Find A Local Ethiopian Adoption Group

Not to dis the internet, but my recent little crisis has reminded me how important face-to-face relationships and discussions are - both for families in the process a for the kids, themselves. For all the worry I've had over children feeling comfortable being an Ethiopian adoptee in America, it seems that these meetings, where the look, feelings and experiences of fellow adoptees can be discussed in a natural, unguarded way feels like the best first step in engendering open dialog and positive self-esteem.

I posted before about the inspiring story of Nancy Meyer & her group in Chicago.

Lately, on the Yahoo! boards, some folks have been wondering how to start/join a group in their area.

That's why I'm grateful to Brian (dad of 3), fellow "SoCal Potlucker", mix-master supreme behind the awesome blog ON THE FLY and man of science for compiling pan-American information about local adoption groups (and letting me re-post it):

We went to a potluck with families from our Southern California Ethiopian adoption group last weekend. Being the family that lives the farthest south, we often end up traveling the furthest to the event, but every time we attend one, I'm reminded how important it is to go. It's good for the parents to be able to talk to other families and it's good for the potential parents waiting for a referral so they can ask questions of people who've "been there; done that." Our kids are often the oldest ones there and they're not quite at the point of talking with their peers about adoption issues, but they're building friendships that will be helpful for those issues in the future. And of course its nice to (re)connect with people who's blogs you read on the internet (Blaine, Julie, and Kevin, was there anyone else that didn't out themselves to me?)

So where do you find a local group? Here's a good start:

Connecticut
Rhode Island
Boston
Midatlantic: MD, VA, WVA, D.C., PA, NJ, and DE areaNew York City
loosely-defined northeastern states (New England, NY, NJ, PA etc.)
Illinois
Arizona
Northern California (SF bay area
Southern California

If none of these are near where you live, you can check the Frappr map and see if anyone lives near you (add yourself while you're there) or post a message on the big group asking if others live near you. That's how our group formed with 5 or 6 families.

If I missed any groups, please add them in the comments. If you've got a blog about Ethiopian adoption, feel free to link to and/or post this list to your blog.

Thank's, Brian!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program

My wife and I are grateful beyond words for the generosity of everyone who posted. Some of you we know, some we know only online, some we don't know at all. Everyone has really helped put us securely back on the path of adoption.

Here's the ingredients of the breakdown:

My parents came to town and gave a very rosey portrait of their relationship with my sister (she was adopted at 13 mos. in a closed adoption in the mid-70's). This is VERY unusual, as there has been discord between my mother and my sister since she was a preteen, which deepened into real open hostility when she was 15 through 27. She moved closer to my folks because she needed financial help, and there's been a restoration of some sort of relationship. Still, they both play massive head games and every conversation I have turns into a "he-said, she-said". So when I heard everything was good, I was hopeful. I have not spoken to my sister at length about our decision to adopt. She happened to call during this visit and I talked to her, only to learn that she has formed a very close relationship with her birth mother and views my parents as not her parents (detailed in last post), good only for financial support. While I am very happy that she's reunited with her birth mother, I am uncomfortable with the way that she is lying to/using/manipulating my parents. I am not absolving my parents, as they did everything wrong, in terms of attempting to make her a "natural" daughter by denying her her history. Add to that the fact that much of the information they DID claim to "know" about her past is being disputed by the birth mother. I personally think EVERYONE involved is lying and trying to make themselves look good. Still, it's been pretty heartbreaking to be in the middle of what should be a happy and hopeful journey towards adoption and yet be in the middle of this ready-for-Jerry Springer drama, in which you are informed that your family was not "real" and was "abusive", and that the birth family is "real".

Only in that moment did I begin to understand what it must be like (on all sides) for an international adoptee to feel that he or she would rather have grown up an orphan in his or her native country than be adopted.

At the same time, my wife's mother, who is, frankly, a really amazing person, had a breakdown in her support. She's afraid of us traveling (we entered into the adoption with the intention of escorting, but have become convinced of the necessity of traveling). This spun out into an expression of many, many doubts and fears -- some legitimate, but many the kind of uneducated fears fostered by the mainstream media's shallow and sensationalistic coverage of adoption in general and international adoption in particular. It's important that I make it clear that none of this was based on race, but rather issues about bonding, corruption, mental illness and health history and the ethics of adoption agencies.

My wife is incredibly close to her mom and, even though my wife could argue against most of her mother's fears, the emotional toll of worrying her was very great. It eroded her confidence in the decision. More importantly, I think it made her feel that by pressing forward, she would be betraying her mom on some level. Add to that the fact that we have very little-to-no family or family support. She's the only person we have locally, and knowing that she's not supportive weighs on us.

The two events tapped into all of the reading we've done about first world "baby buying" and adult adoptee resentment, creating a perfect storm of doubt. We almost emailed our agency and told them that we were done.

So, that's the backstory. Now, thanks to your kindness, we've rediscovered our initial enthusiasm.

Here's what helped:

Brian (dad to 3) said...
Then again, many parent/child relationships are strained and many times it's the parents' fault, so I figure I have quite a bit of control over them not hating me and it's far from "nothing more than a gamble".

A woman from our agency, who's also the mother of many adoptees, some who've reached adulthood, and a few who are Ethiopian, said much the same thing -- that the method of parenting adoptive children has evolved tremendously in the last 30 years. Either through their own selfishness or through the legitimate fact that adoption was treated differently at the time, my parents basically made all the "wrong" choices in parenting my sister... and got a predictable result. You, this adoptive mother and others have pointed out that, while no guarantee, more enlightened, less selfish, more honest parenting can help make adoption seem more normal.

Jon said...

You may have already stumbled upon this, but here's a great blog written by an adoptive mom of two korean born children.

www.thirdmom.blogspot.com


I do read her often. Thank you for pointing out her most recent posts.


-Samantha- said...

Wow, what happened my friend? To tell you the truth, it seems to me that you think way too much. You are overanalizing everything... For all you know, your adopted child will become the one you are most compatible with...who knows.

Certainly, it has not been blood that has fostered my best relationships. To be honest, I am somewhat envious of many of the people in the ET adoption community who blog about their close relationships with family. I have an incredibly perfunctory relationship with my blood relatives. There's every possibility that the same deep connection I have with my best friends could also be forged between me and my daughter -- let's hope so!

Anonymous said...

I have felt very similar to what you wrote about, I have been on the other side of being the adopted child and "hating" my adoptive father at the time, now we have a really good relationship, and he is dear to me.
-Emmelia
www.corban7@wordpress.com

I know that becoming an individual is the point of childhood, and a natural part of that is a pulling away from the parents. I fully expect all my kids to go through a period where they pull away and reject. I think what freaks me out about my sister is that she's in her early thirties and has 3 kids of her own. It's nice to hear that not all rifts are permanent.


Anonymous said...

I've noticed that many of the adult adoptees (domestic) are in closed situations, or come from really abusive families. I feel more readily able to dismiss those situations as being too out of the norm to be relevant background for my situation. However, I think we have a lot to learn from the stories if we can sift through the anger (get ready for a wild ride). We have as much to learn from international adoptess who are coming of age.

So, the bigger question for me is: what can we learn and do differenly based on their experiences. I've got a long way to go on my learning curve, but so far I've decided:

1) I need to do more work integrating culture into my children's lives...more openness and communication will be necessary. It's going to be WORK, lots of work for me. I may have to move to a different neighborhood, go to a different church, find new physicians, and definitely surround my family with people "like" my kids.

2) Adoption reform, especially for domestic adoption, is needed.

3) Socioeconomic reform is desperately needed on a global scale. Read "The End of Povery" if you disagree. Such reform could result in a huge reduction in the availability of children for international adoption. Sucks for me personally, but I would get up on a table and shout 'hallelujah' if I knew that fewer people in the world were dying from lack of access to clean water or basic medication, that more families could afford to raise their children.


All of the above, I feel, is dead on. As most readers know, I've recommended THE END OF POVERTY highly a few times. It was a transformative book for me, paving the way to choosing Ethiopia over other programs -- long before we seriously considered adoption.

I try to incorporate economic justice into this blog as much as possible without having it overwhelm the focus on adoption, itself.

Anonymous continues, saying:

One of the biggest "catch 22" issues for me is that many Ethiopian children are not "orphans" by my standards: they have families, often families they know, who could and would want to raise them if those families had the cash OR in some circumstances if AIDS (b/c of death of one or both parents) wasn't such a social stigma. How do I reconcile that my children have living relatives who love them, but because of a long history of social, economic and political development, CAN'T raise them. So, then I fly halfway around the world to take them out of the only life they know and raise them as my own? And I know this is true because I get the chance to meet these relatives before I leave the country and give them a nifty map of where we'll be (as if they'll ever get to visit) and a generic photo of our "family"?


