux (obligatory knee-length coats) and headscarves.
But, perhaps in an act of defiance, they also touched up their lipstick and donned designer shades. Nervously, I joined the line for foreigners at passport control and, within minutes, had been pulled aside and taken to a darkened office.
Two officials scrutinised my visa. Looking me up and down, one said: "Tourist, yes?" I nodded. He stamped my visa and let me through. I was free to go, a stranger in my own land.
During the years I had searched for Amir, I had mourned the loss of an idealised Persian childhood - the sight of the mountains that ringed Teheran, the sound of Persian poetry, the taste of apricots on a child's tongue.
But my first impressions were far less romantic. I gaped at the empty vastness of the Ayatollah Khomeini's mosque as my taxi sped past and at the fluttering banners proclaiming the glories of the Islamic revolution.
I listened to a language I could not understand - shamefully, the only phrase of Farsi I managed on that first day was: "Shoma ingilisi baladin?" (Do you speak English?)
Later, I met Amir at my hotel. It was only our second meeting and we were both still too shy to embrace. Besides, kissing or hugging someone of the opposite sex who is not a relative is haram (forbidden) in Iran, so we shook hands instead. My father had instructed me to explain to hotel staff that he was the father of a friend.
We ordered hot chocolate and settled down to talk. Before long, Amir had launched into an attack on Islamic mores.
He railed against girls being married off before puberty and told me how he hated the hypocrisy of middle-class life in Iran, whereby children whose parents openly drink or play cards at home have to pretend that their parents are good Muslims when they go to school.
And when I asked him about the mourning flags that were draped everywhere, he exploded: "We love the dead more than we love the living. We are never out of mourning for some imam or other."
He made me nervous, but it became clear that such feeling against the Islamic state was not unusual.
The next day I met a television director, Arash Minovi, and quizzed him about the kind of life I might have lived as a middle-class woman in Iran.
We ate lunch at a traditional chelo kababi (a kebab house): tender lamb flavoured with saffron and served with buttered rice. We were unmarried and therefore should not have been there unchaperoned, but no one seemed to care.
The ladies who lunched alongside us in their Chanel headscarves were immaculately made up, their peeping hairlines hinting at glossy highlights, their coats - which, by law, should have been loose-fitting and worn to the knee - were sharply tailored, some barely grazing the thigh.
When I expressed my surprise at the relaxed scene, Minovi replied: "We are not all one-eyed women and sweaty men here, you know."
This, he reminded me, was uptown north Teheran, where the parties are legendary and frequent, the black market in alcohol and opium is booming, and where couples can live together if their landlord will turn a blind eye.
The coffee shops are full of handsome young men in leather jackets and jeans, flirting with beautiful women. The malls sell silk lingerie and strapless dresses.
The young, Minovi told me, have their own ways of overcoming restrictions on their freedom, sculpting their hair into artful quiffs in the usual teenage quest for individuality and arranging amorous liaisons on buzzing internet chat rooms.
But this world is in stark contrast to the other Iran - the Iran of bellicose Islamists who deny the Holocaust and defy Western imperialism. This image has more truth in southern, downtown Teheran, where government stooges gather for demonstrations lauding their hardline president.
Women struggle home with the shopping from the bazaar, shrouded in their chadors, which they have to clutch to their faces, leaving just one eye open to the outside world.
The two worlds are often bizarrely juxtaposed. A billboard confiding (in English) that "I am closer to Allah than his jugular vein" sits close to a Benetton concession.
An advertisement exhorting faithful parents to send their children to a madrassa (religious school) is just 50 yards from a full-length poster of David Beckham in a sports shop.
I was keen to explore outside the capital and, later that week, caught the midnight train south to Esfahan, a cornerstone of the ancient Persian empire and one of Iran's largest cities.
I had booked a sleeper compartment to be shared with five other "sisters".
One, a beetle-browed youngster, frowned furiously at me when she discovered I was English. A theology student with impeccable language skills (in her spare time she liked to translate the Koran into Farsi), I think she suspected me of being a spy.
The others were far friendlier. Sahar, a student of English literature, was a Jane Austen enthusiast.
"The relationship between men and women here in Iran now is very similar to Jane Austen's time," she told me. I was intrigued.
"So do you live in modern times?" I asked her. She looked flustered, wary of the others listening in, and suggested we meet up the next day.
I woke in Esfahan, breakfasted on eggs, and refused the offer of a smoke on a qalyan (a hookah pipe) with my glass of tea. I had arranged to meet Sahar and her brother, Karim, who sells air-conditioning. We strolled over Bozormeghr Bridge and I asked her again about Jane Austen.
"Sometimes we live in modern times, but religion divides us," she told me.
"You cannot discuss so many things with the religious."
Her brother, spying a mullah ahead, spoke with a sudden passion.
"She is right. Those people use religion like a needle. And they stab us in the eye with it."
Later we visited the Imam mosque, one of the most beautiful in the Islamic world. Karim told me that once worshippers were so plentiful that they would spill out into the vast square outside.
"Now nobody comes - except the tourists."
I heard this many times; how the intellectuals have turned their back on Islam as a once-proud and ancient Persian culture has become tarnished by Islamic extremism, and by the aggression of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide victory two years ago.
The violent demonstration outside the British Embassy during the hostage crisis, when students from the University of Teheran threw petrol bombs, were symbolic of a very different Iran from that which I saw during my visit.
Back in Teheran, Amir showed me Evin Prison, where he spent most of his stay blindfolded and where he was beaten regularly while the guards played Koranic recitations to "re-educate" him.
It is a forbidding, sprawling complex, surrounded by barbed wire and we dared not stop or take photos. Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian journalist who did so in 2003, was arrested and beaten to death.
On my last day, we ate at Amir's favourite Armenian restaurant. "The next time you come," he said, "you will stay with me. You won't need a hotel."
I was so touched by his words. I do want to return - and not as a tourist. Physically, I fit in. I lost count of the times that I was asked for directions in the street. But, on occasion, I also felt like Mr Bean on holiday, forever fiddling with my coat and headscarf, feeling that, at any moment, I would commit some horrendous gaffe.
All my life I have wondered whether I was lucky or unlucky to have been given away as I was. I will never know. I know I am lucky now, though, to be loved by all my parents, and forced by none to choose between them. England is my home but Iran pulls me to her as well.
