Today, I am being featured in an interview over at Lipsticking. I feel privileged to appear on this great blog by Yvonne, she is a marketing maven with moxy--she knows women online. The interview is about our adoption, international adoption in general and our challenges to becoming parents.
Yes, challenge number one is the wait. I It seems more of a challenge everyday when people ask me, "how is the progress of the adoption going?". The adoption isn't going it is stalled out and I am waiting. I probably wont have any significant news for a year or more!
There is a silver lining per se. There is something good. Besides having time to create a 100 Good Wishes Quilt to wrap my daughter is when she comes home and laying her in a crib in a room (which I am decorating in a garden theme) filled with enchantment, I am preparing to raise a child who is not biologically my own. She will be from a country far away. She will be a different race from her mother. We, her parents will be uprooting her from the only life she has ever known. We will be exchanging her country, her identity, her home, for a loving family, the one thing that will be a challenge to her in China. So we will be giving her love--lots of it, she will have a good education, lots of things, nurtured--probably excessively. The one thing that will be a challenge is providing her with a connection to the culture of her birth. This is what we have a lot of time to prepare to do. I realize a lot of it will be learning as we go. Being prepared and open, I believe, is a good way to start so that someday I am not surprised when my 10 year old starts expressing interest in her country of birth or is facing some racism. She needs to be comfortable with us, herself, her country of origin, the U.S. I want her to be prepared and I want her culture to be part our culture. I want to start this from day one rather than adding it as questions arise.
I read a lot of articles, blogs, comments where some parents think nothing of extracting a child from their birth country and expect their precious child will be an American through and through. What is "American" anyway? America is about making room for all, right? But does that mean everyone has to be the same? Identity is important to all of us and in those pre-teen and teen years it will be even more so. If we haven't prepared what will we do when she asks questions? What will we tell her about her story, her country, her race? If the children of some of these blog authors ever read some of these blogs that treat birth countries as insignificant, or where they continually complain about all aspects of the trip to go get her I wonder how will this affect her? Even if she doesn't read it these attitudes are there--in that parent, how will those microagressive attitudes affect her? I want to start right away, including all aspects of my daughter in our lives. I never want her to feel rejected, put down, inferior, or not a part of her own family. That is one reason I am working on my calendar. To provide a sense of belonging for children through visual representation. I'd like to encourage you, the reader, to participate. Rather than pretending our children are not different we should address it, acknowledge it, and talk about it. I am learning as I go and am continually challenged.
Whether we are adopting or not I think everyone could use a little diversity training. So I have added a new list in my side bar to the left with sites and blogs that address the same issues. These sites give a lot to think about. They challenge my thoughts and ideas. Give me new thoughts and ideas. They make me question what is best. But from what I hear this is a lot of what being a parent is all about.
So as I continue to read all kinds of blogs, I will continued to be challenged, reassessing and striving for what is "best".