This weighs on me as well. I think I entered the process thinking of "orphans", and coming to understand that most are relinquished. In my posts about birthmothers, I've discussed how this has thrown me for a loop.

I read once that for some adoptees, the trauma of adoption is distinct from the event of getting a new family. In other words, adoption does not cause relinquishment. The relinquishment and trauma would occur anyway.

It's important, I think, to run a check on the idea that you are "saving" anyone. I feel that having selfish motives -- WANTING a daughter, ENJOYING Ethiopian culture, in my case, actually HELPS motivate me to do the RIGHT THING by my daughter and keep her culture and heritage alive.

As for "orphanage vs. family" and the disruption to culture and language...

Umm 'Skandar said...

What is the greater loss, to lose one's country, language, and culture? Or to have no family? It seems that right way to balance anger adult adoptee question is to seek out adults who lived their whole life in an orphanage. What can they add to this conversation?

I agree -- does anyone know if orphans have ever gone on record??

Carrie said...

My friend, I know exactly were you are in your adoption journey right now. The fear that you feel is real and you have real reasons to be afraid. Adoption, like everything in life, comes with no guarantees. You may adopt a child who has very real issues with being adopted or you may adopt a child who has none. Have you read “In Their Own Voices” by Rita Simmons? I found it to be a very realistic look at how transracially adopted children feel about their adoption and being raised in a white family. Many of these children had to deal with issues stemming from their adoption, but most still felt close to their adoptive parents. The people who had the most issues with their adoptive parents seemed to be the ones where there was “other”
issues with the child/parent relationship besides adoption e.g., abuse, neglect, poor communication.

I have not read this book yet, but was aware of it. I'll have to order it.

This post heartened me because the idea that adoption is a complication in an otherwise dysfunctional parent/child relationship applied to my parents and sister's relationship. Many of their parenting choices didn't have great results for either my sister or me -- but with adoption adding an extra wrinkle, her problems with them are more pronounced than mine. Once again, hopefully more selfless parenting can lead to a more healthy, respectful relationship all around.

Cathy and Abebech said similar things...

cathy said...

You wouldn't be a good parent if you didn't wrestle with these questions.

abebech said...

These are great responses. Please do check out thirdmom's blog, and my own post in response.
I am pro-adoption reform, pro-open records, do believe that children are best served by being raised in healthy families of origin, yet I feel very passionately that we did the right thing by our daughter, and will do so again by another child BECAUSE we've considered all these angles, listened to those very important voices, gave it all serious consideration and decided as we did. I also realize that doesn't mean she'll think we did the right thing when she's old enough to decide. But she'll know we did what we believed was the best thing, with our hearts full of love for her. Isn't that what most parents do?

A surprisingly cogent and effective argument. Also used by our African-American social worker, when I pestered her with questions during our home study. I may actually start believing it!

For those not in the know, Abebech is A NEW FLOWER BLOOMS. I have blogged about her awesomeness before.

jen said...
One thing I have considered, along with a lot of what has already been said here is that our children will grow up in a very different world than the adopted children coming of age. There are gazillions of books for us parents to read, there are studies that show what worked and what didn't, there are many more adoption communities and support groups, there are even more inter-racial relationships (marriages, adoptions, etc.) than twenty years ago. That's not to say that we have come so far that we don't need to work HARD, but it is to say that our children will have a different background than the children who are adult adoptees now.


Julie said...

I think the anger many adult adoptees have is a result of a line of thinking their parents' generation had toward international adoption (and adoption in general). Adoptive parents did not try (for the most part) to include their children's culture and did not address the issue of race. Some adoptees were even made to feel grateful for being "rescued" by their parents. Of course these are all generalizations, but awareness of the importance of one's birth culture and race are things that we as adoptive parents are only now starting to deal with in a healthy and constructive way. My thought (and hope) is the newest generation of adoptees will not be as angry as some of the current adult adoptees.

My wife and I attended a gathering of other adoptive families this past weekend. It was really amazing. It felt so natural, and the families were all really wonderful. I think these resources and the increasing awareness of adoption will help kids feel more "normal".

I must also say that part of my wife and my reason for continuing is all of you. We've met some of the most engaged, open, honest, decent people within this adoption community. People who are engaged in the world, people who are fighting for economic justice and racial equality. People who's relationship with God is about love and community, not division or oppression. People willing to admit to fears, mistakes and insecurities.

It may sound strange, but we figure such people can't be involved in something wrong, or something damaging to kids.

So, we're soldiering on, waiting for our referral. I'll continue to blog about race and culture and adoption, in hopes that such an education can making me a better parent -- and that by being such a parent, I really can tip the scales of fate in my (and my adopted child's) favor.

Confused, Need Help

HEEEEEELLLLLLPPPP!

For people who have OLDER ADOPTED KIDS and for ADULT ADOPTEES... I'm having real problems coming to grips with the idea of adoption -- how does an adopted person integrate her adopted family with her birth family. Does an adopted person ever get over that dissonance of coming from somewhere else -- and in this case another culture (which the child will, on some level, lose) and another race (which the child, on some level, will feel alienated from)and a birth mother a half-a-globe away, more imagined to her than real.

I've gotten so far into the experience of adult adoptees who feel "completed" by their birthfamily (some who are still on good terms with the adopted family, most who are not), that I'm beginning to feel that adoption is nothing more than a gamble.

I have a tremendous capacity to love an adopted child as my own. I have energy to do my best to compensate for not being raised Ethiopian, or even in an African-American family. I have energy to try to help, in my small way, to make Ethiopia better.

What I do not have the capacity for is to have the relationship with an adult child that I see many adult adoptees and their families having. I am so freaked about it that I feel it may be better not to "risk" the "experiment" of adoption at all.

I'm starting to side with the anti-adoption crowd. Their arguements are really starting to make sense. I'm even questioning the desire to have a third child by any means -- my wife and my unwillingness to play genetic roulette by getting pregnant over 35 was a major factor in chosing adoption in the first place.

Am I chicken? Am I having cold feet? Do I have a statistically skewed view of adoption? Or am I just being honest that I don't want to risk endangering my marriage and my bio kids' lives for a potentially bad outcome?

Birthmothers

You know what a broken heart looks like? Like a sobbing teenager in a hospital bed giving a two-day-old infant she knows she can't take care of to a couple she hopes can.

Orphans. The word is thrown around alot in cases of International Adoption. On those long walks in the summer with my family when all this first came up, I was comfortable with orphans. Who couldn't appreciate giving an orphan a home?

Then, while on the boards, people kept making references to "traveling south", once in Ethiopia, to meet the "family" - overtaxed aunts and uncles?

No, the poster made clear that she was in contact with the birthmother. Initially, I rebelled (in my mind) -- "Wait! Whoa, hold the phone, nobody said anything about birthmothers!"

Since that moment, I have worked on educating myself about open adoption, trying to visualize explaining it to a child, weaving it into our lives.

Much of my fear comes from the fallout from my sister's closed adoption, her birthmother's return and then her birthmother abandoning the relationship. In our case, the birthmother was a destabilizing influence, to say the least.

That's why Dan Savage's essay, LIVING WITH A VERY OPEN ADOPTION really spoke to me.

It provoked me to visualize a moment I intellectually comprehend happens, but on which I dared not dwell:

I was thirty-three years old when we adopted DJ, and I thought I knew what a broken heart was, how it felt, what it looked like. I didn't know anything. You know what a broken heart looks like? Like a sobbing teenager in a hospital bed giving a two-day-old infant she knows she can't take care of to a couple she hopes can.

I won't be there for that part. We will get a referral picture. Maybe, if she shows up, we will meet the mother months later. That doesn't mean that a moment such as the one described above didn't happen. It's just uncomfortable (or, maybe, emotionally crippling) to think about.

Dan continues:

Ask a couple hoping to tadopt what they want most in the world and they'll tell you there's only one thing on earth they want: a baby, a healthy baby. But many couples want something more: They want their child's biologincal parents to disappear. THey want their child's viological mothe rand father to be forever absent so there will never be any question about who their child's "real" parents are.

In my darker, less proud moments, I admit to this. I was shocked that Dan Savage put it in an essay in an actual book. (He goes on to explain that he never felt this way and wanted an open adoption).

Then, in other moments, I would find myself agreeing with the anti-adoption folks, that maybe the whole idea of adoption is wrong on the face of it -- cruel and confusing to the kid, robbing them of a sense of culture and history and family. Better to stay in Ethiopia.

I guess, at some point, I grew up. After long talks, my wife and I started discussing about ways to keep the birthmother "in the family". My wife would talk about feeling a connection "as a mother" to this woman -- knowing what it feels like to be pregnant and experience birth...

