What's A Mother To Do?

Anya and me in St Pete, in October.

We talked to Anya twice this week, and she is desperate to see us again. I had told her we'd likely be back in February, so you can see why she is anxious -- it's almost April. On top of that, Nadezhda ( Orphanage Director) contacted me and D is very worried that I have changed my mind. He begged her to ask me to come visit now. 'I want to see her', he said. What's a mom to do?

Two things have been holding us back from going. First, money is more than tight right now and I'm not sure how I can afford to go just now, unless I borrow the funds. We've had a few unexpected expenses lately and, on top of the cost of the adoption, it has put us in a tough spot financially. Second, not all of D's paperwork is done and I had hoped to submit it all in person on this next trip. If I can have a friend submit it, then that is not a problem, but I'm pretty sure I need to submit it myself since I am adopting independently.

Still, I feel such a longing to go...to see Anya, to see D, to give as much love to the kids at the orphanage as I can. I keep hearing from my Siberian Shakespeare students, too. " When are you coming back? We need to see you!" I'm trying to convince myself that borrowing money is not a big deal, but it is to me. I do have a few friends who have offered to lend it, but borrowing scares me. I worry about how long it will take me to pay it back. I have plenty to spend on the kids once I'm there ($1600!), thanks to all the orphanage donations that have come in since December...but getting there is the problem.

I'm going to take today to pray and meditate about it. Something keeps nudging me to get over there fast, but its hard to listen when there are money worries! I know that every pre- and post-adoptive parent reading this knows exactly what I'm talking about.



Last night I read about someone winning 319 million dollars in the lottery, and all I could do was calculate how many adoptions that could fund, over and over again. Nearby, a country club has recently torn down a beautiful stately, albeit old, mansion and what did they put up in its place? A bigger, more elaborate palace of sorts. Every time I drive by it, I think of how all that money was wasted. A bigger, more modern palace for the golf players enjoy. It just dumbfounds me how people can waste money on such useless things when there are millions of children in need all over the world. It boggles the mind.

Well, enough ranting. Ranting doesn't get us anywhere. I try to not think about these things, but my mind gets obsessed with them. I hope God will help me to be less judgemental of the rich. It's my biggest prejudice and it does not serve me well. Better to keep my eyes on what I can do to make a difference, and leave others to their own choices.

The Not-So-Gentle Art of Nesting

I went through this phase when I adopted Nastia. And I'm at it again. It is this overwhelming compulsion to perfectly clean and utterly organize every single room, corner, closet, cabinet and cupboard in my house. I had always known that biologically pregnant moms go through this nesting phase, but it was only after I adopted that I learned it is fairly common for us 'paper' pregnant moms, too.

When I was 'paper' pregnant with Nastia, I honestly thought I was going crazy. My compulsion to clean and organize the house was not even borderline obsessive, it was obsessive! One friend worried I had developed OCD. I would stay up till four and sometimes even five o'clock in the morning getting a closet 'just right.' I would get up at 3am after a few fitful hours of sleep to organize my pantry can by can - labels all facing the same way, taller ones towards the back, smaller ones to the front. I would wash Nastia's new bed linens over and over. I would iron her pillowcases, I would dust her never used bureau, I would vacuum her immaculate new braided rug. I was a cleaning virtuoso.

Well, it's that time again, I guess. There really is no rhyme or reason to it, but somewhere in my crazy little brain, it seems to have dawned on me that I have a son coming home in a few months. In some dark corner of my subconscious, a light has gone on and the machinery of motherhood has started, and I am helpless to stop it!

Today, I went through work files and boxes and threw away about 3 recycling bins full of papers -- old posters and programs, student health forms, outdated scripts, obsolete resumes, dusty laundry lists of props and sound cues. I purged them all. Now, my son-to-be would never have any reason to see these files, but my mind doesn't differentiate -- it all has to go. Some really neurotic part of me seems convinced that every extraneous paper, gadget, book and toy must be purged. The nest must be ready! And so I soldier on -- against my own conscious will -- to fight the 'battle of the stuff'.

