Adoption Blogger Interview Project: Part Two

If you missed yesterdays post scroll on down and check it out first. You don't want to miss what Tara Bradford of Smore Stories shared as part of the Adoption Blogger Interview Project. The second half of her interview is powerful and I am so thankful for her unique perspective. I know you will be too! 

               As an adoptee, is there a common theme you see among adoptive parents that makes you shake your head and wish you could speak into?

I think as an adoptee one of the most important things that I would stress to adoptive parents is to keep your child’s past a part of their story. I personally grew up not knowing anything about my heritage and culture. I don’t think it was intentional on my mom’s part, but she simply didn’t realize the importance of it to my wholeness as an adoptee.

Particularly with transracial adoptions, it’s vital to talk with your child about where they came from and help them be proud of the fact that they are not one, but two cultures. I am Korean and I am American, yet, I think many times parents don’t realize that as adoptees, we think we have to be one or the other. This becomes a serious identity issue because we are then stuck in a space where we don’t feel as if we belong to either culture. Many cultures may shun adoptees when we return because we grew up in America, yet as we grow up in America we don’t feel as though we fit in here either.

Please don’t fear your child’s history. Please don’t think that if we don’t talk about it, then it will go away and all will be fine. It simply won’t. The more adoptive parents talk about, shed positive light on, and provide open dialogue with their adoptee about their birth country or culture, the more you will establish a sense of confidence in them about who they are and where they came from as well as a confidence in the fact that being adopted is a good thing, not something to feel ashamed about. I recently wrote a post entitled “When adoption, race and parenting collide” that speaks more specifically to this challenge transracial families face.

              Is there anything you wish you had done to better equip yourself prior to adopting your children from Ethiopia?

If I could go back and have the time again in the “paper pregnancy” stage of adoption, I would have done more to understand Trust Based Parenting, helping a child heal from their wounded past, and what my own damage is that I bring into the parent-child relationship.

I’ve recently done training through Empowered To Connect to learn how to teach parents the Trust Based Parenting (TBP)model and I have seen the fruits of this in my own home with our children and with myself as a parent. It’s a “relationally” based model that is based on how God parents us. Much of what we learn as parents comes from our own childhood and our parents model of parenting. In my early parenting years I learned mostly how to do “behavioral” based parenting. The TBP model has shown me how to empower my children by teaching them to use their voice (words) in a respectful way while staying in connection (relationship) with them as I teach them how to correct the desired behavior and then praise them as they show the correct behavior thereby leaving them with “motor-memory”. I would previously send my kids to time out expecting them to know how to behave differently when they were done. I realized how I had been unfairly expecting my children to know how to act. It’s really humbling as an adult when we think about how many times we know we need to repeat an action for it to become habit (research shows 66 times) in our own lives, yet, we expect our children, who don’t come with an innate moral blueprint, to know how to ask for a toy rather than grab it, or talk through conflict rather than get aggressive and hit because they are mad. This training and the book The Connected Child was instrumental in giving me the tools to parent and help our children heal from the situation they came from.

The other piece is what I bring to the parent-child relationship as the parent. I’ve been on a long journey, as I mentioned previously, to heal from my own abandonment and my training has helped me realize that I bring my own baggage into relationships. It’s helped me a lot to work with an attachment counselor for my kids and myself. It’s also helped me to read Parenting From The Inside Out by Daniel Siegel. It’s become very apparent, that if I don’t know the way to healing myself, then how do I expect to guide my kids to a place of their own healing?

               What advice would you give adoptive parents as we seek to mix our biological and adopted kids and unite them as siblings?

First, I would encourage parents to think about the simple things such as, how they “refer” to their kids within their presence and to friends, family, etc. There are many words we use in talking about adoption that can make our adopted kids feel like they really aren’t “ours”. If we talk about our birth and adopted kids differently within our respective families, then how will we foster an environment where they will feel like they are equal to or united with their siblings?

Second, we have the same rules and same expectations in our home for all of our kids. Our 3 main ones are “Be Respectful, No Hurts (verbally or physically) and Stick Together (we do things that help us stay together as family, rather than things that would pull us apart)”.

Third, I would encourage parents to establish a confidence in their kids that they are each uniquely created and that everyone has a unique purpose intended by God within our family and within our world. Without each person’s contribution, it changes the quality of our family and ultimately the quality of our world, as we become adults. When we work together as a family to protect each other, work together and be kind to each other, we are doing our part to help our family be a safe, positive, loving environment that allows us each to be our unique selves.