The fates of both countries matter to me - those I love live in both, and part of me is always where I am not.
But, most of all, I grieve that the warmth, the kindness and the intelligence of so many of the Iranian people is unknown to most in the West - and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
Names have been changed and faces disguised to safeguard identities. Katharine Rayner is writing a book about her experience of being adopted from a Middle Eastern background
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Searching Again for Lost Sibling
The amazing events of the last few weeks have pushed me even harder to find the one sister unaccounted for. The searcher is leaving in the morning to research the two children's home's we have heard where she may be at. Keep your fingers crossed people.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Together Again
Not quite all the kids together. I'm still looking for one sister. The little brother is still with the Birthmother as far as I know. I'm sending this pic to Russia ASAP.
Will write more later.
Isn't this picture just beautiful? What happiness on those girls' faces.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Long Distance Relationships
I have spent the entire day on finding a way to communicate with my son's sister that is still in Russia. She doesn't live with her mother. She doesn't live with her father or grandmother. She lives in a children's home SOMEWHERE in the Vladimir Region.
I had to take a break after looking at more than 69 pages of children in the Russian Databank from the Region. That does NOT mean 69 kids. I think there were about 10 children on each page. The online translator did not work on the picture page. I had to cut and paste when I found a girl that was born the same year as "NC" was.
I have contacted Mary from Russian Family Search to help us. I say US because like some of you know, I finally found my son's other siblings in the US after a two year search. They want to contact NC as much as I do. Mary has said she will help us find her.
I have been in contact with my son's birthmother and grandmother in Russia. For some reason I haven't been able to find out which children's home she is in. Maybe they are afraid I will take her home to the US like the rest of the children. NC still goes home for visits.
I would have asked the original searcher that I used before, but with me starting the new BIZ I'm a little short o' cash at the moment. They are awesome but NOT CHEAP. I also don't know WHEN they would go, they have a waiting list. Mary's searcher just happens to be going soon.
So... trying to get this organized over the Internet hasn't been easy. The girls are on the East Coast. I am on the West. Mary is in the middle and none of us really have computers that work well with each other.
I have an idea that I know the home where she is... the earlier searcher has it in his report. The oldest sibling doesn't think NC could be there because her Mom told me she said it was a "bad" place. I am not sure which "bad" she is talking about.
Scanning, e-mailing, cut and paste, trying to read Cyrillic (that I'm starting to understand!), etc etc is time consuming and frustrating but OH SO WORTH IT. Much like the adoption process.
I am also trying to plan a trip out to the East to visit the girls' family. Never been there. Certainly can't go now where I'd probably freeze solid when we stepped off the airplane.
And so, I sign off for now friends, cross eyed with exhaustion.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Anyone Speak Dutch? Re: China Adoption
Chinese Birthparents Found
(I'm probably the last to know)
(Got this on a Birth Parent Contact List)
Translation: It's a lovely piece. I wish I had a translation for the first part of it, which concerns Chinese "waiting" children with special needs. The birth father's reaction is especially poignant, I think.
I'm glad the two families will be meeting later this year and look forward to another installment from Spoorloos on this.
When you hit the link, it's the first one called "Spoorloos" which means Missing.
Enjoy.It appears there is a statute of limitations, of sorts, on child abandonment ... five years, which might make more of these searches possible in the future.
Susan T.starts at 0:27:35in churchA church in Noord-Holland (province), a couple of weeks ago. We meetEline.Eline is an altar girl and searching for her Chinese parents. For acoupleof years now she has been asking her Dutch parents about her roots. Elinewas born in the surroundings of Chongqing.ChongqingHere she was abandoned shortly after her birth. The first months of her life she stayed with a Chinese foster family.
Then she is adopted by a Dutch couple. Eline grows op with Anneli. Anneli is7 years old and she is from another part of China. She is also afoundling. The children form a family with their mother Wilma and their fatherJim, who also has Asian blood.
A-Father: It's not very obvious that they are adoptive children inour case,so they mingle in and don't arouse questions of the public. Now and then there is a remark: you are Chinese, well, that's right.
Interviewer: Eline is now 10 years old, what kind of child is she?
A-Mother: She's a delightful child. On one hand she is a littleinsecure. She is a child who asks many questions about the past, about the why,whycouldn't I stay there, why did I have to go, but on the other hand,she is avery inquisitive child, also a cautious person, but she does embrace people.That is very good; when she gives herself then she gives herself 100%. The two children are very content, but Eline repeatedly asksquestions abouther past.
Interviewer: What kind of questions does she have?
A-Mother: Why did I have to go? Where are they? I don't have apicture ofthem, what will they look like? Did they love me? Why wasn't Iallowed tostay there?
Interviewer: And she asked those questions of you.
A-Mother: Yes, mainly of me.
Interviewer: And what was your answer then?
A-Mother: I have always said: sweetheart, if you had stayed there,then theywould have loved you enormously, because I can't imagine that theywouldn'thave loved you. But we also explained to her that they could onlyhave one child there and that the chances are that she has more brothers or sisters. Or that her parents were poor and if they have several children, it wouldnot have been possible for you to stay with them.
Interviewer: How does she react to that?
A-Mother: She does understand, but you have been relinquished. Itremains difficult. It is an answer, but deep in your heart you just want to bewanted.
Voiceover: Indirectly Jim and Wilma gain contact with a Chinese woman who comes from Chongqing, where Eline was abandoned. She spontaneouslyoffers tosearch for the biological parents of Eline.
Interviewer: When this search succeeds, then one day you could comeface toface with her Chinese parents. What will you say to them then?
A-Father: That's difficult. For one that we are happy that Eline iswith us. There are some things that you can see from Eline, she's quite small,youhave seen that, you will probably recognise that in her Chineseparents as well. And then we will see how the conversation develops. Then youhave tostart building a contact. What we will ask, we will decide at thetime. These are the kind of things, you want to know what kind of people they are,to get an idea of how they live and for the rest we have to see how itdevelops.
A-Mother: And I think that I would say what a beautiful daughter they have.That they have a child to be very proud of.
Interviewer: Because?
A-Mother: Just how she is as a human being. How she is socially. Youdon't see that with all children.
Interviewer: When Eline was abandoned they left a note with her. You gavethat to us. Could you read it to us?