And in a typically co-dependent fashion, my girl has caught this craziness too. She has filled three large boxes for the homeless shelter in three days. She is weeding out unloved clothing, unwanted dvds, and unneeded stuffed animals to make way for...what? Her brother?

Well, D will come home to a very clean and clutter-free home. His room is the only thing left to really organize...and it sits chockful of orphanage donations at present. We'll have to tackle his room after we make our first trip. And just a few weeks after he arrives, the house will, in all likelihood, get that lived-in look again. I look forward to that.

But for now? I've got a basement to conquer...

I Believe in Birthday Magic :)

Happy Year Old Me.

Today is my birthday -- yippee!

I know most people my age don't revel in birthdays, but I do! I love birthdays! And I love being born on the first day of spring, and right after St. Patrick's Day. I love waking up knowing I have a whole day set aside just to celebrate and be grateful for this life I've been given. And that, even more wonderful, others will want to join me to celebrate! so....yippee!

I got my first birthday card and package on Fridaymorning from my mom. She sent me my grandmother's rosary beads, some money to spend on the orphanage kids, and a huge batch of homemade gluten-free brownies! My mom knows me well. I received a few more cards in the mail on Saturday -- so nice to hear from faraway friends and family.

pensive 7 year old me

I believe there is a certain amount of magic and grace to birthdays. Good things happen on birthdays! Case in point...I've been trying to reach the orphanage for weeks and weeks, with no luck. Well, last night I waited till midnight, and tried calling. I got through! We talked to Ksusha for almost 45 minutes! We got to catch up on all that is happening there, and it was a perfect start to this day of celebration.

If that weren't enough, we even got through to Anya this morning, after five or six weeks of phone issues and a message telling us her 'signal is missing'. Today, I woke up and called her right after I got home from Mass, and she picked up after one ring! I got to hear my dear sweet girl wish me a happy birthday and I got to remind her how much I love her. There is nothing more I wanted in the whole world. (Except having her here..)

So, I may not be very eloquent today, but I'm too busy revelling in the birthday magic to write anything truly post-worthy, but I'm sure you don't mind. I'm off to clean up the house before my friends head over for a birthday potluck dinner. 

A very fulfilled 'now' me!

Please feel free to take some of my birthday magic for yourself today! I obviously have plenty to share :)

Hosting An Orphaned Child

Those who read my blog regularly know there is nothing I am more passionate about than orphan care. Orphan care can take many forms -- it's not just about adoption. One way you can help right now is to consider hosting a child this summer. As many of you know, I hosted Dasha through NHFC last July. It changed our lives. Many of you asked if there was a program that allowed non-Christian families to host. There is! Project 143 is one such program that I can personally recommend. I am currently working with its founder, Tammy Cannon, to create a host program for Orphanage #5. But they currently have many children from Latvia and Ukraine available for hosting right now! Here are a few:

S, age 6. Silly and goofy! A girl after my own heart!

R, age 9. An artist!

Also, two people I admire very much have started another hosting program for the East Coast (Virginia up to Maine). It is called Open Hearts and Homes. Here are some of the beautiful children available for hosting through them!

M is in 4th grade..and loves to sing and dance!

S is a very energetic 4th grader, who is curious and asks lots of questions!

If you have ever considered adopting an older child, hosting is a great way to meet some older children and see if they are the right fit for your family. I offer myself up as a resource person for anyone who does host and needs support. Raising the funds to host is easy -- I have lots of ideas if that is holding you back.

Please check out both Project 143 and Open Hearts and Homes. They are smaller programs than NHFC, but no less wonderful! The more the merrier, right? I am just grateful that there are ethical choices out there for hosting. These children need homes. And even if you can't adopt, giving these children a month-long experience in a loving family would be life-changing for them.

