Little Acorn

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I've had some positive feedback about the lifebook pages and I think I'm inspiring some other Mamas to get to work on one for their child, so I'll keep going.

The page about the orphanage has had many revisions, but finally I decided that this is just the most simple of lifebooks and the time to go deeper is still to come and it can be seen as more of a conversation starter than a provider of all the answers (HA! as if I'll ever have all the answers). I think I had trouble with this page because of all the words and phrases around adoption, the only ones I continue to be uncomfortable with are "orphan" and "orphanage". I have never, and likely will never, use the word "orphan" to describe my daughter, as it just seems to have so many connotations that don't fit and it seems so negative. It sounds more like a playground taunt or a melodramatic Disney movie to me. "Orphanage" is a word that I wish I could do away with, but I know Adeline will have to face that word and that truth sometime, and better to learn about it from me where I can tell her the truth about what orphanage life was like for her - which was nothing like you see in the movies. Truly, Adeline was in the best of institutional care and I know she was loved and cherished, so it's not hard for me to tell her proudly what good care the nou-nous took of her when she was a baby, but orphanage is the word that has to be used, so that's what I'm going to start using sometimes.

Adeline was worried but brave on the day we met her. She was curious about us, but VERY serious and she continually searched the room for Nga, who kept coming back to try and make Adeline laugh (with no success). While it would be easy for me to focus on this as the happiest day of our lives, for Adeline it was a pretty weird and worrying experience, far from her normal daily routine, which she faced with an open heart and the most concerned looking eyebrows I've ever seen. I am continually grateful that, unlike in other countries, we didn't just take our daughter from everything she knows in the instant she met us and we had the chance to visit with her and her caregivers at the orphanage a few times. By the second visit Adeline was much more relaxed and was laughing with us, and when she was ready to come with us we weren't strangers anymore and we had learned a lot about her from Nga and the other nou-nous.

More Pages from the Lifebook

 

November 24th, 2009... I remember EVERYTHING about the day I met my daughter - right down to what I heard when I first woke up (for the first time in Hanoi I heard birds singing), what I had for breakfast (a ham sandwich, peach juice and tea), what I saw in the courtyard of the orphanage (a huge bright blue butterfly), and most importantly what my sweet baby's sweaty little body felt like when she was first placed in my arms and how her dark eyes looked right into mine.

Real Family

More pages from the lifebook...

 

These pages start to address the very big topic of how Adeline will answer questions about herself and her family once she is out in the world. This can be very challenging for many children, but hopefully Adeline will have the self-confidence she needs and will be armed with the right responses, so that whether the question is curious or intrusive or even confrontational or rude, she will be able to choose the response she is comfortable with. This is just laying the groundwork and we will continue to talk about this topic in more depth as Adeline grows. It also lays the groundwork for the inevitable "family tree" project and the "bring in a picture of you as a newborn" request (many children who were adopted or fostered don't even have baby pictures, never mind a newborn picture), the "write a story about the day you were born" assignment (this is my most dreaded assignment - it could be a very hurtful topic and make Adeline feel like she stands out, and the "ancestry" projects that Adeline will someday face in school. You would think with the many adopted children, children in foster care and children with untraditional families that these sort of assignments would be modified or replaced, but I hear from people in the adoption community all the time that their children are having these assignments given to them in school year after year. I will always have to be an advocate for Adeline, and my wish is that we will always have enlightened and thoughtful teachers. Ohhhhh...picking a school for Adeline...one of my constant nagging worries and she's not even three yet!

Lifebook Project (and a Two Year Home-i-versary!)

Happy Home-i-versary! Two years ago today Adeline started making the big blue house a noisier, messier and most of all a happier place!

The easiest pages to put together for the lifebook were ones like this that talked about Adeline's life since she's been with us...

And I apologize to all the scrapbookers out there, both digital and paper, that I have ever disparaged in the past. Yep, I was pretty snobby about the whole thing. It might not be art and you can get some pretty impressive results using very little creativity, but it's SUPER FUN and with some creativity I think it can really elevate photos to something much more special. Now I want to digital-scrapbook everything!

 

Lifebook Project

Adeline will have been home for two years on Monday. The time...whew...FLOWN. My seven month old baby is now my running-towards-three big girl and she has learned so much, changed so much and grown so much. Adeline is a very verbal girl and very curious about the world and how it works, and lately I've noticed her asking some questions about adoption, about Vietnam, and about where babies come from. We've always been open with talking to Adeline about her adoption and the fact that she has a birth family, but I think she's on the brink of beginning to actually understand what it all means. For a long time she would say "I was born in Vietnam! Mama and Daddy adopted me and I came home on the airplane!" but she didn't seem to really understand what any of that meant. My project has been working on a lifebook for Adeline that is told in age-appropriate and correct language and that tells HER story. It's not the story of her adoption, as her life didn't begin when she was adopted, but it is the story of her life. It's not a scrapbook as there are more words than pictures and our roles in it are only as they relate to Adeline. It's the first of a few lifebooks. I know that as she grows Adeline will need to process her adoption in different ways and will be able to understand things on different levels. Even in this tiny book there are some very hard to talk about topics, and when your intended reader is just about three, finding just the right language is hard. That was one of my motivations to work on this project now - I wanted David and I to be able to answer Adeline's questions confidently and without any hesitation as we searched for just the right words. I want to always be truthful, but not harsh, even though some of the things that have to be talked about ARE harsh. It's important for Adeline to have the truth, but my Mama heart wishes that she never ever had to feel a single hurt, so it's hard for me to write about how Adeline was brought to the orphanage or even just to use the word "orphanage", but I do it because I know I need to and I know that owning the truth of her story will give Adeline power. It's hard for me to know that I will always have to answer many of Adeline's questions with "I don't know. I wish I knew, but I don't know" and it's hard for me to know that there are going to be some hurts that I can't prevent or even make better. I'm going to share some pages with you as I know many of you are parents through adoption and you might be working on lifebook projects of your own, but I won't be sharing the pages that speak of Adeline's specific circumstances. Part of giving Adeline power is letting her decide who hears her story and when. It's not that it's a terrible story - she shares the basics of her life story with tens of thousands of other children - it's just that it's her story, not mine. And perhaps those of you who are parents through biology can read these pages too, and begin to talk to your little ones about adoption as a different way to make a family. It's guaranteed that they will know children who joined their family through adoption and the more people who grow up thinking that adoption is just a fact of life the better.

The first pages I'm going to share are the ones that are meant to teach that every baby is born. Many children who were adopted believe that there are two ways to come into the world - through birth and through adoption. It's important for Adeline to know that she is no different from anyone else, and that she was born too. Click on the picture to open a bigger and more readable image.

The black bar isn't on the original image, but there was some personal information there.

Then it gets a little harder to write as I needed to talk about birth parents and the choices that they make. These pages, along with the ones where I talk about the specific choices Adeline's birth family made, were the hardest to write. I wanted to put as positive a spin on it as I could, without sugar-coating and without discounting the pain that birth parents and adopted children can feel. It was also important to just stick to the facts and try to keep my bias, conjecture and guesses about how people might have been feeling out of it. All that and make it concise and understandable for an almost-preschooler.

Whew. To be honest working on this project has brought up a lot of emotions for me. I've had a lot of time to reflect and think and while I think it's been good for me, there have been tears. Tears for myself, tears for Adeline's birth family, tears for the many children in the world who will never have a family and of course tears for my daughter.