Um, no, I didn't get it. Intellectually, I was all about discussing it, but emotionally -- nada. My "heart" wasn't guiding me. My heart was shrunk back in my chest cavity hiding from the whole thing.

Then, I wrote that review for Bob Shacochis' essay, KEEPING IT ALL IN THE FAMILY. As I recall, my review reflected my initial feeling: "basically useless to me".

Well, yesterday, I found myself ruminating on it, for no particular reason, when, suddenly, my heart spoke up: "What if, for whatever reason, you were tapped to take care of your niece, like Bob was? How would that be? More importantly, how would you treat your sister in such an instance?"

Suddenly, it came to me, a gloss on the "Golden Rule" that made sense to me intellectually AND emotionally: The birthmother will become family. TREAT HER THE WAY YOU'D TREAT YOUR SISTER. TREAT YOUR ADOPTED CHILD THE WAY YOU WOULD TREAT YOUR NIECE, IF YOU HAD LEGAL CUSTODY. Instantly, everything became clear. I would never not "parent" her. I'd be the parental role model. I'd teach right from wrong, exert my "parental authority", or whatever, but I'd never try to create a fantasy that my sister didn't exist. I wouldn't fail to acknowledge her role in my neice's life, or try to quell the unique bond they would share. I would never try to deny her importance to my child's identity in a misguided attempt to make her feel "normal", "the same as the bio kids", "part of the family" or "ours". She WILL be "ours"... and she won't be. She will also be the daughter of a man and woman in Ethiopia... and that makes THEM part of our family, too -- to be treated with the same respect and decency as a sister or brother.

A Love Like No Other: Variations

Much of my "Are We Guilty?" posts made oblique references to Jacquelyn Mitchard's WHICH ONES ARE YOURS?, in which she fields a question in such an aggressive way, she admits she categorized, by her interviewer as a "Tiger-Lady-Crabby-Oversensitive-Diva". My question in this essay is, "what's the point of that?" Why be so aggressive, that, even if you are RIGHT, you are still written off?

Much of my previous discussion came from questioning this stance. Still, the essay is not without it's merits. She does a marvelous job of heading off any attempts by her kids (bio or adopted) of making an issue of adoption during moments of discord. Her DAT (that would be "Dumb Adoption Talk", in the parlance of her kids) eschews the chestnut, "You're not my real mom!" in favor of, "I don't hate you because I'm an adolescent who's trying to adjust to the fact that he was adopted. I hate you personally." While obviously funny, I think it's a good point. How amazing that they've digested the adoption process so thoroughly that they know not to bring it into arguments -- that the bio kids don't use the adopted kids' "primal wound" to do just that. More amazing, is that the adopted kids have the presence of mind not to use their story as a way to inflict damage on their adopted parents. What can be a quick, devastating way to win an argument (or deflect punishment for a curfew violation) can lead to long-term harm in the relationship, a fact sometimes not considered by the adolescent adopted kid.

THE DAY THAT HALLMARK FORGOT by Jesse Green focuses on the intrigue surrounding Mother's Day in a family with two dads. Managing to be both irreverent and touching, it ends on a note that is applicable to all of us: the benefits of being able to "express unconventional truth in conventional terms".

STANDING OUT AND STANDING UP IN THE CROWD by Marcelle Clements is an ode to her unsinkable, adopted son, Luc. Within her celebration, she goes to lengths to refute the psuedo-science of "Adopted Child Syndrome". "...[C]reated by psychologist David Kirschner and first used as a defense in the 1984 trial of an adolescent adoptee accused of setting fire to his home and murdering his parents... the "adopted child syndrome" has been cited as scientific evidence that adopted adolescents are at high risk of becoming liars, thieves and serial killers..." She mentions that this notion has been soundly refuted and that even Kirschner renounced his theory. Still, it seems that in prime-time news magazine shows and other popular "news" media, the "adopted child syndrome" looms large.

DIVORCE, ADOPTION-STYLE by Antionette Martin is a powerful bit of personal testimony -- what happens to children, adopted out to stable, two-parent homes, when those homes lose stability -- and a parent? I can only imagine it would be a life-line for anyone attempting to ensure familial support for adopted children through a stressful divorce. Antionette and her ex, Ted, seem to do as good a job as anybody, in separating without separating from the kids. I hope never to need it!

KEEPING IT ALL IN THE FAMILY by Bob Shacochis tells the rather sad story of an infertile couple on the verge of adopting, when Bob's sister-in-law reveals that she is dying of breast cancer, leaving in her wake a teen daughter and a dysfunctional ex-husband. Bob and his wife, "C", become guardians to the girl, but find her nearly uncontrollable. Her bio-dad creates numerous problems, preventing them from adopting, but also failing in his role as a father. The essay ends with the nature of the relationship unclear -- Bob is both more than and less than an uncle and certainly not a father, although he treasures the one Father's Day card he did receive, as a token of his best attempt at fatherhood. Frankly, this essay did not provide me with much to take away, except, perhaps, that even in the most troubled adoptive parent/adoptee relationship, there is still a memory, a trace of what could have been, to be cherished.

Unexpected: A Love Like No Other

Part Two of A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER focuses on "Encounters With the Unexpected", containing a variety of essays in which parents were caught off-guard by the reality of adoption.

Melissa Fay Greene's "Post-Adoption Panic" is as surprising as to WHO wrote it as what she wrote. Melissa Fay Greene (as her bio at the end of the book attests) wrote a book "about a foster mother to AIDS orphans in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That book is practically the Bible of Ethiopian adoption. That book is, in whole or in part, responsible for many people considering Ethiopian adoption. That book is recommended highly on this website. Don't have it? BUY IT. READ IT. There's a handy link, go-go-go, we'll wait.

Good. Everyone owns THERE IS NO ME WITHOUT YOU. Now, buy THIS book (A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER) and read how a mother of 4 "bio" kids struggles to bond with their first adopted child, a boy named Jesse, from Bulgaria. This is prior to their children adopted from Ethiopia. This is the story of a mother who bristles at having this "interloper" in family pictures, who loses her patience easily, who finally makes an appointment with a psychiatrist, because she just can't seem to LOVE this adopted, older, Bulgarian child. It is a question that few parents ask honestly. While there is endless work put into trying to coax adopted children into loving their "a-parents", no one asks -- not out loud -- if they are REALLY capable of loving an adopted child like their own. And for some, it is a hard adjustment. Greene's honest portrayal will help anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

Sheila Stainback's "Baby on Board—But Not Everyone Else" will be massively identifiable to many of us. What happens when we think the sun and moon revolves around our kid/s -- but our extended family refuse to welcome him or her/them into the fold? This essay describes the slow thaw that occurs when the "other" becomes "family".

Amy Rackear's "The Second Time Around" revolves around a fertility-challenged couple who adopt successfully, but struggle with the decision of expanding their family through adoption a second time.

Jill Smolowe's "Color Her Becky" recounts a family with a daughter adopted from China (the titular "Becky"), fail to see the importance of discussing race with their daughter, until she has to grapple with a school bully who delight in taunting her with the brilliant put-down, "Cut the cheese, you're Chinese."

Reading this essay was like having a conversation with the person I was a year ago. At that time, at the beginning of our process, I would've said that emphasizing race is unnecessary. Play it as it lays, right? I now feel, after a year of reading books and blogs and forums, asking friends, etc., that it's irresponsible to leave a child unprepared for this kind of unpleasant experience. Judging from much of the tranracially-adopted adult adoptee community on the internet, it is those who grew up identifying as "white" until adulthood that had the biggest trouble when the world failed to see them as they saw themselves. It may be counter-intuitive at first, but the more race is discussed, the less of an "issue" it may be later in the child's life.

Jana Wolff's "The First Thirteen" makes some starling admissions about her thirteen-year-old, transracially-adopted son: the more he excels in that which she does not, the more she realizes he is not "of" her. Likewise, the more he fails at (or fails to care about) things she finds important, the more she grows to understand the truth of adoption -- we are loving another's child like our own. ANOTHER'S child, with a different set of genetics, different predispositions, different medical histories, different issues. She tells of how her son said, in a moment of anger, "Adoption sucks, you end up with the worst parents". She quietly agreed, not for his reasons, but her own... that, "like many adoptive parents, [we] persist in our fantasies about our children -- saping them if not in our image, than in our image of them." And if they don't live up? "Many of our kins turn out to be only average. There's nothign wrong with average, expect that it doesn't give moms and dads the vindication that above-average does."

From this point, questions as to nature vs. nurture are parsed, eventually leading to increased interaction with the child's birthmother.

My own opinion of the piece is that the writer came off as having unrealistic expectations for her son, and that, in any number of ways, her ego was getting the better of her parenting. I think one of the greatest challenges to good adoptive parenting is the almost zen-like discipline it takes to get your own ego out of the way of your child.

