Much Ado About a Passport Adoption Families.com

Thousands of miles away I have a daughter waiting for me. Her name is Laney. She is legally my daughter; she even has my last name. However, I can’t bring her home, at least not yet. The reason seems really simple to an American – all we need is a passport. However, in Liberia, Laney’s country, nothing is simple. Everyone is focused on getting through each day. “Unimportant” things like paperwork often fall to the wayside when people are focused on the basics. Food, water, shelter, safety – these things take precedence. One day, probably in a few months, someone will have time to focus on passports and Laney’s will be issued so that she can come home. Until then, we wait.

What we are experiencing with Liberia is a good example of the problems people often face when completing international adoptions. Most international adoptions are from Third World countries. As a result, adoptive parents come face to face with how slowly things happen in these countries. When people are struggling just to get by, adoption often isn’t their first priority. Paperwork can sit on someone’s desk for months, documents are misplaced, meetings don’t happen because no one gets around to attending them. It’s all part of the process and it can greatly frustrate parents waiting for their children.

What can you do about it? I’m sorry to say that the answer is “not much!”. We have very little influence over the governments and officials who make the decisions and process the documents that will bring our children home. It is just one of the realities of international adoption. Instead, we just have to sit back and hold on for the ride. Some people’s adoptions will go quickly and others will drag on and on. Yet, we can comfort ourselves in the fact that adoptions are completed and children do come home; and when they do come home they are so completely worth the wait!

So, I sit here in Texas and wait for someone in Liberia to have the time to process a passport for my little girl. In the meantime, I try to keep myself busy and I look forward to the day that Laney is here and I can happily file that long-awaited passport in a drawer and shake my head at all the trouble it took to get it.