Transracial Adoption

Konjo Handmade

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December 6, 2012 By sharla Leave a Comment

What an amazing opportunity to sit down, have a cup of coffee and write a wee little article for you to enjoy (at least I hope you do). I guess I get to be one of the exceptions on the Adoption Magazine, I was asked to write up about my new little business venture and how I came upon doing it!

My husband and I adopted our son Job from Ethiopia in October, 2011. At the beginning of our wait, I was introduced to another lady that was also waiting for a daughter from Ethiopia. She brought her home shortly after we met, and I started looking for little gifts here and there for this beautiful little girl. I went to the big box toy store to look for a Black Doll in our smaller city. Looking at the HUNDREDS of pink and purple boxes down the BIG long aisle, I realized how sad that really is; I couldn’t for the life of me find a Black Doll. I asked one of the associates if they had one. She took me back down the same aisle I was in and grabbed the box and said ‘this is the only one we have’. I debated in my head of whether I should start to laugh or educate this girl on what black people look like. The box I was holding was a slightly darker shade of cream. I left empty handed!

One day I came across a pattern at my local quilt shop for an ADORABLE doll! ‘Ruby Lou Doll’ Designed by sewmuchado.blogspot.com. I realized that I could make my OWN black doll! I made up two dolls and gifted them for two little friends. I took a picture of the dolls and posted it on Facebook. A couple of other friends expressed their interest if I were to sell the dolls. So I acquired a limited license to sell these adorable dolls and just opened an Etsy shop to sell them to you all!!! I made up 5 dolls right away and have 20 other dolls in the works!! I named the shop ‘Konjo Handmade’ by Jennifer Giesbrecht. The word ‘Konjo’ in Amharic (one of the main languages spoken in Ethiopia) means ‘Beautiful’. I truly love all the dolls I make so much; I think they are so beautiful and I’m so happy to know I’m helping find joy within little girls out there knowing there is a doll that looks like them! My mind is swirling with the possibilities of making other nationalities of dolls cuz I know other adoptive Mommas will be interested for their children for sure! BUT before I start making all those, I know of a special little 2-year-old that would LOVE a little Black boy doll –so that’s next on my list to create!

I hope you stop by my shop, take a peek, and drop me a note to let me know what other nationalities you are looking at purchasing for your kiddos! Here’s the link to the shop!

www.konjohandmade.etsy.com

Filed Under: Transracial Adoption

10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before International Adoption

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September 3, 2012 By sharla Leave a Comment

1. What are the country’s requirements?

Each country has its own requirements for adoptive parents. Restrictions on such things as age, marital status, family size, religion, income, health, and even weight may exist and are important to know before you make a decision about international adoption. Before starting the process of international adoption, be sure to research country requirements.

2. What children are available?

Due to the nature of international adoption, it is almost impossible to adopt a newborn. The majority of children up for adoption range in age from toddlers to teens. There are also sibling groups available, as well as children with special needs.

3. How will you finance an international adoption?

International adoption includes costs such as agency fees, orphanage fees, legal fees, paperwork completion, and travel expenses. Adoption from some countries is considerably more expensive than from others. Take a look at these steps you can take to finance an adoption.

4. Are you comfortable parenting a child of a different race and/or culture?

Transracial adoption has additional factors that need to be looked at such as how culturally diverse your neighborhood is, your willingness to incorporate your child’s culture into your family, and how you plan to tackle the issue of racism with your child.

5. Can you handle the unpredictable nature of an international adoption?

International adoption can be an emotional roller coaster. Country programs can change their requirements or shut down to foreign adoption altogether. Some countries have more stable, better established adoption programs. Newer programs can sometimes be faster, but are less secure. Look carefully at the track record of the country program that you are considering.

6. Do your current obligations allow for time away?

Some countries require a residency stay before an adoption can be completed. This can range from several weeks to a year or more. Factors such as career and family obligations need to be considered when looking into countries with residency requirements. Other countries require multiple trips to complete an adoption. If you have a job where you need to give advance notice of time away, those countries may not be the best choice for your situation.

7. What will you know about the child’s history?

In international adoption, there is often less documentation regarding a child’s medical background and family history. This is a very important factor to consider as it not only impacts your ability to prepare for potential needs that you may not anticipate, but it will affect your child’s ability to have a full medical history as an adult. Even international adoption that is not officially a special needs adoption may turn out to be one.

8. Are you willing to learn or teach a new language?

When adopting an older child from a foreign country, there is the possibility that they will not speak the same language as you do. Most children do pick up new languages quickly, but it will still affect their ability to communicate, their reading, and overall learning.

