My Adoption Day
Twenty years ago today, at four years old, my Ukrainian adoption was finalized. With every adoption, there’s a story and an awaited journey. My parents were unable to have biological children. Equally a desire of theirs from the beginning was to adopt. They didn’t adopt through an agency, but through an organization that worked closely with the Adoption Center of Kiev, Ukraine. My parents were provided with resources and assistance in completing an independent adoption. The adoption process began a year before they came to Ukraine. At the Adoption Center, my parents were presented with 16 books of about 1,500 pictures of children available for adoption. They chose 8 children as a possibility. I was not one of these chosen children, however, my orphanage was their first destination. My documents labeled me with a slight mental retardation and so I was placed into a specialized orphanage where children with severe disabilities remained.
Prior to my parents ever coming to Ukraine, as a little girl wearing tights and an oversized t-shirt standing in the corner of the orphanage watching the other children get dressed up for potential adoption, I told an orphanage worker that my parents were coming for me. Months later, this same orphanage worker witnessed the faces of a distressed couple who had not yet met the child they were led to adopt. This orphanage worker remembered my words and allowed them to see me after already visiting two children they formally arranged to meet with. I was dressed in a fluffy pink dress with a big white bow on my head with a boy’s haircut due to lice. Beyond that, my parents saw a girl that was meant to be their daughter. They gave me a teddy bear (Mishka) and were invited to a celebration where we demonstrated learned skills like putting a round block in a round hole, but even this was too difficult for a developmentally delayed girl. One of the children tried to take Mishka away from me. I was a social orphan, meaning that no family ever visited me, but this could’ve prolonged my adoption if they had. After reunion with my birth family, I discovered that my paternal birth aunt visited my orphanage and saw me from afar. I had no other siblings in the orphanage with me. I was soon to be placed into another orphanage had I been there much longer.
Normally, there is a 30-day waiting period before an adopted child is allowed to be taken out of the country; however, the judge waived the waiting period because the orphanage director said I needed medical attention. We traveled to Warsaw, Poland to get my Visa and finalize the paperwork necessary for me to become an American Citizen when I landed in the United States. During travel, I refused to be put in a seatbelt, and when I did fall asleep, I woke up screaming. Being in a new home in a new country with a foreign language was a big adjustment. I had many fears such as bathrooms, ceiling fans, and the family dog. I was too scared to sleep in my own room and I rocked myself to sleep every night. I was also very protective of my food. The impacts of institutionalization in Ukraine left me to weigh only 19 lbs at four years old.
After two weeks, I was no longer fearful of bathrooms, and it took several months for me to be okay in water and use a real toilet seat. My parents constantly taught me words in English as we did things. Some of the other challenges I had were that I was delayed in school with learning disabilities and I always cried when saying goodbye to family or friends in fear that I would never see them again. Much of this, I have grown out of, but many of the unexplainable emotions remain. I had many unanswered questions about my past and the circumstances surrounding my birth. After reuniting with my birth family years later, I learned so much more to my story.
My parents have given me a wonderful life and I’m so thankful for all they are to me. They came for me when I was left in the world. They welcomed me as their own. They provided for my needs when I was most vulnerable. They remained with me all these years. Their wisdom and guidance has helped me become who I am today and has taught me what true unconditional love, an addition that I felt I could never add up to. Growing up, I may have given them a lot of grief. I struggled to express my feelings verbally which resulted in either suppressing them or lashing out in tears and frustration. I had to address the traumatic impacts that abandonment and institutionalization had on me. As a child, I often had nightmares of my parents either dying or abandoning me, or me being taken from them, and I would wake up shaking and crying in the night. Once in a while, I still have these nightmares.
The reference to this day, one many call, “gotcha day”, can be implied many different ways. For many adoptees, their adoption day is a reminder of all they have gained, but also can be a reminder of what they have lost. There is the breakup of a family before an adoption takes place and grief follows. In my experience, adoption was an intervention that kept me from a life of institutionalization and God has blessed me through the hardships that have followed. Not all adoptees view their adoption in this way.
Although there may be a majority of people in our sphere of influence who are not adopted, it is likely that they also have trauma of their own. True and supportive community lays down defenses and helps lift one another’s burdens. I personally believe there are burdens of personal enslavement that can eventually be completely surrendered at the cross of Jesus’s perfect sacrifice and lifted by God, breaking us free from its captivity over us so that we can grow from it. But we can’t heal from something that we don’t attend to nor grow from something that we don’t work through.
