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.