A-Father: That's right, this is a photocopy of the original note. It's atranslation by the way, it said.. (English)..Eline: Hello mummy, where are you? Who are you? What's your name? Why didyou leave me somewhere? Do you think I'm sweet? I miss you, do youmiss metoo? Greetings, Eline Kuiper, bye, I will miss you, bye, bye, I will stop,bye.
Voiceover: We are in Chongqing, 2000 kilometre from Beijing. In Chongqingand the surroundings 32 million people live. Because of the neonlighting Chongqing looks like a modern western city at night. By daylight we meet Jocelyn. She was born and raised here and works as aproject manager with IBM. Jocelyn managed to get the local media to payattention to the story of Eline. A local journalist even wrote several articles about it. He did research and a couple of months ago hecalled Jocelyn with an amazing report.
In these surroundings, far from the city, the journalist contacted a farmer and his wife. The man and woman claim that they are the father andmother of Eline. The farming couple is willing to talk to us, but not in theirownsurroundings. To abandon a child is of course a big taboo and that's why they would rathernot be seen in their own surroundings with a camera team from the West.
We invite the man and the woman to come to the centre of Chongqing. Here itdoesn't attract so much attention if they have contact with us. We meet in a big hotel where there are a lot of Western businessmen.
Father Wen and mother Ming have two children: a daughter of 17 yearsold anda daughter of 12 years old, Lu. She also comes. We go to a room onthe top floor of the hotel. Here Wen and Ming can tell their story without disturbance.
B-Father: The child was born at home. And I cut the umbilical cordmyself.
Interviewer: You didn't go to the hospital
B-Father: No.
Interviewer: And there was also no family?
B-Father: No, noneInterviewer: You did it all yourself?
B-Father: Yes. When I saw the baby girl, I found her to be verysweet. She had long fingers and long toes. And she looked around immediately. So Icould see her eyes. I bundled her up in cloths very well. We didn't want other people to know that she was born. We wanted to keep her for awhile before relinquishing her.r
Voiceover: The baby is the third child for this couple. After gettingtheir second child, Lu, they had to pay a big fine a couple of years before, which they have still not been able to pay fully. Wen and Ming know that anotherfine is waiting for them. A fine that they can't possibly pay with their small income.
B-Mother: We wanted the child to find good fortune. We were not able to raise her. But in our heart we did want the child.
Interviewer: You abandoned the child at the police station?
B-Mother: Yes.Interviewer: Did you see anyone picking the child up?
B-Mother: Yes, that's why we waited.
Interviewer: You didn't walk away immediately?
B-Mother: No.
Interviewer: Didn't anyone see you then?
B-Mother: No.
Interviewer: Were you alone, or together?
B-Mother: Together.We put her in a basket with a note with her birth date and some milkpowder.
Interviewer: What kind of basket did you have?
B-Mother: A regular basket.We wrapped her things and clothing. And also a bottle of milk. We had to walk to the city. There was no bus. It was far and I had pain in my legs. Ididn't know it was that far. But we didn't have much choice. We could hardly abandon her in our own village. Everybody knows us there. I remember that we walked to that place. I remember which place it was.
Voiceover: Father Wen is willing to take us to the place where the baby was abandoned. We follow the road they walked ten years ago. It is hours of driving on dirt roads. We end up in a place that looks very different from the modern looking Chongqing. In the suburbs the locals go about their daily activities. There is hardly any traffic.Here and there products are being sold. Chinese people who seem to have nothing to do, give in to another pass time: gambling.We drive to the centre. At the father's request we film as inconspicuouslyas possible.Then we reach the police station where the child was abandoned.Father Wen asks us to stay seated in the car. We are at the spot where Eline was possibly abandoned 10 years ago. But are these really her biological parents whom we have found?
The answer to that question comes from Amsterdam. In this laboratorya DNAtest has been carried out at request. The saliva of the Chinese couple is thoroughly analysed and compared with the saliva of Eline. From the results of this research, it will become apparent whether Eline is indeed the first Chinese foundling who can be put in touch with her biologicalparents.
Theresearch will take a couple of weeks.
The result of the research is known now. The story of father Wen andmotherMing is true. They are the biological parents of Eline.
B-Mother: What happiness! It's really a miracle that she ended upthere.
B-Father: She is beautiful. She must have fallen on her feet.We must be very grateful to her parents for what they have done. I just hopethat Eline does not blame us. I feel terribly guilty.
B-Mother: I hope we will be forgiven. I really hope that.
A-Mother: I have always told her the story as they are telling it them selves now. My feelings always told me that it was this way.
Interviewer: They feel guilty.
A-Mother: They don't have to. They couldn't have done anything else Ithink.
Interviewer: They are also grateful to you.
A-Mother: They also don't have to be.
A-Father: We now have a beautiful daughter.
A-Mother: What is gratitude? Do the children have to be thankful to us? That they ended up here? Maybe she rather would have stayed there. But you can't turn back time. And we are trying to give her a future here.
Interviewer: They see that too, don't they?
A-Mother: Yes
.Eline: I miss you so, I really do. But I really have to stop now,because Ihave to go to sleep now. I would have had to do the same if I had stayed with you. Bye bye, and good night.
Greetings, Eline.
In the meantime Eline and her sister have watched the images from China.
They understood what had happened.The Chinese parents want to meet Eline and her Dutch family very much. Jim and Wilma are planning to go to China with the children this year.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Birthparent Connection?
I rec’d an e-mail today. “T”, my intermediary in Russia sent me a scan of a two page letter from my youngest’s (EB) biological grandmother. At least I think it is from her. The letter is signed kisses-Baba (Grandma).
I sit at the computer with all my concentration centered on those lines of ink on paper. I can‘t read Cyrillic. I stare hard at the monitor, as if I‘m trying to inhale, digest or melt into the words. I know the translation will come in a matter of days yet I’m impatient. I crave some sort of connection, I can only imagine what Baba feels, what “V” (EB’s birthmother) feels. What would it feel like to have your child on the other side of the world, another family calling him son?
EB doesn’t seem to crave the connection as I do. He does smile, snuggle into my chest as I tell him that Baba “N” has written him a letter and show him the screen. He then slides off my lap and goes on playing dinosaurs.
I know what yearning feels like. I know what it felt to have him on the other side of the world, unable to fulfill his needs the way I knew only I could do to satisfaction. How does it feel to have a child you held in your arms for a year, a child you fed at your breast, just disappear from your life?
