This is the Chinese symbol for family.
Lila is already so much a part of our family. We already hold her in our hearts and blow her kisses in the wind. Grace proved to me just the other day that she loves her little sister already. We were talking and I asked Grace if Lila was going to be her baby sister. Grace, in her sweet little 3 year old voice, said "Yeah, she’s my best friend!"
We truly feel like we are expecting a baby. The adoption community uses the term "paper pregnant" to describe this waiting period. It will be long but we cannot wait to see her for the first time.
I would like to try to explain issues she will face, our issues as an adoptive family, and our responsibilities as adoptive parents. Hopefully through educating everyone we can all help Lila when she comes home.
Lila will be abandoned at birth and have lifelong abandonment issues to deal with like wondering why she was abandoned, what was wrong with her that they gave her up, wasn't she good enough for them to keep, what did she do wrong to make them not love her? It is the responsibility of the adoptive family to provide unconditional acceptance and stability to help cope with abandonment.
She will have lived in an orphanage with hundreds of other babies and very few staff to care for them so very limited human contact. She will not have the copious amounts of love and undivided attention that parents shower on their infants. She will not understand love and not have learned to develop healthy relationships. She won't know how to trust or how to allow others to interact with & love her. She must be able to rely on her loved ones to nurture her.
She will be a minority in the US especially so in the predominantly white midwest. We will have to teach her how to deal with the racial discrimination that she will encounter from people at school, out shopping, at the zoo, in a park, in a restaurant, in any public place. She definitely doesn't need her family & friends adding to that discrimination.
She will see that she doesn't look like her mama, daddy & sister. She will feel that she is different from us. We cannot risk that someone in her extended family will treat her differently than they do Grace. She is in every way our daughter just as Grace is. We will not accept anything less than equality for both girls.
Please learn with us and learn to love & accept our new baby girl.
Lila is already so much a part of our family. We already hold her in our hearts and blow her kisses in the wind. Grace proved to me just the other day that she loves her little sister already. We were talking and I asked Grace if Lila was going to be her baby sister. Grace, in her sweet little 3 year old voice, said "Yeah, she’s my best friend!"
We truly feel like we are expecting a baby. The adoption community uses the term "paper pregnant" to describe this waiting period. It will be long but we cannot wait to see her for the first time.
I would like to try to explain issues she will face, our issues as an adoptive family, and our responsibilities as adoptive parents. Hopefully through educating everyone we can all help Lila when she comes home.
Lila will be abandoned at birth and have lifelong abandonment issues to deal with like wondering why she was abandoned, what was wrong with her that they gave her up, wasn't she good enough for them to keep, what did she do wrong to make them not love her? It is the responsibility of the adoptive family to provide unconditional acceptance and stability to help cope with abandonment.
She will have lived in an orphanage with hundreds of other babies and very few staff to care for them so very limited human contact. She will not have the copious amounts of love and undivided attention that parents shower on their infants. She will not understand love and not have learned to develop healthy relationships. She won't know how to trust or how to allow others to interact with & love her. She must be able to rely on her loved ones to nurture her.
She will be a minority in the US especially so in the predominantly white midwest. We will have to teach her how to deal with the racial discrimination that she will encounter from people at school, out shopping, at the zoo, in a park, in a restaurant, in any public place. She definitely doesn't need her family & friends adding to that discrimination.
She will see that she doesn't look like her mama, daddy & sister. She will feel that she is different from us. We cannot risk that someone in her extended family will treat her differently than they do Grace. She is in every way our daughter just as Grace is. We will not accept anything less than equality for both girls.
Please learn with us and learn to love & accept our new baby girl.
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