Bonnie Miller Rubin's "The Fallout from a Less-than-Perfect Beginning" is the adoption horror story. A "Gerber baby... in a pink crocheted dress", adopted from Chile, develops a profound (but undiagnosed) emotional disorder, consisting of rage-filled meltdowns. The essay explores how desperate, how powerless, this loving adoptive mother feels in the face of "a bunch of neurotransmitters."

Personally, I feel much of this has little to do with adoption, per se, (unless there are studies of which I'm unaware), and everything to do with the decision to add a child to the family. Before we had our second bio-kid, we had months of discussions, that all boiled down to one unanswerable question: "what if it's a BAD one?" You can't answer that question. Ultimately, you go on faith, because there's no crystal ball. Like Rubin, no matter how much you try to hedge by good, informed, enlightened parenting, there may be problems outside your ability to control -- with ANY kid.

My wife and I have the disquieting habit of watching that show, INTERVENTION. It's like a horror movie for parents. What if that was one of our kids, running the streets, cooking up smack in the bottom of 7-11 cans? What if our kid is schizophrenic?

Scary? Yes. But what if you get hit by a bus? So much of life is out of your actual, physical control, that to live your life in avoidance of pain or risk is to live a gray, empty life.

We want the noise and the energy and the challenge that will come with another child. Our child will be a different gender from those we have now, a different color, a different nationality. She will be loved unconditionally, whether she wants to be or not. Her problems will be our problems. Could it all go sideways? Sure. But to think we WANTED to take this step, but let FEAR win the day? I couldn't imagine anything scarier than that.

Welcome, Friends!

Welcome the following families to the ETHIOPIAN ADOPTION BLOGROLL:

Show 'em some love!

April and Zach's Adoption Site

Augusta's Blog

Baby Ash's Adventure

Bringing Baby Home Blog

Ethiopia Mama

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Meet Your (Racist) Neighbors

It will happen.

At some point, somebody is going to say something...not stupid, not out of bounds, just plain racist. They will think you're a "good white person" and, therefore, won't be minding their "manners" as they would have in "mixed company".

You have not spent your life building a thick skin about such matters. And this is your CHILD being dehumanized. Yes, a child, and you are a parent, therefore, jail is not an option. So what do you do?

I recently stumbled across a wonderfully written blog, the personal blog of "Aaryn", a professional columnist and adopted parent of an adorable African-American girl known as "Ruby" (pictured).

She graciously allowed me to share the experience with everyone here. The following serves as an illustration of what kind of situation we may face and, I feel, a pretty nifty response on Aaryn's part:

How A Man Becomes Ugly And Ruins My Sunday

Sam and I both knew when we chose to adopt an African-American child, that we would forever be on the frontlines of racism in America. And we were okay with this. We're both outspoken in our own way and neither one of us are the kind of people to back down when faced with bigoted comments. Still. No amount of pre-adoption coursework or reading could prepare us for the new dimension of pain racism would cause us because thanks to adoption, we see the world very differently than we did almost 18 months ago. Racism has always been abhorrent to me but now it's personal, too. The blinders are off. Amen.

Yesterday morning at the park, I had a conversation with a neighbor I hadn't met before. We were discussing the fact that our community, built around a college, isn't always safe and that women in particular need to be aware that there are sexual predators in the area. Which is when, as Ruby toddled away from me to the water fountain with her father, this young and relatively attractive guy offered me the following little gem:

"And you know that it's because these African-Americans are rolling up in the neighborhood."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him directly, making mental note of his wild effort to be politically correct with his racist views. Clearly he'd seen me playing with Ruby and would at the very least have enough sense to keep it to himself. But no. He obviously assumed that I played for his team, some sort of twisted camaraderie based on the shared color of our skin. He simply continued unfiltered from his place of inherent superiority as a white twenty-something male.

"Well, the rapists and stuff..."

"What about them? There are plenty of white rapists and sexual deviants. Are you saying that only black men commit these crimes?"

He just stood there looking at his feet, saying nothing. His wife sat next to me on the park bench, mouth closed, petting her 3-month old Yorkie. The quiet air was thickening between all of us. So I went ahead and whipped out my cleaver to cut through the bullsh**:

"You know, whether someone is a sexual predator has nothing to do with the color of their skin."

"Yeah...well...yeah." He mumbled this last part while kicking at a rock, his black lab making nervous figure eights around his legs (the irony that he owned a black dog was not lost on me). His voice weakly trailed off.

"Well, you're speaking to the mother of a black daughter," I pointed toward Ruby as she climbed expertly onto the step of the water fountain, Ella pacing at her heels with the tennis ball in her mouth. "So you're talking to the wrong person about the blacks rolling into the neighborhood."

"Yeah...I guess I'm not gonna get into it." He said this last bit as if he actually had more to say. As if he had some really persuasive argument to offer but had already seen my fangs.

"I think that's a really good idea."

Then he just stood there for I don't know how long. Too long, really. My hackles were up and inside I was screaming. I fought the urge to call across the park to Sam, to let him know it was time to leave. I was so uncomfortable and just wanted to go home but this was our park and we'd just gotten there and we'd had such a lovely morning and F*** this guy. So I just stayed put, my elbow only centimeters from that of his wife who still said nothing, complicit in her silence. Finally this guy, who had in seconds morphed into the most vile person I'd ever seen, began to skulk away to the furthest corners of the park. I watched him go, privately hoping I'd sufficiently shamed him, and while I waited anxiously for Sam and Ruby and Ella to wander back to me, I passed the time trying to act normal as I engaged in the most pathetic small talk with the racist dude's wife.

As we walked home, I was unable to speak for a few minutes because I was so close to tears. When I did recount the conversation for my husband he was equally distraught by the whole thing. While we discussed how we were feeling, Ruby babbled away in her stroller, pointing at airplanes in the blue morning sky, aping the crows on the powerlines overhead, completely innocent and oblivious to what had just transpired. It was the first time I'd been confronted by such blatant, unedited and direct racism since we've had our girl and my heart was broken into ten thousand tiny shards. My child has done nothing except to have beautiful dark brown skin and I know what lies ahead for her. I want to shelter her from it, to keep her from becoming hardened by the hurtful stupidity of ignorant people but understand that this is not possible. I felt helpless, filled up with sorrow and worse than anything, overcome with a rageful hate.

Once we got home, Sam sat down on the couch and began to cry, something I've witnessed only twice before in our 9-year relationship. We were both devastated. As an interracial family we regularly intercept ridiculous comments as they pertain to both adoption and race; sometimes we handle them better than others but even with ongoing practice, we still haven't completely acclimated to being such public property. This particular interaction, however, was the kind of direct hit we'd read about, knew was inevitable and for which there is no preparation as it pertains to emotional injury. Not internalizing it is a challenge.

I know I've got to find a place of compassion in my heart for this man and for others like him. This is necessary for survival of my belief system. Hating is only going to make me a bitter person and aid me in raising a bitter daughter, neither of which I want. It's so hard to find the forgiveness that's imperative for healing; I'm closer today than I was yesterday and hopefully tomorrow that goal will be even more within my reach. But I'm still feeling very raw over the whole exchange and wondering how I can possibly face similar situations over and over again without it breaking me in half.

Many generations of black people have survived it and I can't help but wonder how.

Aaryn's blog, "Ruby Soho" joins the blogroll, under "Parent(s) Who've Adopted Transracially". Her blog mixes in liberal politics with her slice-of-life commentary, so, if you have a violent reaction against such points of view, be forewarned. I find all of her writing to come from a place of profound compassion, and she writes with considerable wit.

SWERLFOLK, PLEASE COMMENT WITH YOUR OWN BRUSHES WITH CASUALLY RACIST REMARKS -- ESPECIALLY IF THE PERSON SPEAKING DIDN'T KNOW THAT YOU WERE A TRANSRACIAL PARENT.

Profile: Nancy Meyer & Illinois Ethiopian Kids Community

Adoption can be a lonely business in the most ordinary circumstances. Some of us Gen-Xers may still have friends without even a pet, who’s idea of “responsibility” constitutes “finding a designated driver”. Add to that the fact that, by adopting from Ethiopia, we are becoming parents to children of a different cultural heritage and, often, of a different race, well, it’s easy to feel a little isolated.

One suggestion in all those pamphlets we get from the adoption agencies is to “meet with other families like yourselves”. Point out the tree where those families grow and I’ll shake it.

Nancy Meyer couldn’t find that tree either… so she took things into her own hands. I think she’s a profound inspiration to all of us. I asked her to share her incredible journey with us, so that, at minimum, she can help her organization thrive. More importantly, I’d love for her to serve as a model for all of us, so that we can emulate her entrepreneurial spirit… er, rip off her idea and do it in our own towns.