Are my letters an offering of some sort? Am I trying to stick a band aid on a broken heart? There are times I dream of going back to Vladimir to meet EB’s biological family. Isn’t it presumptuous of me to think that my physical presence could be a balm of some sort? That the “laying on” of my hands could heal them? Am I trying to “fix” these people?
Sometimes I want to take EB with me to Russia. I certainly won’t be able to take him back when he is of an age to be drafted into the Russian Army. That was the very first admonition of the officer at the Embassy. “Do not bring him back here after he is 16 years old. Do not let him come back until he is an older man.” How can you keep a grown man, a man in his late teens, early twenties from traveling to his birthplace, to his roots? I feel, that if I take him too soon it could be damaging. I mean, I talk to these people in letters translated by a third party. How can I discern their personalities, intentions and reactions by these disjointed interactions? But how can I force him into waiting until he is a man my own age, possibly with a young family of his own, to see his birthmother and birthfather again. What of his biological Grandmother? She will not be living by then, I know it. When we first gained contact with them, EB carried a picture of his “Baba” in his pocket until it fell apart.
Am I projecting MY feelings onto these people (including my son)? Am I?
I sit at the computer with all my concentration centered on those lines of ink on paper. I can‘t read Cyrillic. I stare hard at the monitor, as if I‘m trying to inhale, digest or melt into the words. I know the translation will come in a matter of days yet I’m impatient. I crave some sort of connection, I can only imagine what Baba feels, what “V” (EB’s birthmother) feels. What would it feel like to have your child on the other side of the world, another family calling him son?
EB doesn’t seem to crave the connection as I do. He does smile, snuggle into my chest as I tell him that Baba “N” has written him a letter and show him the screen. He then slides off my lap and goes on playing dinosaurs.
I know what yearning feels like. I know what it felt to have him on the other side of the world, unable to fulfill his needs the way I knew only I could do to satisfaction. How does it feel to have a child you held in your arms for a year, a child you fed at your breast, just disappear from your life?
Are my letters an offering of some sort? Am I trying to stick a band aid on a broken heart? There are times I dream of going back to Vladimir to meet EB’s biological family. Isn’t it presumptuous of me to think that my physical presence could be a balm of some sort? That the “laying on” of my hands could heal them? Am I trying to “fix” these people?
Sometimes I want to take EB with me to Russia. I certainly won’t be able to take him back when he is of an age to be drafted into the Russian Army. That was the very first admonition of the officer at the Embassy. “Do not bring him back here after he is 16 years old. Do not let him come back until he is an older man.” How can you keep a grown man, a man in his late teens, early twenties from traveling to his birthplace, to his roots? I feel, that if I take him too soon it could be damaging. I mean, I talk to these people in letters translated by a third party. How can I discern their personalities, intentions and reactions by these disjointed interactions? But how can I force him into waiting until he is a man my own age, possibly with a young family of his own, to see his birthmother and birthfather again. What of his biological Grandmother? She will not be living by then, I know it. When we first gained contact with them, EB carried a picture of his “Baba” in his pocket until it fell apart.
Am I projecting MY feelings onto these people (including my son)? Am I?
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The Italian- A Russian Movie
The movie is called "The Italian". It is now coming to the US in limited release this month on the 19th.
It is the story of a 6 yr old boy in an orphanage in Russia who decides to find his birthmother after meeting an Italian couple that wants to adopt him and take him back to Italy.
This is the story of his journey. It is Rated PG-13. The Russian Language entry in the 2006 Academy Awards.
Movie Trailer
It is the story of a 6 yr old boy in an orphanage in Russia who decides to find his birthmother after meeting an Italian couple that wants to adopt him and take him back to Italy.
This is the story of his journey. It is Rated PG-13. The Russian Language entry in the 2006 Academy Awards.
Movie Trailer
An Article written by By: Boris Gindis, Ph.D. on the site International Adoption Articles Directory.
Italianetz: A Message That Hurts
This movie reminds me of a Russian “matreshka” (a nested doll) -- a Christmas-like happy-end story intertwined with Soviet-style propaganda, a sentimental fairy tale mixed with pieces of rough Russian reality. And like the bright colors and curvy shape that connect all elements of a matreshka, there is the image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy named Vanya to glue all the pieces together and to focus our attention to the movie for its 99 minutes length.
The plot is simple. Six-year-old Vanya lives in a Russian orphanage. He is about to be adopted by a couple from Italy – to become an Italian or Italianetz in Russian. So far, everything is real: international adoption is a fact of everyday life in Russia – since 1992, nearly 60,000 Russian orphans have been adopted in the US alone, about half of all children adopted abroad from Russia. From this point on, however, the fairy tale begins: Vanya decides to find his biological mother and stay in his motherland. Vanya goes through unbelievable adventures – all against the background of almost documentary quality realities of contemporary Russian life – and finally reaches his goal.
In the back of your mind you understand all this is unreal: a 6-year-old orphanage-raised child is not capable of such plans and deeds. But the wonder of art forces you to believe in what you see on the screen. Indeed, this is cinematography at its best: an authentic and intriguing screenplay by Andrey Romanov, the sophisticated work of cameraman Alexander Burov, and the fine direction of Andrey Kravchuk. And, most of all, the acting: Kolya Spiridonov in the role of Vanya reaches a new height of child performance in cinema. Like any genuine piece of art, this movie carries a message (or many messages).
So, what is the message of Italianate? As matreshkas of different sizes and colors carry different images, the movie brings various meanings to diverse audiences. In the US, this film will be watched with trepidation and excitement by a special group of moviegoers – those who contemplate or have completed adoption from overseas orphanages, particularly from Russia. For them the story of little Vanya will be a trigger for their own anxieties, expectations, and memories. Some will identify with what they see in the movie, some will be scared and upset by the heart-breaking harsh reality of Russian orphanages, but all will be mesmerized by the likeable image of the main hero.