Fourth, talk with your birth children and prepare/coach them in understanding the possible trauma their siblings have come from. We took our sons with us to Ethiopia so they could experience first hand the culture and poverty that their siblings were coming from. We try our best to help our birth sons see that they are a piece of the healing journey for their siblings and that they play an important role in partnering with them.

Lastly, I would encourage parents to not celebrate “Gotcha Day” as something only celebrating your adopted children. As an adoptee, I struggle with this name and how it has traditionally been celebrated. As an adoptive parent I struggle with how this puts focus on our adopted children only and depending on how it’s celebrated, can have an exclusionary element to our birth children. Our family has “Family Celebration” day which is a celebration on September 11^th when we touched US soil with our children who recently joined our family. We had ethnic food and then took time to have each of our kids’ share how they feel loved in this family and what family has meant to them personally in the past year. My husband and I answer the same questions and we try to stress the celebration is our way of honoring our family in the new sense of how it exists. We take time to honor each of our children and their uniqueness and what that brings to our family as a whole.

               How do you feel about terms which have become mainstream in the Christian orphan care movement – “fatherless” “orphan” “vulnerable children” “needy” “poor”?

The terms themselves don’t bother me because if God spoke of them, we should also :-). What I would say is disappointing for me, is the lack of these actual voices in the movement itself.

As one who was once “fatherless” an “orphan” a “vulnerable child” who was “needy” and “poor” it saddens me that the larger orphan care movements are not harnessing and embracing the actual ones who lived this out in their personal lives. There are many amazing, godly people who have helped the orphan care movement in tremendous ways calling others to action. My concern is that those of us who are/were the “fatherless” “orphan”, etc. are not the ones being asked to help be the movement. It’s as if we are the “show” piece bringing the heart wrenching story or the “drama” in the conference rather than being utilized as a resource for the meat of the conference. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a conference who is utilizing us, “fatherless”, to the core of being the actual voice. If we truly want to speak for and defend the cause of orphans, shouldn’t we start by listening to the ones called “orphans”? Couldn’t we be utilizing the voice itself rather than trying to be the voice for them?

               What is the main thing you think adoptees want their parents to know?

An adoptee is in this position because adults along the way have made all the decisions for them. We are juggled from adult to adult through orphanages or the foster system and then finally ending in a forever family. That’s a lot of change, a lot of trauma in a small child’s life.

Adoptees have had no voice in their life trajectory and their circumstances are a result of adults who couldn’t/wouldn’t care for them and adults who ultimately chose to care for them.

We want to know that our feelings have been considered, our voices have been heard, our pain has been cradled, our grief has been treasured and our lives have been worth fighting for. We want parents who won’t abandon us again. We want to understand who we are and where we’ve come from and how we merge these two very diverse worlds together. We want to know that even though you didn’t give birth to us physically, in your heart we are a physical birth and no matter what happens you will be by our side to help us understand our identity and to help us reconcile our past, present and future. We want to know that you are our forever partner in this journey of adoption.

There is SO MUCH in these words and I want to say "THANK YOU!" to Tara for sharing her story and wisdom with us. I'm praying the last paragraph for us all, that we would be able to give those things to the children God has in our homes and the ones we are still waiting for.

Adoption Blogger Interview Project: Part One

In honor of National Adoption Month I am participating in the Adoption Blogger Interview Project. The project pairs up over 100 bloggers to interview one another and I was blessed to be matched with Tara Bradford of "Smore Stories". Tara is an adoptive mother and also an adoptee. She has some serious wisdom for all of us on this journey - I am excited to share it with you! Part Two is coming tomorrow!

               Share how long you have been married and the names and ages of your children.

My husband, Ty, and I have been married for 19 years. He is a true gift from the Lord and I can’t imagine life without him! We have 5 amazing, very different and uniquely made children… Alex(18), Meskerem(16), Evan(14), Worku(12) and Zenash(9).

               Tell us your horizontal adoption story.

I was born in South Korea and adopted at the age of 3 into a Caucasian family who already had a son by birth and he is 2 years older than me. I was raised in a small town in North Dakota where I was the only minority for most of my childhood.

Shortly after coming to my family, my parents separated and eventually divorced. My mother was married 2 more times during my childhood but she spent many of those years as a single mom. Her third husband eventually became my legal father because of a very emotionally difficult relationship with my mom’s first husband who initially adopted me, but blamed me for his divorce from her. He had agreed to adopt me thinking it would help save his marriage, and of course, it didn’t. I didn’t. This resulted in a childhood filled with a lot of anger and resentment from a man who was supposed to be my father. I grew up very distanced emotionally from him feeling the weight of his resentment, yet not really knowing what I had done wrong. At the age of 21 years old, he confessed to me one day that he had not wanted to adopt me but did it to save his marriage. It was after this that I had my mom’s third husband named as my legal adoptive father. There were some relational strains within my family as a result of my decision, but I don’t regret choosing to separate myself from him. I knew it was what I needed to do to be free from the emotionally, unhealthy relationship and begin my healing process as an adoptee.

