She Thought WHAT was ADOPTION?!??

On St. Patrick’s Day, we watched a family film about Patrick’s early life and his years in Ireland, as a slave and then a missionary. After the scene where Patrick is captured from his family’s town in Britain and taken to Ireland, seven-year-old Regina ran to my husband and asked if Patrick was being adopted! I was, of course, horrified. Unable to hear the rest of their brief conversation, I asked my husband later. He’s great with kids but can be a little frustrating when describing detail, so I’m not sure exactly what they said. Later he calmly told me, … Continue reading →

Christmas Stories and Quotes, Seen in the Light of Adoption

Our former adoption blogger MJ wrote about the relationship between her faith and adoption. I’ve been thinking about some quotes, Scriptural and otherwise, that have a new meaning for me when seen in the light of our family’s experiences with adoption. Visualizing the Christmas Story can be a bit more intensely real when you think of your child being born in a borrowed house and possibly left there for a day in a cold December. If you have an international family, many of the charity appeals you hear this time of year seem not so far away, but much closer … Continue reading →

Life after Adoption: Secret Fears

I recently reviewed Jana Wolff’s Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother. My last two blogs share some of My Own Secret Thoughts as we began the adoption process and My Secret Suspicions while we were out of the country adopting. When we considered adopting, I had some fears about life after adoption as well. Some of these are embarrassing to admit. I worried a bit about whether it would be hard for me to find her in a large group of Korean kids, such as at culture camp. My siblings and I each have a different hair color, so it … Continue reading →

Secret Suspicions

In my last blog, I shared some fears I had as I began the adoption process. Here, I will share some fears I had about the overseas agency and overseas adoption process in general. These fears came from stories that circulate about foreign officials or adoption workers telling adoptive parents what they want to hear, not tell all the fees, etc. I had no reason to fear our agency—except for room and board, we paid all our fees to the American agency, who paid the Korean adoption agency. Nevertheless, the rumors lingered. I was secretly afraid that unexpected delays would … Continue reading →

My Very Own Secret Thoughts

I’ve recently reviewed Jana Wolff’s memoir, Secret Thoughts of An Adoptive Mother. I’ve also shared my own impressions and experiences regarding the issues she raises in two of my blogs: here and here . But I promised myself that rather than just react to Wolff’s experiences and feelings and comment on how mine were the same or different, I would take the time to recall and bring into the sunlight other thoughts I did have during the process of deciding when, how, from where and who to adopt—and through the process of actually doing it. Assumptions and feelings just below … Continue reading →

Thoughts of Another Adoptive Mother

My last blog was a review of Jana Wolff’s memoir Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother. It led me to reflect: did I relate to her thoughts as she went through the adoption process? Did I have other secret thoughts? I do sometimes wonder how Wolff’s now-teenage son feels about this book. I think that, although Wolff shares her conflicting, not-so-socially-correct thoughts like we all have from time to time, her love of her son and her appreciation for his birthmother come through. Her son may well value this record of his mother’s experience. Still, adoptive parents now are advised … Continue reading →

Easter Again…a Reminder of our Miracles

It’s Easter again–six Easters after I broke one of my rules. The rule I broke? “No hassling doctors or social workers at home unless someone is dying.” But I needed to know! We were supposed to be having a medical consultation, via conference call, on whether the grim prognosis we’d initially gotten about our daughter’s sister was valid. Would she have needs that we would be unable to meet, given family health issues and our two other children? Somehow we had gotten the wires crossed. And I just couldn’t observe Easter without knowing: was I celebrating a new life that … Continue reading →

More Musings:

As we were leaving speech therapy last week, we mentioned our plans to have corned beef corned beef for dinner (for St. Patrick’s Day). Meg’s therapist said, “Are you all Irish?” “Sure. Every last one of us.” Except that, like most witty responses, this came to me after the fact. It’s probably a good thing anyway. Emphasizing the difference would have just made her feel different. She’s also getting to the age of being embarrassed in talking about herself and being adopted, although she seems much more ready to talk about being Korean since we had a Korean student stay … Continue reading →

Resources for Learning the History of Other Cultures

When I decided to adopt from Korea, I knew next to nothing about the culture. In what little mention of them there is in books, Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia are often presented as victim nations, poor and often governed by puppet regimes of other countries. This is not great for self-esteem. (Regarding self-esteem: I’ve always thought some women were too sensitive to non-inclusive language. I’ve always been fine assuming that “all men” included me. But as I get older I see subtle discrimination more than I ever thought I would, and I realize the power of hearing … Continue reading →

“Nightmare on My Street”

I’ve written recently about my daughter Regina’s transition to kindergarten and about some extra issues that can come up for adopted children as they enter school. Now there’s a new wrinkle: Regina seems much happier at school and has mostly stopped having toileting troubles and long tantrums. However, now Meg is waking up every night with nightmares. Sometimes she is literally shaking when she wakes up. For her it has been Halloween every night for the past two weeks, it seems. She tries to snuggle into bed with us. One night I said I really wanted her to stay in … Continue reading →