9. What are you prepared to do to encourage healthy attachment?

Many factors impact a child’s ability to attach to a new caregiver. These include the time spent at an orphanage, the quality of care received, pre- and post-natal malnutrition, the number of placements or caregivers, prior trauma, abuse or neglect, and other risk factors. Spending time researching the type of care that waiting children receive in the country you are considering will give you a better idea of what attachment issues you may be facing with your prospective adoptive child.

10. Is international adoption right for your personal situation?

When researching your adoption options, it is important to consider the needs and makeup of your family, the strength of your support system, what you feel you can provide for a child, your financial resources, your overall physical and mental health, and what you feel is right given your current situation. International adoption can be a wonderful way to build or add to your family, but is not easy and should be pursued only after careful consideration.

The Talk

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March 27, 2012 By sharla 5 Comments

It is time for me to have “the talk” with my two younger boys. I don’t want to do it. I feel sick at the thought of it, but it’s time. It’s time because of what they have been hearing on the radio and seeing on the news and because Einstein is so tall that he is starting to look like a teenager.

By “the talk”, I don’t mean the birds and the bees talk. That talk happened awhile ago, delivered by The Husband while I sat eavesdropping outside the door, laughing near hysterically when I heard the boys’ reactions like “ewww”, “gross”, “that’s DISgusting”, and “when I’m married, do I HAVE to do that?”!!! (let’s hope they still feel the same way when they are teenagers!) No, that talk was easy, especially for me since I only did the listening! The thought of this talk has me losing sleep.

I look at my boys, at these precious faces, and I wonder if they will have the same sparkle in their eyes, that innocence, after I tell them the truth.

With my older boys, I never had to have this intentional, sit-down talk. I didn’t have to carefully choose my words and wonder about crushing their spirits. I spoke openly about all parts of history, without the cracking of my voice betraying the breaking of my heart. When the older boys were younger, we owned the Disney movies “Ruby Bridges” and “Selma, Lord Selma” and I taught them about the Civil Rights movement, about slavery, about racism. My sons would sing freedom marches on the way to the playground, my brown eyed, brown haired son and my blue eyed, so-blond-it-was-white haired son, both of them with my pale skin and freckles. I’m sure it looked out of place, these white boys and their mom marching and singing freedom songs, but I wanted them to remember, to know. I was proud that my boys always drew their pictures using all the colours in the crayon box. Because we were a foster family at the time, even though we lived in a predominantly white community, we were never an all white family. I was careful to buy black dolls and books with black characters (very hard to come by and I had to go outside of our community to buy them, which I complained about to several store managers). So, even though racism was on my radar, it was on the peripheral.

I remember reading an article when we were very early on in our adoption process about how white adoptive parents who adopt black sons should teach them to carry a picture of themselves with their family by their driver’s license so that WHEN they were pulled over (not if), the officer would see it and perhaps pass on some of that white privilege to them because of their parents. I was sickened. I catalogued the information from that article in a tiny part of my brain, hoping to never have to access it again.

When we adopted our first black son (technically bi-racial), I did educate myself a bit more about the types of things he would face as he got older living in our society. I attended seminars on raising a black child in a white world. I read books on transracial adoption. I spoke to friends, in particular my black friends. I asked questions and listened. I read news articles that scared me, but I thought, “not my son” or “not in Canada…that is only in the United States”.

When we adopted a son and daughter from Ethiopia who are both black (seems obvious, but you’d be surprised the questions you get, so I want to clear up any confusion), I didn’t give race much thought. I considered their culture, their language, surrounding them with other Ethiopian adoptees and adults, but I honestly didn’t consider race much. Sure, we made a few changes like attending a church in a larger city so that it was more racially diverse than the ones in our small community and made efforts to attend culturally relevant events, but I never considered that I would be taking these children out of a community where their race put them in the majority and moving them to a community where their race made them a minority.

While I have talked to our younger kids about things like the Civil Rights movement, it was always in past tense. We probably talk about those things more than most families, but I have to admit that it has been much harder teaching it to my younger kids than it was to my older ones. I look into their faces and I think, “How could anyone not love them?”, “How could anyone judge this treasured child based on the colour of their skin?”

There is actually a bit of a running joke in our house that if the kids want to see me cry, they bring me a copy of Leah’s Pony or I Promise I’ll Find You to read to them or ask me to recite Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech! So it is not like we have never talked about the tough stuff, but I had left my kids with the impression that these terrible things happened only long, long ago.

