Be The Answer

I just came across this video ... I found it touching.... I have always said that I did not think that international adoptions are the best thing, and that in country adoptions would be better if suitable families could be found, but even better would be to make sure that everything had been done to remedy some of the issues for families forced to give there children up in the first place... I guess there are many different approches that must all work together for the sake of the kids.....
All that said, I still believe that there is a place for international adoption... I believe it comes down to a global responsibility... My biggest concern was that there is a certain identity that comes with culture... one that will affect the kids in years to come... Last week I read this on the blog of a family brought together through international adoption....

----"There are those who argue against international adoption for many reasons, the most prevalent being that it us unfair to "rip a child from their culture", leaving them with no cultural identity to connect with. Sounds like a good point, doesn't it? Especially when one considers all that a child must leave behind that is familiar, how extraordinarily difficult such a transition must be. There was a time when I had a hard time arguing against this one...

Not anymore.Adopting Kenny opened my eyes to an entirely new perspective on this issue. An older child has the ability to share more about what their life was like, how they perceived the world they lived in, and how they identified with their culture. We have had many stories shared over the past couple of years as Kenny has proceeded to meld his old life and new life into a new amalgamation that he can better relate to.What anti-international adoption advocates don't seem to understand, which even my 10 year old clearly does, is that children who are institutionalized in an orphanage setting are so disconnected from their birth culture it is already as if they have been removed from their country. They are dehumanized, they are essentially jailed and they reside in an unsavory sub-culture of their birth culture...one which exists behind closed doors and is not revealed much to the outside world. Kenny had to actually be taught about Kyrgyz culture, he had very little knowledge at 8 1/2 years old of the country he had been born and raised in. He thought he could speak Kyrgyz but was speaking Russian. He had no understanding of the nomadic culture, of the conflict between Russians and Kyrgyz as they try to stake out their claims, he had no idea that neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were so similar in so many ways. He knew he was Kyrgyz, but he had no sense of what that meant. Ask him about orphanage life and he could give you an earful, but he had never experienced every day life in his own country...his culture was that of an isolated orphan kept within the confines of an institution which could have been in Timbuktu for all he knew.
So I ask you, really, what is it that he was giving up that related to culture? Was he walking away from a part of who he was when he left Kyrgyzstan? Yes, but not in the way some might like to picture it. As a cleft affected child he would have most definitely remained in an orphanage until he aged out with an inferior education and no safety net to save him from drowning in the sea of that Kyrgyz culture he barely knew nor understood...for he would have never lived within it"------

Many of the adoptive families that I have met share this same concern... in fact, they do everything they can to teach the kids about their culture and give them an understanding of what there native home was like... Just last week I spent some time on the phone exchanging traditional Kyrgyz recipes with a mother who wanted to prepare a special feast to celebrate a Kyrgyz holiday with her kids ...

I have stood at the gates of the orphanage on Got ya day and watched as families leave with babies in there arms... There is nothing that can be said that expresses the overwhelming feeling of HOPE and LOVE that takes place at that moment.... I have sat with children that were in turmoil because the adoption that they have been dreaming about is always just out of their reach, postponed yet again .... yet the hope of one day having a chance at a better life keeps them going..., And a few weeks back, we experienced the pain of one young man that had to be cut down when found hanging from the roof of the orphanage.... because he had no HOPE, and felt that there was no one that loved he and his brother ... What would have been the answer to heal HIS broken heart.... What possible reason or excuse could we come up with for preventing him from one day having a forever family..... and how many more like him are out there..... looking for an answer.....