Nancy has formed the Illinois Ethiopian Kids Community (IEKC), an adoption community that aims to provide cultural and social connections for our children/families through activities and events and to create authentic relationships/friendships with the local Ethiopian community.

Nancy built and maintains the organization’s website: www.ethiopiankids.net. You owe it to yourself to check it out, even if you can’t spell Illinois (no shame in that, it’s sort of counter-intuitive). The site is chock full’a great links, product reviews and information of value to anyone in our community. Don’t believe me? They have one of the best hair resource pages I’ve seen. The links are so valid, because each comes with a nice little explanatory profile as to why it’s relevant. That makes for some smart surfing!

If you ARE in or near Chicago, Illinois, you can take advantage of the cultural events and meetings Nancy organizes. On August 4th, 2007, IEKC is hosting the Mesgana Dancers, in Evanston, IL. Tickets will be on sale, on-line.

My hunger for connections with other families is what led my motivation to form a community, Nancy explains. I arranged an informal gathering of some local families last year that I knew had adopted from Ethiopia. We met at a local Ethiopian restaurant. Most of the families in attendance were families "in-process" and needed support from others who had walked the path.

The organization is growing quickly. From that initial gathering of seven families, the local organization now boasts a roster of fifty families. I am working to create unity, which is a long, steady process. Still, she feels an even stronger sense of community is warranted. I have found that families are very interested up until the point they bring their child(ren) home. Then the need for connection begins to wane. It seems like it should be the opposite really. I think people get busy in their lives and perhaps lose sight of the bigger picture...that our children will one day ask "who am I" and "where do I belong"?

As our children grow up, they will be caught between black and white, Ethiopia and America, first family and second family. A group like this seems to provide two indispensable functions: providing a lifeline to others JUST LIKE THEM (or at least in the same situation) and expose them and us to authentic Ethiopian-American culture. Ideally, this cross-communication with the local Ethiopian community will provide mentors and opportunities to explore and express themselves in the context of their native culture.

Right now the hardest part is laying the groundwork by making contacts and starting relationships. Nancy opened a dialog with the sizable Ethiopian community in Chicago, reaching out to the Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, as well as the local Ethiopian Orthodox and Ethiopian Evangelical churches.

She stresses that the relationship between the Ethipian-American community can be mutually beneficial, believing that her partnership with these organization will, in her words, not only bring social and cultural connections for our adopted children, but will encourage greater patronage for Ethiopian businesses. Many of the families here are immigrants trying to find their way and make a life for themselves. They support themselves by opening restaurants, driving taxis and some have enough education to get professional positions, though very few. It is my hope that our community can in turn support their businesses and create opportunities for them to offer their skills (i.e Ethiopian cooking classes, Amharic classes for the children, having ET nannies/babysitters, etc.). Through this partnership it is my hope that there will be greater visibility for the ET community here in Chicago. They have a lot to offer.

Nancy’s connection to Ethiopia deepened significantly… and unexpectantly, when Nancy traveled to receive her daughter. She was picked up at the airport by an Ethiopian man named Tesfaye, an employee at the adoption agency’s care center. I happened to be the only one there at the time. It was love at first sight for him and for me, I knew he was really special but couldn't imagine a marriage relationship would result from our meeting.

They maintained a long-distance relationship after Nancy returned to America with her new daughter. Soon, they realized that they were ready to commit to each other forever. He is an amazing man and I believe we were both ready to accept the level of love we had for each other and create a partnership. It is an amazing story and one that has blessed our lives enormously.

Tesfaye only arrived in the beginning of February, and, per our government, the couple has only three months to wed. Tesfaye is currently perfecting his English, learning the ropes of being in America, experiencing his first Chicago winter and discovering that Ethiopian food just doesn’t taste the same outside of Ethiopia… enter, nachos!

Nancy and her unique family have great hopes for the future of IEKC. My vision is much broader. I aim to make it a non-profit organization that will either adopt or build a service project that will benefit the people of Ethiopia. I hope to make this a full-circle organization.

Ethiopia has quickly emerged as one of the main programs for international adoption. In cities and towns across the country, there is an ever-growing number of American families with Ethiopian children. There are also pockets of the Ethiopian Diaspora in those same cities. Grassroots community organizations such as Nancy’s create “win-win-win” scenarios for all involved, by capitalizing on the unique relationship between International Adoptees from Ethiopia (many adopted transracially), the Ethiopian-American community and native Ethiopian society, still strong, proud and independent, despite the challenges of poverty and disease. All of these benefits – the support for us, the economic enfranchisement of the Ethiopian-American community and the aid to Ethiopia, herself, will ultimately pay dividends for the most important people in all of our lives – our children.

New Families on the Blogroll

Welcome,
Ethiopia 2007
Mager Family Adoption Story
Our Big Crazy Family
The Long Road Home,
to THE ETHIOPIAN FAMILY BLOGROLL and SWERLFEEDS.

A Love Like No Other: Life Stories

A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER, STORIES FROM ADOPTIVE PARENTS is a collection of first-person essays, all penned by professional writers who are also adoptive parents, edited by Pamela Kruger and Jill Smolowe. It is a delicate but powerful blend… different flavors that come together to create a memorable portrait of modern adoption. Admirable in it’s diversity -- adoptive father, mothers, gay couples, lesbian couples, single mothers and divorced couples all weigh in -- and lack of sentimentality, the hardest truths prove to be the most captivating.

The book is divided up into themed chapters. I thought I'd take each theme as a jumping off point for a post.

In the first section, "Reflections on Birth Parents" offers the following essays:

SHE IS AMONG US by Christina Frank is a meditation on a birthmother from Vietnam, who, due to laws and customs, will never be known.

TO SEARCH OR NOT TO SEARCH by Pamela Kruger (one of the book's editors) details her decision and process of finding the first family of her child, adopted from Kazakhstan. The interesting thing about this essay is it ends with Pamela having found out the information, but refuses to tell her reader, insisting, "The rest of the story is for Annie, and only Annie, to know, when she is ready."

LIVING WITH A VERY OPEN ADOPTION by Dan Savage, was a favorite. It details a couple doing everything in their power to encourage an open adoption, but find the inclusion of the "first family", an alcoholic woman who is homeless by choice, increasingly troubling and painful. In an age of open adoptions and a feeling of responsibility to the child's sense of identity, it shows the lengths we may be asked to go to honor those commitments, in clear-eyed fashion. The other thing I love about it is that it is about a gay couple... but isn't about the fact that they are a gay couple.


TWO DAUGHTERS, TWO DESTINIES by Laura Shaine Cunningham portrays a mother of two girls… a daughter from Kazakhstan and a daughter from China facing a difficult crisis in developing "their stories". She laments the inequality between her daughters’ histories. She knows her daughter from Kazakhstan’s first family, while for her daughter from China, all she can offer is a street where she was found. Ironically, neither seem at all interested in their heritage. She is so worried about how they may feel about their cultural identity later in life that she practically forces a trip to their birth countries down their throat (when both are clearly more interested in going to the mall).

These essays, along with a confluence of other events, including posting on message boards and our own family discussion, has lead to a discussion of first families and what role they will play in our life and our child's life.

• Is it presumptuous to search for your child?
  
• What part of your child's story is okay to share with family, friends or the general public, and what part should be reserved for them?
  
• How much information about or interaction with the first family is crucial to fostering a positive self-image?
  
• What is the research on this issue?
  
• How do adoptees cope with the "what could've been?" questions about their first family?
  
• How adoptive families cope with being the "second" family, as a child's curiosity about their first family increases?
  
• No matter how much you know, how are first families handled in lifebooks?
  

I'd be disingenuous to say I know the answers to ANY of these questions.

Who of you out there has asked the same questions and would you care to share your insights?

Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir

The ultimate horror, the ultimate tragedy in this world is the needless, senseless death of a child. The opening chapters of LOVE IN THE DRIEST SEASON by Neely Tucker recount dozens of them. The news attests to hundreds of thousands. The effect can be debilitating -- you look at your own children, tossing a ball, watching Scooby-Doo, you project all that they may accomplish with their lives, and wonder, "What did the world miss out on, for lack of a few dollars worth of medicine? An inspiring politician? A brilliant scientist? An artists? A father? A mother? A teacher?"

In a primal, almost simplistic way, you want to help -- do something. So you join "ONE", write Congress, give what amounts to peanuts to your favorite charity, and watch reality chug along it's grim path. Eventually, meaningless compassion can deepen into a feeling of hopelessness, then, into a hardening of all emotions.