But how many will be able to look at the movie through the eyes of those to whom this show is primarily addressed: the Russian viewers? In Russia, international adoption is a matter of bitter controversy. Amongst Russian politicians and population at large there is rather wide opposition to “letting children go.” This opposition stems mostly from wounded pride and offended nationalistic feelings rather than any logic or humanitarian values. The essence of this attitude is forcefully expressed by a security guard at the orphanage for infants where Vanya arrives to discover the whereabouts of his mother. The old man says, with intense passion: “We sell children for dollars. The country is falling apart.” Responding to these sentiments and in fact, reinforcing them through the power of art, the movie sends this message to the Russian audience: “The beautiful, smart, and compassionate Russian children are being taken away by foreigners with the help of greedy re-sellers, and society tolerates this state of affairs.” The evil force standing between Vanya and his dream of finding his mother is a ‘madam,’ – as the adoption facilitator (a middleman between prospective adoptive parents and a child) is known among the children in that orphanage.
This middle-aged, energetic, and at times ruthless woman (convincingly depicted by famed Russian actress Maria Kuznetsova) with a name suspicious to the Russian ear, Zhanna Arkadievna (very likely Jewish), is the only totally negative character in the movie. For her an adoption is a financial deal, and she seems concerned only about money. What is amazing to anyone familiar with the legal process of international adoption, “madam” (the word carries an acid connotation in the context of Russian culture) does not violate any Russian laws: everything she does is legal and approved procedure (except, perhaps, for the bribes she openly offers to police officers, but that is such a ‘normal’ thing in modern-day Russia that it is not perceived as a deviation from everyday routine). And still, she exemplifies the dark forces that take a Russian child from his mother(land).
It is interesting (and the movie is honest about this) that everyone in Vanya’s surroundings understands adoption abroad means an escape from the gloomy and desperate life to which orphans doomed in Russia. A chronically drunk director of the orphanage tells Vanya that misery now and jail in the future await him if he stays in his motherland; the leader of a youth gang “instructs” Vanya with a belt, whipping him mercilessly because he thinks that foreigners' failure to adopt Vanya may close this route for other children; all orphanage inmates, from the youngest to the oldest, envy Vanya and without hesitation would take his spot (and his close friend actually does). Ironically, the only real driving force for positive change in the fate of orphans is “madam” – she is the one who arranges initial meetings with prospective adoptive parents and manages the process of adoption. But the adoption facilitator is the only character who is painted in definitely dark colors.
While Vanya is just a phantom (a symbol of the treasure taken away from Russia), the other characters in the movie are very believable and are neither positive nor negative. The film's makers do not pass moral judgment on any character (but “madam”), treating episodes of child prostitution, lawbreaking behavior, and physical abuse as a matter of life. Again, the only character who gets no understanding or objectivity from the filmmakers is Zhanna Arkadievena – what a pity! This is a perfect example of misplaced anger: instead of pointing at society and people neglecting their most vulnerable and valuable asset – children – the creators of the film point at an adoption broker who is making money – yes, indeed – but at the same time helping children and providing them with what society denies them: security, love, and hope. Although not a sympathetic person by all means, objectively Zhanna Arkadievena is orphanage residents’ only hope!The biggest bewilderment promoted by the movie – almost in proportion to Soviet era propaganda – is Vanya’s likable image.
The movie tells us that life in an orphanage has not affected Vanya – he is smart, compassionate, brave, and goal-directed, unusually mature for his age. Any nation in the world would be proud to have him as its citizen. According to Russian nationalistic politicians, that is what Russia gives away to the foreigners! This is what Italy (USA, Germany, you name it) buys for its liras (dollars, marks), robbing Russia of its real treasure, symbolized by Vanya.Let's get real: a child who is reared in an orphanage simply cannot be like Vanya. Life in an orphanage is damaging to any child. Those families who have adopted from abroad have learned this the hard way. They have brought home children with developmental delays, lack of age-appropriate skills of daily living, often physically handicapped and sick, and almost always with emotional scars that take years to heal.
American adoptive families apply enormous resources: time, money, patience, and efforts in remediating and rehabilitating these children. Most international adoptees are flourishing in their new families only through the extraordinary scaffold provided by their adoptive families. The movie, with the powerful force of real artistry, plays into the hands of those ideology-driven nationalists for whom the “state-idea” is more important than the life of a particular child.
The message that the movie sends to its viewers in Russia hurts thousands of orphans and those who work for their release into a better life. International adoption is not a remedy for the problem of unwanted children in Russia, but it is a solution for individual children – to deny them such a chance in the name of a nationalistic idea is plain cruelty.
Article Source: International Adoption Articles Directory
Dr. Boris Gindis is a child psychologist specializing in psycho-educational issues of older internationally adopted children. He is chief psychologist at the Center for Cognitive-Developmental Assessment and Remediation, the lead instructor at Bgcenter Online School, the author of many publications on international adoption issues and frequent presenter at conferences and workshops.Tel. 845-694-8496
The Magazine Adoptive Families has a Review of this movie in the current issue.
Monday, November 20, 2006
A Post From An Adoptive Mother About Contacting Her Daughter's Birthmother in Vietnam
I have permission to post this by the author. This is true.
I have just returned from Hanoi, Viet Nam where I am building an orphanage.
We have been involved with my 101/2 yr. old daughter's birth mom, sister and extended family for over 2 years now.
I decided to visit Hoa even though my daughter was not with me on this trip. I decided that, as she has invited me several times, I would take her up on her offer of staying overnight in the home we helped her build.
I did not have an interpreteur...just a Handycam and lots of sign language and mutual admiration. Where she lives is poor, dirt poor. But there is love and food, and we help her out. When I arrived, I was stunned. There stood a woman who was a mere ghost of herself from our last get together in March. She was beyond thin, she was emaciated....She said she couldn't eat, it hurt. She had seen a doctor in a neighboring small town, but the medication was not helping, and basically, she had just decided that she was going to waste away.................................No, she had not thought to contact our mutual friend, a woman Dr. in Hanoi. She did not want to bother her.
That night, as I sat in the dark on the table which was my bed and watched fireworks go off above the local paddies (though they are illegal they are everywhere in the countryside and though there was no exact holiday---they were just setting them off)-------I agnonized.
This erie flashing of lights and noise made me think of VN during the war.......how it must have felt to sit in the dark and wait. This time the enemy was internal. I knew Hoa was very ill. I returned to Hanoi in 2 days with Hoa. Fortunately my husband has taught surgery at Viet Duc Hospital (the best in the No. for surgery) and we got right in to see Dr. Son. Two days later the tests confirmed my fears. Hoa has colon CA. She had surgery and is recovering for two weeks, then the chemotherapy will start. She made all the decisions. I made sure she knew all the facts. She was offered care abroad. We cried and held each other as I told her we would adopt Lily's sister if that need arose, and we would support her and take care of her if she chose to have her remain in VN.