A few years ago, I expressed to my brother that I wanted his father to know that I’d forgiven him and that I didn’t harbor any resentment towards him anymore. My brother was hesitant, but eventually communicated my wishes to his father. I soon received a note in the mail from his father apologizing for his hurtful words and the way he had treated me. It’s been amazing and healing to have this come full circle and continue my healing journey as I deal with the past wounds of being abandoned.

               Tell us your vertical adoption story and how your horizontal adoption affected your feelings towards Abba Father.

I grew up knowing God existed, but church was never a priority in our family. I definitely had an admiration for Him as I always believed God existed but never understood the magnitude of the relationship He desired to have with me.

It wasn’t until one day when my world fell apart as a wife and mom that I came to understand exactly who this Abba Father was. I was ready to walk away from my life, husband and kids. I had always struggled with a sense of self worth and belonging and I came to a point where I felt like everyone would be better off without me on this earth.

I sought out a gal I barely knew who had shared her story of depression with me at one time. Little did I know she had given her life to the Lord a few months prior to that day when I, myself, would sit with her and accept the love and relationship Christ was offering me. As I shared with her how my life was not going well and hoping to get some recommendations from her for counselors, she poignantly and bluntly stated, “You don’t need a doctor, you need Jesus!”

I chose to give my life to the Lord after Michele shared her testimony with me and to this day we have the privilege of working together for the Kingdom and doing life together as dear friends and sisters in Christ.

Since the day of saying “Yes!” to Jesus, I have been on a long journey healing from my father wounds through my horizontal adoption. I’ve realized the magnitude that I only know my Abba Father intellectually as a result of my distant and unhealthy relationships with my earthly fathers causing me to never fully give my heart to any of them. To this day I continue to work on accepting and feeling the love of my Abba Father and incorporating that into my intellectual faith and understanding of who he is and how much he loves me as his daughter.

                You share openly on your blog the challenges you are experiencing as an adoptive mom and your sons recent diagnoses. How do you decide what to share and is there anything “off-limits” for the blog?

When I began Smore Stories, it was to chronicle our adoption process so others could get updates. Once we came home with our kids last year, I began to write as a way to openly share that adoption is hard and messy but beautiful and redeeming. My desire is to be transparent about how I feel and what I’m processing as an adoptee and adoptive mom utilizing our family life experiences as we navigate through them. I do my very best to keep my posts about the life circumstance we are moving through being the center of the post rather than the child themselves being the center of the post. Our challenges, particularly with our son, are not his fault, yet we as a family have to move through them together. I would never belittle or insult the being of who any of my children are in that online space because I love them each dearly. I’m truly hoping that other families will visit Smore Stories because it is an open, honest, reflection of true life in our circumstances as a multi-racial family living in the world of adoption. If we can minister to the hearts of others through our experience then I believe that we are bringing adoption to others for God’s glory.

                  Has your story as an adoptee uniquely gifted you to connect with your adopted children? If so, please share your experiences with us.

As an adoptee-adoptive parent, I’ve been able to connect with my adopted children in a few areas that some may not be able to. Our shared experiences of losing our birth families are one unique connection.  The other is living in a white culture as a transracial adoptee.

I understand the wonderment of our birth families life, the grieving and the loss of our birth family, the awkwardness associated with being a transracial adoptee and the challenge of being able to navigate how we fit into a culture where we are challenged by our racial identity.

I’ve been able to share with them my own feelings and story as an adoptee in grieving my own birth family as well as being teased at school and feeling as if I don’t fit in. It’s given me the opportunity to minister to their hearts and situations through what I personally went through as an adoptee.

Yes, as a fellow adoptee, I’ve walked in similar shoes to my children, yet, any adult can also understand the feeling of grief in losing a parent(such as through death at an early age), the feeling of abandonment with the absenteeism of fathers in our world today, and also the feeling of loneliness and lack of belonging in our own lives where we were excluded from social circles or left out by a friend. If we are honest about our own childhood’s we might be surprised how we can understand how our children feel and remember being in similar shoes. Things like grief, abandonment, loneliness, lack of belonging aren’t mutually exclusive to adoptees, they are just the reality of our fallen world.

Head over to Tara's blog to read more about her experiences as an adoptive mom, adoptee and orphan advocate. Also check out the other Adoption Blogger Interviews at Production, Not Reproduction.