This is how we meet Neely Tucker at the beginning of the book. He'd seen children die in Kosovo and hundreds of other "hot spots" around the world, as he reported the news. Then, one day, a tiny hand gripped his finger, and his hardened heart began to melt. This emotional attachment with an abandoned Zimbabwean girl, found by the side of the road, still covered in her mother's blood, ants eating her ear, takes Neely and his wife Vita (and the reader) on an unbelievably epic journey through the dark heart of the AIDS crisis and the re-emergence of one man's soul.

Judging from the adoption world at large (blogs, sites, forums, etc.) LOVE IN THE DRIEST SEASON seems to be the poor cousin to THERE IS NO ME WITHOUT YOU. Without taking anything away from Melissa Faye Green's powerful and pertinent examination of Ethiopia, I'd argue that Neely Tucker's memoir is equally affecting.

Neely is a white man from Mississippi who married a black woman from Detroit, then tried to adopt an African child from post-Colonial Zimbabwe. Issues of race, identity, national origin and adoption weave organically through his narrative -- from the Zimbabweans suspicion of a white man adopting a black girl (for sexual slavery?), to Vita's identification with and alienation from "mother Africa". At times, she is treated apart from her husband, at other times, rejected by the Africans, she feels very "American". Neely's family, who boycotted his marriage to Vita, fiercely love their daughter -- and even reveal family secrets concerning adoption.

Many of these issues have touched my own family, and seeing them refracted in the smaller, more personal moments of this otherwise "big scope" story led me to strongly identify with Neely. His nuanced analysis of his personal history, his loving portrayal of Vita, his honesty about the wear-and-tear their story caused to him, his marriage and his career pulled me through even the starkest chapters.

The thrust of the book, however, is the point/counterpoint of adopting the girl named Chipo, in the face of a country ravaged by AIDS. Adding context to this throughline, we also tag along on Neely's correspondent work. Headlines such as the Rwandan genocide, uprisings in the Congo and the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi all come into focus, allowing readers, perhaps for the first time, to understand the complex political interdependence between all of these troubled post-colonial countries.

Their Kafka-esque nightmare through the Zimbabwean bureaucracy illuminates clearlyand Tpowerfully the full reasons for the AIDS pandemic: the legacy of colonialism, leading to poor, undeveloped countries with large uneducated and impoverished black populations angry and fearful of Western intervention, local sexual mores (including a tradition for "dry sex", a fear of condoms because they "are for prostitutes", a complete unwillingness to admit the disease exists and a system that shuns those who are infected) and, most viciously and tragically, profoundly corrupt and quasi-facist governments which hide and deny the disease for reasons of pure ego and divert healthcare funding into their own purse. The problems are complex, with long histories. In a strange way, the truth does set us free, and the complexity of the problem does leave room for real change. The idea that some of these issues ARE fixable also cracks the door for hope.

In the end, however, life is unfair, and children do die. Cherish the kids we have and honor the memory of those who didn't make it as best we can. It doesn't sound that uplifting, writing it now, but I came away from the book with a better understanding of the world from which our kids come and why that world exists.


A parting note - this is the perfect book for the HUSBANDS out there. His POV and writing style are very guy-friendly. His exploits as a reporter add splashes of action and suspense. Most importantly, Neely's concerns about the adoption and the path he takes to having his heart opened to the idea is very identifiable to men. He struggles openly and honestly with his attempts to balance his marriage, his professional life and the toll of the adoption -- emotionally and financially. The adoption does extract a toll, but in the end, he feels more than recompensed. This book would be a welcome present for all DADS, WAITING DADS or POTENTIAL DADS out there (and might just help tip the scales for RESISTANT COULD-BE DADS as well!)

Community

Why reach out on the internet, if not to be part of a community? Statistically small, and spread out across the country though we may be, we all share a unique perspective. For months, my family and I found strength and comfort, information and provocative thoughts within our virtual community.

A morning or evening ritual has become "checking in" on blogs and boards. When contemplating my own blog and how I could add something of value to the community, the first thought was to make my daily surfing habit available and accessible to everyone:

THE BIGGEST ETHIOPIAN ADOPTION BLOGROLL ON THE INTERNET!

Other new features include:

SWERLFEEDS!

Every "Ethiopian Adoption Blog", "Other African Adoption Blog" and "Parent(s) Who've Adopted Transracially Blog" that has a feed has been subscribed to and is now a CLICK AWAY.

This saves you from having to subscribe to this list yourself! Make it YOUR morning/evening routine.

SWERLALERTS!

This is basically an "e-mailing" list -- for timely alerts, like "Hey, this person of interest is going to be on TV in a few hours" or for important site information. It will be used VERY SPARINGLY.

AMAZON STORE

This is a focused place for recommended books and products of interest to families like us, including books for adults and kids about adoption and race, products for co-sleeping and multicultural toys and gifts.

Our community has tremendous untapped economic, social and political power. Not conventional politics, where I'm sure everyone differs wildly, but specific to trying to uplift humanitarian efforts and stop easily treatable infectious diseases in Africa, eliminate racism domestically and support transracial families. For example, if I donate or buy something off the internet, I always try to go through a blog I like.

One question as I go forward is: "how much advocacy (for the above topics) do I include?" And, what causes? I've been working on two other link categories -- responsible shopping and non-profits. Literally, the list is endless and impossible to vet. Feedback is welcome.

After all, we're a community, so let's discuss!

A Family Affair

No Small Feat posted some interesting thoughts about public reaction to transracial international adoption. Check it out!

Through the Computer, a Connection

I stumbled across this today and was touched:

I think sometimes, when we are caught up in becoming a family, we can unintentionally separate our children's birthplace from our children... This new development -- finding someone intimately connected with their birthplace, someone who understands firsthand the situation there -- well, it's pretty intense.

Read the post at Holding Still: internet magic.

What I Learned from Harlow's Monkey

Like many husbands, I was the reticent one, when it came to adoption. Unlike most, my reticence came from only one concern -- that I wouldn't be up to the task. That after a wonderful childhood, I'd encounter a daughter who felt unprepared to be African-American, but wasn't accepted as white, and would be doomed to be forever alienated by both cultures. And it would be my fault -- for "sins" of commission, adopting her in the first place and "sins" of omission -- not giving her the tools she needed to explore her African-American identity, her "blackness", as it were.

Having been very close to some transracial adopted kids myself, some of whom had issues, some of whom didn't, I wanted to do more research before initiating the process.

I searched for any kind of study of adult transracial adoptees, and immediately came across The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's The Gathering of the First Generation of Adult Korean Adoptees: Adoptees' Perceptions of International Adoption by Madelyn Freundlich and Joy Kim Lieberthal.

Check it all out. It is fascinating. For me, it also validated my concerns (how's that for a nice way of putting "scared the hell out of me"?). I wasn't SURPRISED, as I said in my first post, I keenly understand racism at work in our world. But I'm not the victim, my daughter will be. Here's the pertinent part:

Experiences with Discrimination

The majority of respondents reported that they had experienced some form of discrimination while they were growing up. Race (70%) was cited more often as the basis for discrimination than was adoption (28%). A number of adoptees provided comments in response to the question, "If you felt any type of discrimination as you were growing up, are there any thoughts you would like to share about that experience?" The comments reflected a range of experiences. A few adoptees stated that they did not experience discrimination ["I feel like an oddball who grew up without experiencing any discrimination"]. Others recounted experiences with discrimination that they described as mild ["I didn't feel injured or threatened because it was infrequent or fairly mild;" "The only thing that bothered me was that a lot of people asked me if [or assumed] I was Chinese or Japanese;" "The discrimination was mainly the minor kinds of teasing that many children experience because of their peculiarities. Mine happened to be because I was Asian"]; as persistent ["It wasn't blatant -- just the everyday little things (ridicule, stares, comments, assumptions) which accumulated over a lifetime simply wore you down;" "Very sad memories of the constant teasing of my ethnicity, more frequent in elementary school but more intense in high school"]; or as severe ["It was very humiliating, degrading and painful"]. Some adoptees highlighted certain factors as most central to the discrimination they felt:

• Adoption: "I grew up in a small, predominantly Caucasian middle-class town where adoption seemed, to me, to be unacceptable because it was "un-natural" -- children, more so than adults, were more unaccepting and, at times, cruel;"
  
• Race: "Unfortunately, my parents were not particularly open-minded in the area of race despite having adopted two non-white children. They made racist comments to us about Koreans as well as other non-whites;" "The racism I experienced was enhanced because I felt like the people I most closely associated with . . . turned on me;"
  
• Stereotyping: "I had to be smart because I am Asian;" "Any discrimination I felt was because I was Korean and overweight. I didn't fit the 'tiny' Asian role;" "People tend to think you are really intelligent and a stereotypical nerd. I was discriminated against by Asians because I didn't speak my native tongue and discriminated against by Caucasians because of how I looked;"
  
• Gender: "Any discrimination I experienced was related to being female, not race or adoption;"
  
• A combination of gender and race: "It was mostly internalized attitudes towards gender and race combined that helped to foster [in me] an internal conflict between an assertive intellectual and a passive, shy Asian girl;" and
  
• Physical appearance: "The pointing out of physical differences made me think I was ugly;" "Being called 'greasy haired' and 'chink' was hurtful;" "Because I am Amerasian, I was not Korean enough and not Caucasian enough;" "Growing up in a small white community, I was a 'novelty' but very few people associated with me;" "I wanted to be like [everyone else]. Instead, I was always catching attention [both positive and negative] for being different."

