Facing Reality

Excitement is in the air as we count down the weeks till we travel to China. In just five weeks we are returning to the homeland of our 3 younger children. S.S.(now 11) and R.X.(now 9) were born in China and like many babies spent the first months of their lives in an orphanage. S.J.(age 8) is our youngest son and is 1st generation Canadian. I'll get to his amazing story at another time.

I wouldn't call this trip a vacation but rather a time of discovery. Our children are adopted and as a result pieces of their story are missing. It's not always easy to talk about what we don't know and often the tears roll down everyones' cheeks as our girls grieve what they have never known. Our girls deal with their loss in very different ways.

S.S. is very analytical and deals with the facts. She gets it and seems very accepting of the path her life is taking. When we have some mother and daughter time I am often overwhelmed by the depth of her thoughts and the logical way in which S.S. approaches her life. She has a humanitarian heart and sometimes I wonder if she will return to China as an adult in an effort to make a difference. Time will tell.

R.X. has a sensitive spirit and wishes for things that are out of her reach. She understands that there must have been a good reason that her birth parents had to entrust her life to people unknown but she is desperately searching for her identity. We talk about the sadness and we celebrate our family. We often reflect on how we have been woven together. More importantly, we give our children permission to imagine "how life might of been" or "what their birth parents were really like". We want them to know that we are there for them as they try to understand.

Tonight we watched this YouTube video:

This video opened the flood gates again as R.X. shared that she was happy to have her family but just wishes that she knew her birth parents. What does a mommy say? I wish that I could take the pain away but I know she has to go through the valley to rise up and feel strong. I hope that our trip to China gives her some of the closure she needs.

For S.J. this trip has a different meaning. He was born in Canada to parents who had just immigrated from China. His birth parents faced an incredible challenge as the doctors discovered that their child had Spina Bifida. Their decision to have him adopted is not for me to explain (at least, not at this time) and is certainly a decision to be respected. We are fortunate to have an open adoption. S.J. knows his birth parents. While we haven't seen them in a few years we regularly write and talk on the phone. When we go to China S.J. will be meeting 2 sets of grandparents, a great-grandmother, some aunts, uncles and some cousins. He will have a connection to his family and will understand the love. Nonetheless I'm sure he will still have some unanswered questions.

In preparation for our trip the children have written important letters. S.J. wrote to both sets of grandparents and the girls wrote to their orphanages. We have received letters, either by email or snail mail and have found out that we are welcomed to visit while in China. As a family we are making blankets for the orphanages and S.J.'s cousins. I have contacted our national, provincial and city governments to request lapel pins and started collecting other souvenirs to share while we are in China. We've started planning the packing and are completing the paperwork for the visas this weekend. Vaccinations were done a few months ago. We will be going to China with other families who have also adopted and there are many events planned. We will be going to a school and the children have already written pen pal letters. I guess we will have to think of a few good gifts to share with their new pen pals.

~Your children are like fingers; all similar, but no two alike.~