And then Trayvon Martin was killed, gunned down walking to his home carrying an iced tea and a pack of Skittles that he bought for his little brother. His crime? He looked suspicious. He was male. He was a teenager. He was black.

And I couldn’t pretend anymore.

I couldn’t pretend that my sons won’t be followed in a store by security. I couldn’t pretend that my black sons wouldn’t be “randomly selected” at the airport more often than my white sons. I couldn’t pretend that my sons wouldn’t be more likely to be pulled over by police or more likely to be detained or questioned. I couldn’t pretend that they would be allowed to date anyone they wanted to or that they were just as likely to get the job as the next guy. I couldn’t pretend that some people in the world wouldn’t look at my sons and see them only as “black”.

So tonight, I sat them down in front of me in the living room and I did my best to have “the talk” with them. I am sure that I would have done a better job if I had experienced racism myself, if I weren’t white. I could say that it made me wish that I were black, but then that would take away from what I told them about how God made them exactly how they were meant to be and how I am so glad that they are exactly who they are and so happy that they are exactly the colour that they are.

I would love to tell you that I held it together and did a great job of keeping my own emotions in check, but that would be a big fat lie. I was a mess. I am still a bit of a mess. I bawled. I sat there, sometimes struggling to get the words out, as my sweet sons handed me kleenex and I tried to find the right words to tell them about how some people were not going to see their beautiful hearts, but instead were going to judge them because of their pigment. I tried to find the right words to explain this madness, this hatred, this ugliness that should not exist and yet does. I tried to find the right words to tell them that even though it wasn’t their faults, I needed to teach them things to help them protect themselves, like how to walk in stores so that they wouldn’t be suspected of shoplifting. I tried to find the right words to tell them about what racism was. I tried to find the right words to tell them about a boy named Treyvon, whose parents chose his name and whose parents loved him and whose parents had to bury him. I tried to find the right words and I failed miserably.

But that’s okay. Because there are no right words. How can you possibly explain something that shouldn’t be? That shouldn’t exist in this world?

I know that my boys saw in my tears the depth of my love for them, the depth of the pain I feel for the racism that they will face in their lives, the desire I have to shield them from it. My boys were so innocent. Snuggle Puppy kept asking me “what is racism again?”, which made me cry harder, but smile that he had not yet known it personally. I wish I could say that he never will.

Yesterday, five of my kids were dancing around the kitchen singing their version of the song “Black or White”. Their lyrics go, “You can be my sister. It don’t matter if you’re black or white (or mulatto). You can be my brother. It don’t matter if you’re black or white (or mulatto). ” They laugh and dance and sing, together, the five of them, black, white, mulatto, family.

Sharla Kostelyk is the mother of seven children, including three adopted from foster care and two adopted from Ethiopia. She started Adoption Magazine in 2011 and is the author of That These Two Will Live and Shield: A Framework of Self-Care for Foster and Adoptive Families. Sharla blogs at The Chaos and The Clutter.

P.S. If you are interested in reading some other white adoptive mothers of black sons’ reactions to Trayvon’s story, here are two that I found especially powerful:

The Murder of Trayvon Martin: A Mother’s Response

Dear Trayvon’s Mom

Filed Under: Adoption, International Adoption, Transracial Adoption

Connections

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March 21, 2012 By sharla Leave a Comment

author: Ashleigh

I always knew it would be important to ensure Makeda’s identity was persevered, and honoured. I knew it would be our responsibility to make certain she had friends if not from her birth country then at least those who were of African decent. When we started our adoption journey early in 2008, we lived in a (very!) predominantly Caucasian area. It always plagued us to know that she would stand out. Her skin colour would be obvious and while our desire was to ensure she interacted with children of the same race, it would take lots of driving and many hours of intentional effort to follow through on this intent.

Unbeknownst to us, as our (well, Makeda’s) Visa was traveling in the diplomatic pouch from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, we would simultaneously drive through the Rockies…leaving our friends behind and embarking upon a new journey in Alberta. We arrived in our new home as the pouch was opened and barely two days before we received news that our daughter was 100% paper ready to come home, we arrived in our new home. What we didn’t realize was the number of friends we had and have (since relocating) made who live (relatively!) close…with children adopted from Ethiopia.

Our journey has taken many many twists and turns. Many weren’t anticipated. Most were gut wrenchingly difficult. But the blessing through the trials has been the friendships created. The blessing has been worth the rollercoaster.