Adoptees described different responses to discrimination. Some stated that experiences with discrimination did not significantly affect them because of inner strength or that these experiences made them stronger:

• "Those rare times [in which I experienced discrimination] did not affect my esteem or confidence because by that time I already had much pride in my heritage and a strong foundation of worth. My parents told me, instilled in me, to empathize with these children because they must have felt badly about themselves in order to have antagonized others."
  
• "I learned early on not to obsess over things that I could not change. I couldn't necessarily change how others saw me, but I could change how I saw others and myself."
  
• "I feel the discrimination I endured when I was younger made me stronger. It made me see me for who I was and not how people viewed me. I learned to see myself as special."
  
• "I think it made me stronger and more secure in my identity."

Other adoptees reported a negative impact from their experiences with discrimination:

• "[It] taught me to deny my Korean part."
  
• "The teasing and discrimination by other children made me deny and hate my Korean heritage."
  
• "The experiences of being picked on and singled out due to my Korean heritage made me want to hide my differences in order to 'fit in.'"
  
• "The persecution affected my personality -- [I became] introverted, unhappy, and hostile."
  
• "When I was younger, I tended to head off discrimination at the pass by poking fun at myself. Therefore, many of my friends felt it was okay to call me names such as 'squint eyes' or 'chink face' because I allowed it, even laughed about it."

Thoroughly freaked out, I hit the Transracial Adoptee blogs. I, evidently, am not alone in this, as almost everywhere I turned, I heard a variation on the complaint, "This blog is for me and my fellow Transracial Adoptees, and it's getting ruined by overly-sensitive adoptive parents, or ready-to-adopt parents, flaming my comment board." Ouch. (Twice the Rice, another great blog, candidly disclaims that she "doesn't do advice".)

Having not flamed, but understanding the anxiety that would lead to defensiveness, that would, in turn, lead to flaming, I tried to find some middle ground (for the Buddhists in the crowd, the "middle path") between doing it badly and not doing it at all.

I came across Harlow's Monkey, an unflinching but thoughtful blog, written by a Korean Adoptee and social worker. My earliest posts, in a large part, were my "answers" to hers, my reflections on how her language impacted my thought process. The best thing that I can say is that she is smart enough and informed enough to channel emotions which adoptive parents often view as open hostility into lucid, well written, but intellectually and emotionally uncompromising views from the transracial adoptee's POV. Our childrens' POV (or possible POV). Most importantly, she is not someone who opposes international transracial adoption out of hand. She points to that middle path. So I tried figuring out how to encapsulate her world-view. Luckily, she just did it herself, deep in her recent post:

If I could rule the process myself, I would have a few additional requirements for adoptive parents who wish to adopt transracially or transculturally - including proof that they had actively worked on investigating their own whiteness and that they have the ability to educate themselves and act as allies in the issues and concerns of communities of color. Because just loving and being "open" to a child of another race or culture is NOT ENOUGH. And just hoping that as a parent, one would be able to help them with racial "self-esteem" is NOT ENOUGH. Adoptive parents must be part of a larger movement of anti-racist work. If as a white adoptive parent, you can not picture yourself working within the political movement of your child's race or culture, then I believe you must take a hard look at why that is.

This goes way, way beyond issues of whether you can love your child, or parent them if they have "special needs" or even whether you live in a diverse neighborhood or read books to them about their culture or take them to culture camps. This is about realizing that your little one is a member of a group of people with a long history of struggle at the hands of whiteness and you, as a member of that oppressive group, must be willing and able to step up and actively work towards dismantling those very structures. This means you will be risking your own membership in the elite group of whiteness; others who are part of the dominant structure will begin to challenge you, call you a traitor and try to bring you down. It won't be easy. You may even risk losing friends and family who won't agree or understand.

In the White Racial Identity work by Helms* and Carter**, they point out that many white people who become actively involved in dismantling racism face a stage where they have to learn to give up their membership in the dominant white reference group and yet accept they will not be accepted as members of a community of color - having to exist being "betwixt and between." If adoptive parents can understand this, they might begin to understand the "betwixt and between" that their transracially adopted children will deal with in their lives.

This is tough work. My advice for pre-adoptive parents who think I am being unreasonable in suggesting they engage themselves in active anti-racist work? They should reconsider whether they are really about the child or their own needs. Nobody ever said that this work was going to be comfortable or easy.

My conclusion is that we are going to be DIFFERENT. We will not be WHITE families. We won't even be "Multi-Cultural" families, since, as I stated in a previous post, our kids don't have the leverage to introduce their own culture into the family. We are swirled (or "swerled" in my Google-friendly parlance). It is OUR JOB to make the families Multi-Cultural, and that means leaving our "white" selves behind and embrace a culture, tastes, expression and history of another race and another culture, even though we will never be able to embody that culture. In other words, we must make sure that our household offers a MIXED experience, even though we, ourselves are NOT.

In order to hopefully make our homes more of a comfort zone for our children, we need to venture far out of our own. If we are asking our kids to be different, we need to do the same.

Swerl POV: Angelina Jolie

Show of hands, folks -- how many of you have gotten ANY form of the "Brad and Angelina" jokes? You tell family and friends of your news -- you got a referral, you got your homestudy approved, etc., and the response is "Better hurry before Angelina takes all the cute ones!" or "Didn't you hear? Ethiopia is soooo yesterday, Vietnam is where it's at!"

Now that Angelina has brought home Pax, international transracial adoption is once again bracing for another round of ANGELINA: LOVE HER OR HATE HER. Currently, she is the public face of our extended "ITA" family -- how does that make you feel? (This is not rhetorical, seriously, COMMENT!)

How do you feel when international adoption is reduced to the following (all culled from the comment section of TMZ.com:

She collects kids like lap dogs or an "accessory". This month's accessory of the month is a Vietnamese kids. Next month, it will be a Laotian kid. Pretty soon she'll open up her own orphanage for her adopted kids taken care of by "nannies".

"That kid over there would go good with my Vera Wang outfit!"

And, most directly:

HOW BOUT ADOPTING FROM THE COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN, HELLLLOOOO AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE JUST AS NEGLECTED AS VIETNAME (sic) OR NAMIBIA OR F***ING CAMBODIA! IT SEEMS LIKE THIS B**** "BUYS" BABIES LIKE ITS A F***ING FAD...

And there it is... FAD. After soul-searching, agonizing decisions and a commitment to a very visible, potentially difficult lifestyle, this irreversible choice to add to your family through international, transracial adoption is being reduced to the most ephemeral media hype.

A complicated, emotional topic is reduced to a referendum on a celebrity. News, in the 24 hour cycle, gets turned into opinion, then drama -- "why not adopt from America?" "what is she trying to prove with her multicultural kids?" "who's the next celebrity to jump on board the 'trend'?" We are then either compared to, or asked to answer for, a woman we don't know -- sometimes by those in our families, communities, churches or schools.

One explanation is that there IS NO FAD. Angelina grew up with a narcissistic, often absent father. She acted out in showy, self-destructive ways, then, while filming a movie in Cambodia, realized that life exists beyond the Beverly Center Mall. She felt pulled to adopt a Cambodian child. Her husband at the time wasn't on board with this idea, and the marriage dissolved over this issue. She felt the need to do humanitarian work, to honor all those kids still in orphanages or refugee camps. A combination of that work and the realization that she had more love to give caused her to adopt more children. She met a guy. They fell in love. They had a baby. She does not feel a difference between her biological child and her adopted children. In fact, when pressed, she admits that the contrary is true -- her adopted children have been in her life longer, so, in some ways, she feels a stronger connection to them. She once again feels capable and willing to adopt, and would also like her oldest child to have a male playmate with whom he can relate. She adopts again. She keeps it quiet until the last moment. She gives money to the orphanage that helped raise her new son.

EVERY person who adopts internationally can relate to elements of this story. Is Angelina perfect? Who is? Does she mean well? Who cares? Did she bend rules? She said she didn't, but we all know how harrowing the process is, and everyone, to some extent, pads their case (who actually lives up the their portrayal in the letters of recommendation, for instance?) Finally, we know OUR OWN motivations. This is why it is so hurtful when, through the prism of Angelina, international transracial adoption is portrayed as...

