Adoption, by definition is a relationship that can only be formed after a tremendous loss. Before she comes home to us, our daughter will have lost her entire family. In all likelihood, she will have to struggle for survival in less than ideal orphanage conditions. Following that, she will spend time (between 4 and 9 months) in the CAFAC foster home. This is better care than an orphanage could provide, but it is still institutional care. When we bring her home to Canada, she will loose everyone she has any connection with. She will loose her country. She will loose access to anyone who can speak to her in Amharic. Everything will smell, taste and look different. She will also be jet lagged and will have to re-align her biological clock with a new time zone. When she comes to us, she will be in shock, having suffered more losses in her little life than most of us will experience in our entire lifetime and she will not have the language or emotional maturity to express herself. I have asked myself many times whether this is fair. Whether it is ok. Whether adoption is ethical. Adoption nay-sayers claim that it is not. They say that it is wrong to rob a child of his or her cultural heritage, to remove children from their homeland. The answer I have come up with is this. No, it is not fair. In an ideal world, all families would be able to stay together, and children would be raised by their biological parents. In an ideal world, parents would not die of AIDS, children would not suffer from malnutrition and mothers would not have to make the impossible choice of abandoning one baby with the hopes that she will be able to feed the others. But the world is far from ideal, and in this broken, troubled world, an inter-racial family halfway across the world is better than none at all. We cannot do anything about our daughter’s losses, except to hold her, cry with her, help her heal, and help her learn to trust us. No, we cannot give her roots, but I hope someday, we will give her wings.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
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1 comment:
Hey Leah,
I was catching up on all of your posts, and this one really struck me, because we have considered adoption (wow you guys have been SO PATIENT). There are so many what if's and some are more valid than others.
What every parent knows is that they can not protect their child from everything, any more than they can give them everything. But we can give them a loving home and a safe place to be to explore, and capture all they need; the capablility to do that is the gift you give her!
Miss seeing you guys!
xx Emma
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