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For National Adoption Awareness Month, we asked adoptees and their families to share with us their thoughts, feelings and experiences regarding adoption. This is one courageous mama’s true story of attaching with her teenage son.
Written by E, adoptive mama
Adoption is not for the faint of heart.
It is not unicorns and rainbows, and anyone going into it with visions of Little Orphan Annie better wise up REAL QUICK.
What adoption has taught me is that love is a verb.
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For National Adoption Awareness Month, we asked adoptees and their families to share with us their thoughts, feelings and experiences regarding adoption. This is one courageous mama’s true story of attaching with an older child.
Written by Kate, adoptive mama less than one year home from China
Although I denied it at first, I had conjured up expectations of what “attachment” would look like when we began the adoption process of our then-9-year-old girl.
She had been abandoned at the age of 6, although this was a rough estimate by the police and social services.
She could only state her name.
No connection with a specific town.
No family to speak of.
Just a name.
Who had loved this child before she was found? Who had tucked her in at night, reassured her that she would be taken care of? Met her basic physical needs?
We just didn’t know.
We received her picture from friends who had met her in China. They were finalizing their own adoption of a girl aging out of the program, and they felt drawn to this quiet child from across the room. She was tender and sweet; soft spoken.
It was God who brought that small, intimate encounter across the ocean.
Right to our door step.
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Our sweet friends the Whirleys hosted and advocated for Jason, a then-12-year-old orphan from China, in December 2016. In March 2018, this family traveled to China to bring this now 14-year-old boy home forever. We asked Hunter Whirley, an amazing tell-it-like-it-is Army combat veteran, to share with us the journey to Jason from an adoptive father’s perspective. Warning: This is not yo' mama's travel log. This is Hunter's [sometimes spicy, sometimes sassy but always straight-up] story. We're so grateful to him for sharing his unique perspective.
When Supermom asked me to write for her blog, my first reaction was: “You sure about that?”
So may this be on her head, allowing the sordid storytelling of a redneck Texan, former Army dude who someone allowed to adopt a Chinese teenager. [Editor's note: We'll take it and even barely sanitize it in order to gain your valuable adoptive father's perspective! ;)]
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Fourteen.
In China, it’s the magic age — the age that children “age out” of the international adoption system and are no longer available for adoption.
The number of birthdays they have until their file closes.
The age Jason, the child hosted by our beautiful friends during the same session we hosted Joy last winter, would have become an orphan FOREVER.
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DJ, the child we hosted and advocated for during the summer of 2016 and our forever “nephew,” has officially been a son for one full year! We asked his mama, Rebecca, if she would give us an update on life back home in Chicago. This is her honest, f’real, brave and vulnerable look behind the scenes of the last challenging year as a mama to that boy we love so much. Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your story. <3
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