I told her I was not going to tell Lily until after the Holiday's and that we would be back in early Feb. to see her. I told here she had to fight this with all her strength...that she was loved by so many, especially the girls.
She told Dr. Son she had only one request before surgery...that I be there. She did well post-op and went back to her village to rest before chemostarts in 2 weeks on the day I left VN, 48 hours ago. This is not about me folks....but let me share with you some of the things that are going through my mind. I will, to my dying day, support birth family searches.
No matter how this turns out, how painful for my daughter, she will have known and loved her mother. If I had not visited this trip, the tumor was so invasive it would shortly have eroded through the bowel and she would have been dead when we returned as planned in March/April. I believe that this was suppposed to happen. I believe that Lily and Hoa have to see each other---maybe not for much longer, and maybe we'll be lucky. I believe in medicine and I believe in love (call the latter God, Buddha, karma, whatever.)
I made sure that Hoa knew everything---side effects, how cancer spreads and how chemo works. She said she believes we will someday (we've always joked about being Ba's together for Lily's kids) have grandchildren that we need to be there together for...whatever it takes.
She doesn'twant to recouperate and be sick but she realizes that she has to go against everything she knows and must rest and eat as her family takes care of her. She is in touch with death in a calm way, one I can't describe...there is no fear, anger or denial. Just wishful thinking....I can't describe it. I cried and cried. She just looked sad. She carries this burden as she has all of the struggles in her life...extreme poverty, abuse, hunger, relinquishing Lily, divorce, ---all of it with an incredible composure, an acceptance that does not impart defeat, but rather innitiates a realigning of her inner strengths to carry on.
No wonder the Vietnamese won the war.............................I just am praying that this battle is won as well.
So, as you debate the rights and wrongs of searches I pause to think---briefly---of how much easier this all would have been if I had not searched on my own and found my daughter's birth mother those 10 long years ago. How I promised her then, that if and when Lily expressed a desire to know her, I would return with her to Viet Nam. I know that it was destiny that at 8 Lily and our family returned for a wonderful reunion with our other family---at my daughter's request.
And most of all, I am greatful for the time Lily has had with the woman who gave her life. Each person must make their own decision. This is how it all came down for us.
In the e-mail that gives me permission to post this, she said:
Hello CAMomma,
That would be OK for you to post my letter on your blog, and send it on to whomoever you wish. I am hoping it will help those considering searching to really consider the possibilities...Some seem so rather casual about it, and some seem overly paranoid and reactive. I feel that it is just about family...we are just all humans looking for love, support, understanding and brotherhood. In the ever increasing list of intense events that have tought me great lessons in life...knowing Hoa is right up there...
Sincerely,
K****
I have just returned from Hanoi, Viet Nam where I am building an orphanage.
We have been involved with my 101/2 yr. old daughter's birth mom, sister and extended family for over 2 years now.
I decided to visit Hoa even though my daughter was not with me on this trip. I decided that, as she has invited me several times, I would take her up on her offer of staying overnight in the home we helped her build.
I did not have an interpreteur...just a Handycam and lots of sign language and mutual admiration. Where she lives is poor, dirt poor. But there is love and food, and we help her out. When I arrived, I was stunned. There stood a woman who was a mere ghost of herself from our last get together in March. She was beyond thin, she was emaciated....She said she couldn't eat, it hurt. She had seen a doctor in a neighboring small town, but the medication was not helping, and basically, she had just decided that she was going to waste away.................................No, she had not thought to contact our mutual friend, a woman Dr. in Hanoi. She did not want to bother her.
That night, as I sat in the dark on the table which was my bed and watched fireworks go off above the local paddies (though they are illegal they are everywhere in the countryside and though there was no exact holiday---they were just setting them off)-------I agnonized.
This erie flashing of lights and noise made me think of VN during the war.......how it must have felt to sit in the dark and wait. This time the enemy was internal. I knew Hoa was very ill. I returned to Hanoi in 2 days with Hoa. Fortunately my husband has taught surgery at Viet Duc Hospital (the best in the No. for surgery) and we got right in to see Dr. Son. Two days later the tests confirmed my fears. Hoa has colon CA. She had surgery and is recovering for two weeks, then the chemotherapy will start. She made all the decisions. I made sure she knew all the facts. She was offered care abroad. We cried and held each other as I told her we would adopt Lily's sister if that need arose, and we would support her and take care of her if she chose to have her remain in VN.
I told her I was not going to tell Lily until after the Holiday's and that we would be back in early Feb. to see her. I told here she had to fight this with all her strength...that she was loved by so many, especially the girls.
She told Dr. Son she had only one request before surgery...that I be there. She did well post-op and went back to her village to rest before chemostarts in 2 weeks on the day I left VN, 48 hours ago. This is not about me folks....but let me share with you some of the things that are going through my mind. I will, to my dying day, support birth family searches.
No matter how this turns out, how painful for my daughter, she will have known and loved her mother. If I had not visited this trip, the tumor was so invasive it would shortly have eroded through the bowel and she would have been dead when we returned as planned in March/April. I believe that this was suppposed to happen. I believe that Lily and Hoa have to see each other---maybe not for much longer, and maybe we'll be lucky. I believe in medicine and I believe in love (call the latter God, Buddha, karma, whatever.)
I made sure that Hoa knew everything---side effects, how cancer spreads and how chemo works. She said she believes we will someday (we've always joked about being Ba's together for Lily's kids) have grandchildren that we need to be there together for...whatever it takes.
She doesn'twant to recouperate and be sick but she realizes that she has to go against everything she knows and must rest and eat as her family takes care of her. She is in touch with death in a calm way, one I can't describe...there is no fear, anger or denial. Just wishful thinking....I can't describe it. I cried and cried. She just looked sad. She carries this burden as she has all of the struggles in her life...extreme poverty, abuse, hunger, relinquishing Lily, divorce, ---all of it with an incredible composure, an acceptance that does not impart defeat, but rather innitiates a realigning of her inner strengths to carry on.
No wonder the Vietnamese won the war.............................I just am praying that this battle is won as well.
So, as you debate the rights and wrongs of searches I pause to think---briefly---of how much easier this all would have been if I had not searched on my own and found my daughter's birth mother those 10 long years ago. How I promised her then, that if and when Lily expressed a desire to know her, I would return with her to Viet Nam. I know that it was destiny that at 8 Lily and our family returned for a wonderful reunion with our other family---at my daughter's request.