Not long after we arrived home (in our new home!) we had the privilege of reuniting Makeda with an orphanage mate. And though the two girls will never remember their meeting on Canadian soil, the photos show otherwise. And, there was something in that moment of meeting that jerked me awake. The realization of their loss, the intense desire to honour their birth mothers, their orphanage caregivers, their culture…it has motivated the desire to maintain and seek these connections more than I could ever have anticipated. Since that day, we have had the privilege of several other play dates with children born in the same city as Makeda. We have a connection with families, friends, children Ethiopian born, which we never would have otherwise.

And I see it now. I feel it. It’s an ache nearly, as I realize the crucial importance, validity, and significant necessity of these hours spent with children not only of African decent but who are Ethiopian born. Makeda, at nearly 15 months old, has no idea what’s going on. She won’t understand for quite some time. But one day she will look around and she will reflect and admire the photos intentionally framed and hung on our walls, and she will begin to understand. And I would bet she will find joy in the realization that she is playing with children who come from the same beginnings as she. There will be an unspoken camaraderie, familiarity, friendship found in the moments she will share with other Ethiopian children.

Raising three kids is crazy. International adoption is possibly crazier! After sharing and offering glimpses into her family’s Ethiopian adoption journey to their daughter over the course of nearly four years at www.thekeizerfamily.blogspot.com, Ashleigh now shares her passions including healthy eating, budget friendly living, adoption (Ethiopian especially!), and family life at http://livehealthyonadime.wordpress.com/. She is also a regular contributor to Adoption Magazine.

Filed Under: International Adoption, Transracial Adoption

Adoption Hurts and Healings

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October 19, 2011 By sharla 2 Comments

author: Denise

A few weeks ago, I took Kylar and Amara to a park just down the street from our home. A neighbour was there with her children, so of course we struck up conversation about life, Giselle’s adoption etc. She was so nicely telling me that it was too bad that it took so long for “those children” to come home as so much important brain development occurs in the first few years of life. Really? Shocking news! But I digress…

As we were talking, I noticed that Amara was sitting on her little purple trike surrounded by four school aged children. She was looking up at them as they were saying;

“You’re adopted aren’t you?

You came here when you were a baby.

Did you know you were adopted?”

She just seemed stunned and didn’t say anything. I quickly excused myself from the conversation with my neighbour and rushed over to their ‘education of Amara’ session. I swooped in and said “Amara, would you like to go play on the slide now?” and helped her to be on her way, and she seemed terribly relieved. I don’t think the children really had malicious intent, but there was a self-satisfied type of gloat as if to scream out “YOU ARE DIFFERENT!” and to most children, different is never a good thing. Amara certainly read something hurtful in their tone as normally she would have happily joined in a conversation with older children.

I’m sure you could argue that I should have chatted with the older children, kindly asking questions and having an informal information meeting on adoption – and that probably would have been a really wise thing to do. But I was not in wise mode. I was in mama bear mode and all I wanted to do was save my 3 year old from the injustice of children who think they know so much, ‘educating’ her about what they know nothing of.

Two days later, I was enjoying an informal gathering of families at my friend Sharla’s home. Amara made a new friend her age who had been adopted from Ethiopia. I was catching up with a fellow adoptive mom while pushing the two girls on the swings outside. We must have said the word “adoption” at some point in our conversation when Amara’s new little friend piped up, “I am adopted.”

Then she looked at Amara and said “I’m adopted. Are you adopted?” And Amara exclaimed with delight “I’m adopted too! We are the same!!” and they laughed and giggled at their sameness. My friend and I quickly realized what a precious moment this was for them and she said “Girls, you are so lucky! You are both adopted. Very special people get to be adopted.” And their faces beamed with joy.

My dear friends, THAT is why we need to make a point of getting together with other adoptive families. That moment was healing for Amara in a way that I could never have facilitated on my own. Not to mention how soothing it was for me to be with other adults who ‘get’ the wait. Who know that you are already trying not to panic and mourn all the developmental delays and developments in your child that you are missing, so they probably won’t bring it up. They also understand that there won’t be judgement if you say that the coming home adjustment was (and maybe still is) tough. Sometimes REALLY tough. And how encouraging it is to hear that so-and-so had a tough time but now it’s better. Or this book really helped, or this technique made a difference…

It’s also good for our bio kids to see other families that look like ours. And for our black kids to see that white kids get adopted too.

That perhaps our multiracial family, and being adopted aren’t as ‘different’ as they thought.

Denise and her husband are blessed to be the parents of one son by birth, one daughter by adoption (USA – at birth), and a Haitian daughter they are anxiously waiting to bring home.

Filed Under: Adoption, Transracial Adoption