I feel a sense of hesitation to write about this because it is an emotional subject for me, and many others. And I have some fears about not doing it right. I recognize that at age 42, I still have much to learn, and a lot of growing to do. Because of not seeing myself as a “finished product” right now, it always makes it harder for me to communicate my intimate thoughts and feelings. I am still, and hope to always be, in the process of personal evolution.
However, I also feel the urge to write about where I am at in this moment. And I realize it has been so long since I have written in our blog about our adoption. I think it has been close to 8 years possibly. It is time for an update.
For the sake of time, I don’t want to go into too many details about the whole story of our adoption. So I will try to just touch on the highlights, which I feel are helpful in explaining what I learned from this experience.
We started the adoption process in November of 2009.
The process was extremely challenging in so many different ways, but much was learned. On June 4, 2011, we welcomed 9 year old Andualem, aka “Andy” and 5 year old Hana, into our family on US soil. These two had in their very young lives, already been through more trauma than any child should ever have to endure. Their parents had died. We wanted to take over as their parents desperately. I felt extremely heartbroken for what they had been through, and I wanted to help them heal, and to love them unconditionally. We had absolutely fallen in love with these children during that 18 month adoption process, that is for sure.
I am embarrassed to express, so many things I am about to express here. But it is important to be honest and transparent in this. I know that it was my feeling early on in our adoption, that we were taking these children out of a truly terrible situation, to a haven of sorts, in America, in Utah…. And it was also my feeling that we were ready and well equipped to be everything to these children that they needed. Like I said, I am embarrassed to express this. I was incredibly naive!
We had a couple of good months when they first came home. But soon things got really really hard. Beyond the learning curve of getting to know each other more and more, there were the following hurdles: ethnic hair drama, major bathrooming issues due to the newness of the requirement to use bathroom facilities and how to’s, major dental repair work, working through positive TB and parasites, food hoarding and gorging issues, language barriers, cultural struggles, educational special needs, the fact that we were parents to a newborn, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 year olds, etc… Yet I have still not mentioned the toughest problem of all.
We had adopted kids that had been deeply traumatized. And lets be honest, adoption is likely traumatizing to birth parents and adopted children all the time! But these two had some real tear jerking trauma! Hana was, and still hides hers well. She holds everything in and puts on a smile. She steps up to the plate 9 times out of 10, with a smile on her face. But she randomly will have moments where she’ll break, and I see her pain. And then I feel her pain.
Andy on the other hand, managed his trauma in a much different way. He denied it, pushed it away, had extremely terrifying hours of rage and violence, mainly directed towards Steve and I thankfully. But it quite literally felt like a living nightmare for honestly 8 years. He was great when he was great, and we fully enjoyed him! But when he was not feeling great, he was quite abusive in all kinds of ways.
Andy was diagnosed with PTSD only 2 years ago.
I get upset when I think about how it took us 7 years of blood sweat and tears, to finally get this child an accurate diagnosis, and some help! Please trust me when I say, that it was not for lack of trying! We fought long and hard for him. But like I said, we were so naive in thinking we were well equipped to give these children everything they needed! We had to learn so many things along the way. And I am sad and embarrassed at myself for taking so long to figure those things out. I messed up a lot too. There were moments in time when Steve and I were afraid that this would be a failed adoption. It was hard not to go there mentally when he clearly rejected us for so long, in the most painful of ways.
But now Andy and Steve and I understand that it was because he was too scared to attach, for fear of experiencing a loss of another family. It was a trauma he knew in his heart he could not bear again. So he was determined to reject us the entire time. And it caused that pain to build for he and us.
Andy was not the only one inflicting pain. We were inflicting pain to him too. Not through intentional acts, but through shear ignorance of not understanding his needs and thus not being able to meet them, for so long.
It’s been about a year and a half now since Andy let go and decided he wanted to attach to this family. I think it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. But he did it, and we are so grateful he did. It made all those terrible times incredibly worth it. The love and relationship we share now is beautiful and beyond what I dreamed it would be all this time. We have overcome all this together, and we bonded deeply in the process. We also learned more than we can possibly express. But the greatest lesson I learned was that unconditional love really means unconditional. It means that there really is zero scenario in which I will not love and want and support the best for that person. And that is where I think we are finally at as a family. All ten of us. Because we all lived this story out together. And we will continue to do so.
Beyond learning to love each other unconditionally, our family also got front row seats to racism still being alive and well. And I am embarrassed how long it took us to wake up to how insidious it is.
Racism is systemic, racism is real and ugly, and white privilege is also real and unfair.
I will share some things that come to mind in regards to just Hana and Andy. When Andy was 12, he had a “christian” “friend” tell him that because his spirit before he was born was not good, he was born black. This same “friend” also boldy said he would no longer be calling him by his name, but by “N*****” instead. And he did, throughout the period of their “friendship”. But we did not find out about this until after we moved away from Utah. Hana and Andy have both been called the N word plenty of times, been spoken to in condescending ways. They’ve seen white classmates get off easier on things they got harsher consequences for, time and time again. The first few years of their education was in a school in Utah that only had maybe one or two other black kids their age, if that, in the entire school. They came to America not knowing about slavery. They had to be taught about that. And then they had to be taught about it in front of all their white classmates, as those kids had eyes fixed on the one black kid in class, trying to gauge their response to slavery being talked about.
But they also have to endure racism today. Andy is 18 now and still does not have his drivers license. We have tried to motivate him to get it for a few years now, in different ways. He finally admitted to me yesterday, that he has honestly put it off because he is scared. Not of getting in a crash, but of getting pulled over while black. Which we all know he sees played out online before his eyes, every. single. day. in terrifying ways. He definitely does not feel safe in America as an adult sized black male! And we are honestly scared we may lose our beautiful son we worked so hard to have in our lives senselessly killed too. Because we watch that play out too, all the time. It is terrifying.
What’s almost equally upsetting though, is that my kids have to endure people actually out there trying to deny, gaslight, downplay, whitewash, sweep under the rug, and even actively oppose the concept of equality each and every day. It is heavy to bear.
I thought 9 years ago when we brought these kids to America that I was 100% bringing them to a better country than Ethiopia. But I was ignorant that at least in Ethiopia they looked like everyone else. Therefore, they were mostly equal. So did I really bring them to a better country for them? Not if I don’t help this country become better for them, it isn’t.