And most of all, I am greatful for the time Lily has had with the woman who gave her life. Each person must make their own decision. This is how it all came down for us.
In the e-mail that gives me permission to post this, she said:
Hello CAMomma,
That would be OK for you to post my letter on your blog, and send it on to whomoever you wish. I am hoping it will help those considering searching to really consider the possibilities...Some seem so rather casual about it, and some seem overly paranoid and reactive. I feel that it is just about family...we are just all humans looking for love, support, understanding and brotherhood. In the ever increasing list of intense events that have tought me great lessons in life...knowing Hoa is right up there...
Sincerely,
K****
Sunday, November 19, 2006
More Rights Urged for Birthmothers
More Rights Urged for Birth Mothers
Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 12:37 PM
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK
Mothers deciding to place their infants for adoption deserve better counseling, more time to change their minds, and more support in trying to keep track of the children they relinquish, a leading adoption institute recommends in a sweeping new report.
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute said its report, being issued Sunday, is the most comprehensive ever devoted to birth mothers, whom it described as "the least understood and most stigmatized participants" in the adoption process.
"Birth parents have been a population that has been neglected for so long _ just starting a dialogue that respects them as flesh-and-blood human beings is really important," said the institute´s executive director, Adam Pertman.
The report focuses on U.S. mothers who voluntarily place infants for adoption _ an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 such adoptions occur annually. Most of this country´s roughly 135,000 adoptions each year are from foster care; the next biggest category is overseas adoptions.
In contrast to a few decades ago, many of the voluntary U.S. adoptions are "open" _ with adoptive parents communicating with the birth mother and often allowing her regular contact with the adopted child. However, the report says a significant number of birth mothers are manipulated, pressured and deceived _ sometimes finding that they have no recourse when agreements they negotiated to visit or keep track of their children are broken.
"If you make a decision about adoption based on thinking you´ll be able to see this child grow up, and suddenly the carpet is pulled from under you and the family moves away without giving you their address, you go through this traumatic loss that some women never come to terms with," the report´s author, Susan Smith, said in a telephone interview.
The report recommends that all states establish legally enforceable post-adoption contact agreements; it said only 13 now have such policies covering infant adoptions.
It also recommended extending other rights to birth mothers, including pre-adoption access to pressure-free counseling about their options.
"It amazes me how many adoptions are done by attorneys, where the birth mothers have zero counseling," Smith said. "There are a lot of sharks out there, manipulating them in every way they know how, and the laws don´t prevent that in most states."
Jenna Hatfield, 25, of Cambridge, Ohio, said she got little insightful counseling before she agreed three years ago to the adoption of her daughter, Ariana, by a couple from Pennsylvania.
"My agency did not tell me until a month after I signed the agreement that open adoptions are not enforceable in Pennsylvania," Hatfield said.
She said she has been fortunate in befriending the adoptive parents; they regularly bring Ariana to visit Hatfield, who is now married and has a 1-year-old son.
"Thus far it´s worked very well for me _ just a couple of bumps," Hatfield said. "But unless both sides are willing to put in the legwork, there are going to be problems, and they´d need counseling to help them meet in the middle."
One problem cited in the report is a shortage of mental health professionals trained to understand the grief and loss experienced by birth mothers.
The report said birth mothers´ chances of achieving peace of mind are greatest if they are able to keep in contact with the adopted children, or get continuing information about them.
"Mothers after childbirth are in a very vulnerable state," Smith said. "We need laws and practices that protect their rights and interests."
The report recommended that birth mothers be given at least a few weeks after childbirth before the adoption decision becomes irrevocable. At present, irrevocable consent for an adoption can be established within four days after birth in roughly half the states.
"In many states, you can change your mind about buying a vacuum cleaner or taking out a mortgage within a prescribed time period, but most states do not have a revocation period during which a mother can change her mind about relinquishing her child," the report said.
The report said the rights of birth fathers also deserve stronger protections, including notification of pending adoptions.
Current adoption practices, the report said, "are too often based on outdated understandings, faulty stereotypes, and misinformation from the time that secrecy pervaded the adoption world."
___
Related Links:
Institute: http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/
Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 12:37 PM
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer NEW YORK
Mothers deciding to place their infants for adoption deserve better counseling, more time to change their minds, and more support in trying to keep track of the children they relinquish, a leading adoption institute recommends in a sweeping new report.
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute said its report, being issued Sunday, is the most comprehensive ever devoted to birth mothers, whom it described as "the least understood and most stigmatized participants" in the adoption process.
"Birth parents have been a population that has been neglected for so long _ just starting a dialogue that respects them as flesh-and-blood human beings is really important," said the institute´s executive director, Adam Pertman.
The report focuses on U.S. mothers who voluntarily place infants for adoption _ an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 such adoptions occur annually. Most of this country´s roughly 135,000 adoptions each year are from foster care; the next biggest category is overseas adoptions.
In contrast to a few decades ago, many of the voluntary U.S. adoptions are "open" _ with adoptive parents communicating with the birth mother and often allowing her regular contact with the adopted child. However, the report says a significant number of birth mothers are manipulated, pressured and deceived _ sometimes finding that they have no recourse when agreements they negotiated to visit or keep track of their children are broken.
"If you make a decision about adoption based on thinking you´ll be able to see this child grow up, and suddenly the carpet is pulled from under you and the family moves away without giving you their address, you go through this traumatic loss that some women never come to terms with," the report´s author, Susan Smith, said in a telephone interview.
The report recommends that all states establish legally enforceable post-adoption contact agreements; it said only 13 now have such policies covering infant adoptions.
It also recommended extending other rights to birth mothers, including pre-adoption access to pressure-free counseling about their options.
"It amazes me how many adoptions are done by attorneys, where the birth mothers have zero counseling," Smith said. "There are a lot of sharks out there, manipulating them in every way they know how, and the laws don´t prevent that in most states."
Jenna Hatfield, 25, of Cambridge, Ohio, said she got little insightful counseling before she agreed three years ago to the adoption of her daughter, Ariana, by a couple from Pennsylvania.
"My agency did not tell me until a month after I signed the agreement that open adoptions are not enforceable in Pennsylvania," Hatfield said.