...buying babies

...treating children as ego-stroking accessories

..."collecting" foreign children

...less valid than pregnancy

...a gross attempt to play "martyr" or "saint"

...insensitive to or rejecting of American kids in foster care

...a profound, life-altering decision(life-altering for us AND our children) made with all the thought that one would give a haircut (does it make me look "cool"?).

How does the media coverage of Angelina affect you?

Black Children, White Parents

I must admit that I do now have some concerns about the capacity of a large number of these [WHITE] adoptive parents to help their [African-American] children learn to deal effectively with the problems that will most probably arise as a result of being black in America.

This article was originally posted on NEW YORK HOME STUDY

White Parents - Black Children
by Miriam Vieni

For more information, contact
Miriam Vieni, New York Home Study Service at miriamvieni@optonline.net
Many years ago, I wrote an article which appeared in Social Work, defending transracial adoption as a solution for homeless black children. I was writing in response to an article by a black sociologist who was highly critical of the practice of placing black children with white adoptive parents.

I still believe that a black child, placed with loving white adoptive parents, is better off than he or she would be in an institution or a foster home, even if the foster parents are black. I also believe that the potential success of a foster home must be judged on an individual basis rather than on the basis of race alone.

However, our family has been through several changes since I wrote that article and in addition, I have a good deal more contact with white couples in the N.Y. metropolitan area who have either already adopted black children, or who are contemplating such an adoption. I must admit that I do now have some concerns about the capacity of a large number of these adoptive parents to help their children learn to deal effectively with the problems that will most probably arise as a result of being black in America. There is no doubt in my mind that the white parents of black children whom I have met, very much love their children and will therefore be able to help them develop a basic sense of worth and identity. They will guide their children toward the fulfullment of their individual potentialities.

The problem is that this is not enough. The family must act as the primary agent of socialization, helping its members to absorb the surrounding culture and providing role models so that children can learn to behave in socially constructive ways. Helping a black child to become a complete human being is a very difficult job because our society (1) arbitrarily defines certain individuals as black (2) segregates such individuals into a separate caste and (3) makes unreasonable and often conflicting demands on them. It becomes the function of the parents to make the basic racial insanity of white society explicit to the black child so that he does not internalize destructive values.

One of the issues which seems to cause tremendous difficulty for white adoptive parents is the definition of their children as black. Social agencies, which prefer to place light skinned or “interracial” children with white couples, often add to the problem. White adoptive parents, often, have not begun to think actively about racial issues or determine what their feelings about race are, until the black child is already in their home and the world outside the home has started to send confusing, unpleasant or absolutely negative messages into the home. Because, like other white Americans, adoptive parents perceive the races as separate entities and identify themsleves as being white, they are quick to capitalize on whatever white ancestry their black child may have, and to emphasize the child’s “white” characteristics as a link between the child and themselves. I have heard parents say that their black children have been mistaken by others as their biological children or that the child is not “just” black because one of his parents or grandparents was white. They miss the point that most black people in America have white ancestry, that here, there is no such thing as a “pure” black child, that if you look at a large number of black people, you will see many with features or characteristics that can be recognized as Caucasian. But always, to white Americans, it is the bit of BLACK ancestry that defines an indiviual and their actions toward him, and feelings about him will be influenced by their perceptions of him. A majority of white Americans are so concious of race, that dark skin, in and of itself, often causes them to define an individual as “black” whether or not he actually has any African ancestry.

This complicated and confusing reality is what we will have to help our black children understand. They need to know that people’s negative responses to them are not caused by something inside them, but by the sickness and fear inside the people who are responding negatively. They also need to learn that it is irrational to first define a person according to his race or skin color and then, only later, to perceive his uniqueness and become aware of his personal characteristics.

Another issue which seems to worry a lot of transracially adopting parents is where they should live. Many opt for an “integrated” neighborhood where, they believe, their interracial family will “fit in” comfortably. Because they identify themselves as white and often have white children as well as black children, they try very hard to find an area with a “good racial balance.” Just like most other white Americans, they mean a neighborhood where there are an equal number of black and white families, preferably, more white families than black families to “approximate the natural racial percentages in America.” They worry about racial balance in the schools their children attend and are concerned if they believe “the races are polarized.” They pride themselves on living in a community “where there are many kinds of people living in harmony.” All of it is a beautiful dream, the dream of naive white Americans who have not had to deal with the realities of being black in America.

Black people know the reality for the nightmare it really is. Ther know that if more than a few of them move into an area, white people begin to flee. They know that it is close to impossible to maintain a racial balance in schools because once the percentage of black children rises above 20 or 25 percent, white people take their children out of the schools and the percentage of black children rockets to 90 percent as a result. They know that if white people see a large number of black children in a school, then they are sure that the school must, by definition, be bad; that if there is a large percentage of black people living in a neighborhood it is considered by white people to be undesirable. They know that economic and political forces cause the deterioration of neighborhoods, not their black inhabitants, and that they have to fight every inch of the way to keep their neighborhoods safe and the quality of education in their schools high because white society tends to “dump” its problem population into areas where large numbers of black people live.

Some white parents of black children choose to remain in all white communities. Often the choice is dictated by economic pressures or is made because of family ties or other deep roots in the community. But sometimes, the choice is motivated by fear of living in racially integrated communities or reluctance to take on the problems involved in living in such neighborhoods. We do not yet have the results of research to tell us how the lives of adopted black children are affected by such choices on the part of their parents. We can only guess that black children, growing up isolated from other black people, may feel alienated from them because they have not learned the typical modes of verbal and non-verbal communication, and the implicit system of values and knowledge communicated among black people. While white America will define these individuals as black and the will be expected by both blacks and whites to function comfortably within black groups, they will not have the techniques to help them do so. Adoptive parents, who have been hearing about the importance of “black identity”, often try to expose their children to Black History or teach them about “black culture.” The children may then KNOW ABOUT black people but they will not KNOW black people unless they have daily contact with them. Many parents, who normally would have no contact with black adults, try to seek out black friends or find black playmates with their chidlren. There is, of course, an artificiality to these contrived situations, but they are honest attempts on the part of adoptive parents to handle the problem of their children’s isolation.

I believe that the most positive situation for the adopted black child occurs when the adoption is an outgrowth of the parents’ awareness of the reality and implications of race relations and when the adoptive parents have struggled with their own internal attitudes BEFORE the child comes into the home. I certainly would not expect anyone to have completely resolved the problems. Parents of black children function under unbelievable pressure from society and from within themselves. They have to develop a clear and consistent philosophy concerning black/white relations in the U.S., separate from their feelings about their adopted black children. I strongly suspect that part of this new philosophy is relinquishment of the strong identification with whites. It is not that one no longer recognizes that he or she is white but rather, that this racial definition is no longer of prime importance. This is a new way for most white adoptive parents of perceiving people. If they have white children, their attitudes must extend to thtem. There is a corollary to this which may seem contradictory. One must be committed to help in whatever way is possible, in the struggle of black people to attain their rightful place in America. Racism in our society is not only a personal problem–it is institutional. Our own adopted black children will never be completely safe and secure, nor will our adopted or biological white children, until all of the people in our country can look forward to a life of dignity.

Inaugural Post

As a white guy who is in the middle of an international transracial adoption, I'm looking to do everything possible to do right by my child.

I hope this blog will serve as welcoming nexus for a number of voices, allowing us all to learn, share, be challenged and grow.

The blog is born from nagging questions I have:

What can I do to prevent my adopted daughter -- who will be a black, Ethiopian-born girl raised by two white, American parents, in a family with two white, "bio-kid" (dislike that term) brothers -- from feeling alienated and isolated when she grows up?

How can I ensure that she is secure in her (multiple) identities -- as an African-American woman, as an Ethiopian-born woman and as a loved and cherished daughter?

How can I prevent her from feeling cut off from her roots and missing a piece of herself?

How can I prevent her from being too "white" for the black community, but, obviously, by virtue of being black, not feeling accepted by the white community?

How can I prepare her to confront racism when I have never been the victim of racism (but have been the de facto beneficiary of racism)?

How can I honor that which makes her unique in our family without also making her feel like an outsider?

How can I help her to cultivate her own sense of identity without inauthentically appropriating it myself?

I sometimes read blogs of white adoptive parents, and find them naive -- shocked by racism that I don't find shocking, hopeful in the face of that which I find worrisome. I also read the work of some adult transracial adoptees and feel very inadequate in the face of primal psychological issues of identity. Through this blog, I hope to find some middle-ground, between "no effort to address identity required" and "no effort to address identity will succeed".

In this blog, I would like to encourage PARTICIPATION. This is one blog that will only be as good as the comments posted.

Thanks in advance.