She said she has been fortunate in befriending the adoptive parents; they regularly bring Ariana to visit Hatfield, who is now married and has a 1-year-old son.
"Thus far it´s worked very well for me _ just a couple of bumps," Hatfield said. "But unless both sides are willing to put in the legwork, there are going to be problems, and they´d need counseling to help them meet in the middle."
One problem cited in the report is a shortage of mental health professionals trained to understand the grief and loss experienced by birth mothers.
The report said birth mothers´ chances of achieving peace of mind are greatest if they are able to keep in contact with the adopted children, or get continuing information about them.
"Mothers after childbirth are in a very vulnerable state," Smith said. "We need laws and practices that protect their rights and interests."
The report recommended that birth mothers be given at least a few weeks after childbirth before the adoption decision becomes irrevocable. At present, irrevocable consent for an adoption can be established within four days after birth in roughly half the states.
"In many states, you can change your mind about buying a vacuum cleaner or taking out a mortgage within a prescribed time period, but most states do not have a revocation period during which a mother can change her mind about relinquishing her child," the report said.
The report said the rights of birth fathers also deserve stronger protections, including notification of pending adoptions.
Current adoption practices, the report said, "are too often based on outdated understandings, faulty stereotypes, and misinformation from the time that secrecy pervaded the adoption world."
___
Related Links:
Institute: http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/
Monday, November 13, 2006
This family started out taking foster parent classes so that a friend of her daughter that was in foster care could spend the night (wow! My parents would NEVER have done anything like that for me!). Anyway- they added four more children to their family through Fos-Adopt. Then.... well just read it.
Then I was reading an adoption board and found this thread. I thought it was kind of creepy at first, then I thought, "Well, I was looking for my son's siblings on the internet." I guess there is no reason why birthparents couldn't watch their birthchildren grow up by reading these sites. It still kind of freaks me out though. There is no way in hell MY kids will EVER have a webpage with pictures of them etc etc- I know I am completely behind the times and am a total "old fogey" for saying this but.... I have never been to My Space or Facebook. You never know who is watching......... I just read in the paper that an advice columnist read a letter from a concerned Dad about My Space. She said "My Space is like a virtual hallway in high school. We know it's not private, but it feels private."
If you have kids- have you checked your child's space?
Last thing....
I am trying something out. I have started taking Black Walnut Hull supplements to see what happens. I remember my piano teacher/mentor telling me about them when she recovered from cancer. It helped her. I tell ya.. some interesting things have been going on.. that's all I'm gonna say about that.
I am also taking Milk Thistle as a Liver cleanse and....Milk thistle is believed to have protective effects on the liver and improve its function. It is typically used to treat liver cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis (liver inflammation), and gallbladder disorders. Treatment claims also include:
- Lowering cholesterol levels
- Reducing insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes who also have cirrhosis
- Reducing the growth of cancer cells in breast, cervical, and prostate cancers
Monday, October 23, 2006
Some Answers but More Mystery
Got the letter back from the translator today. We were ALL excited to get it. It is like hearing from a long lost relative. Well, I guess you could say that she IS! In parts of the letter it was like stepping into my son's previous life. The good part.
"It is raining here, the real autumn has begun. We will soon harvest potatoes."
Today is my son's birth-sibling's birthday- or maybe I should say yesterday was- the time change you know. We will get a picture of him taken on this day. My son is very excited. He has shown me where he wants the picture on his wall.
I am a little confused re: my son's sisters. The letter is from ONE of them. So maybe it is so- only three of the older girls were adopted. The three in the picture that I have. Yes, I have a picture of three of "EB's" sisters in America w/ an American couple. They have been there with the same family at least twice according to their Babushka. I have been assured over and over by my agency that they have been adopted. There seemed to be some question when I got the report from my searcher. I think it may be b/c one sister is still in Russia and the others are not. They were in a Children's Home in the city of Pokrov, Russia.
Natasha, whom I wrote about before is going to help me with writing to the proper authorities in Russia to try and get word to the girls adoptive parents to let them know where "EB" is. There is no way I want to interfere in their lives, I just.... want these kids to know where each other are and that they are safe and loved.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Post Adoption Birthparent /Family Help
My guy in Russia sent me scans of the letter and envelope.
I tried to make out the words in the letter but there is no way I can read handwriting in Russian. I can barely make out some words in printing.
I am waiting for the translations. My son's birthmother wrote the letter before she got the package for my son's sibling's birthday on the 23rd.
It seems as if she wrote immediately after receiving my letter telling her we were sending a package. I am hopeful it is all good news in the letter.
I am waiting for the translations before I talk to my son about it.
I spoke to my SW when we rec'd the video. As you can imagine there was some pretty big emotions going on in the tape. She said to wait to show it to him until he is older. Just show him pictures for now and talk to him about his birthfamily.
In the title above is the link for the searcher who found my son's birthfamily even when it seemed impossible. He got medical information, pictures of many family members and family history. I know for instance my son's grandfather was left handed. The search is not cheap. It is not outrageously expensive either. We are talking about our child's history here- it is worth it.
We are still searching for my son's birth sisters. There are 4 of them. They may have been adopted to the United States. Their last name was Churbanova- his was different.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Holy Mackerel!!
I just rec'd an e-mail from my searcher in Russia. My son's birthfamily has responded to my letter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaahhh! I am so excited. Almost as excited as I was when I rec'd an hour long video of the searcher's visit to my son's birthfamily and village. He is going to translate the letter of "6 notebook pages written on both sides" for me. I asked for him to scan the original letter as well. I want my son to see the handwriting of his birthfamily. I am just so happy.
Enough of these many posts already-
Off to a play date at the park.
Wooo Hooo!!
Sunday, October 15, 2006
My Russian Roots
Natasha lives in Phoenix, AZ. She was born in Saratov, Russia. She has tried several times to help me find my son's birthsiblings- never charging me a penny. We are still working on it. It looks as if his siblings are in America somewhere. Somewhere.....
Anyway- I wanted adoptive parents of Russian born children to know that she is available. She will translate letters and even translate on a three-way call to Russia for you.
I learned of her after I paid a searcher to find my son's birthfamily. I am happy with both services. I will post about my searcher at a later time.
click on the title of the post to be directed to her site.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Why I chose adoption
The link is a post from a birth mother. She is patiently waiting for her birth daughter to be ready to meet her.
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