Further, if you can't host either..you can contribute to these organizations and help support the families that can and want to host, but lack the funds. Every dollar makes a difference!

Finally, please let me know if you choose to host! I'd love to follow your journey!

When Hearts Are Exposed

Sometimes it feels like my skin has been ripped off and my heart is there, naked and vulnerable to all the sorrows in the world. Today is one of those days.

I've always experienced seasons like this, my whole life. I can remember being very tiny and feeling like I would simply die from the pain of taking in what was around me. If I saw my elderly neighbor sitting alone through her window, I ached bitterly. If I saw a child crying out of loneliness, the pain would suffocate me. I always thought it was a curse. I didn't understand why I had to feel so much pain. It was and is unbearable at times. And if you share these feelings with others, they often think you are trying to be a martyr or bragging about your sensitivity. Neither is true for me. I almost always, without exception, suffer in silence.

And when these seasons come, I want to hide in my room and weep and weep and pray without ceasing. But life doesn't usually afford me the luxury of a cloistered existence. So instead, I do my best to walk through my days and do what needs to be done, all the while nursing an exposed heart that is being battered by every little measure of suffering it sees.

I know I am one of thousands grieving over what occurred in Japan right now. I won't even let myself watch the news today, because I can't cry anymore. To see the pain so many thousands of people are living is crazy-making. I can't eat, can't sleep...and worse is knowing my agony does not lift one atom of their pain. I pray and pray until I fall asleep, but often berate myself for not being able to conceive of a more practical way to help. What can we do, powerless creatures that we are, but pray? And yet prayer often feels like meaningless gibberish in these times. Words, words, words....while my faraway brothers and sisters break from the mammoth weight of their grief.

I feel my heart throbbing through my skin these last few days. It feels like it will beat right out of my chest wall. It can't hold all these sorrows. And yet I don't know how to have peace about them. I call and call on God and hear my own voice echo in the canyon of grief my heart inhabits.

I know I sound like a little child, I know I should understand these things by now, but I don't. I still ask God every night why there has to be so much suffering in the world. It still sickens me every day to see the world revolving around things that don't matter, while things that DO matter go unnoticed. I can't seem to get an answer. Nothing satisfies. If I'm not actively doing something to alleviate another's pain, I feel useless. If I'm not pushing forward every second to better the lives of those children in Siberia I love, I feel like a hypocrite. Who am I to eat till I'm full when they can't? Who am I to have so many people to love and support me when they don't?

I can't bear it.

There really is nothing you can say to help my heart move back inside my body. I've tried. It's stuck on this very exposed and vulnerable precipice where the wind and waves batter it incessantly. I can only hope this is part of God's bigger plan. I know that suffering has meaning. I know that suffering is often the door to greater and greater glories. But sometimes --- sometimes it just feels like my heart will slowly wear away from all the slings and arrows it catches. Some days it feels like my heart shivers on an exposed cliff during a hurricane, and it has nothing and no one to protect it.

God, if it's Your will, you can keep my heart raw and hurting. But if you can at least wrap it in some insulating blanket of your protection, I am ready to accept that. I share this pain with you, my readers, only because I know this truth:

'Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.' ~ Shakespeare

Where Are Their Mothers and Fathers?

Every day that you and I wake up and kiss our children good morning, and make their breakfasts, and cuddle them in our arms is a day these children wake up alone.

These are only five of the 100 children at Orphanage #5. Look at their faces. What did they do to deserve waking up every day of their lives without a mom or a dad to love them? Where are their families? Who is going to step up and out of their comfortable lives to say 'yes' to them? Who is willing to commit their life to nurturing and loving these beautiful little souls?

I get emails on a daily basis from people asking how they might adopt these kids. Emails that express sorrow and concern over their plight. Emails that lead me to think there is hope. But out of the hundreds ( yes, hundreds) of emails I have received in these past 6 months, only two families are serious enough to start looking into a homestudy and contacting the DOE in Russia about a particular child. Why?

Why????

I don't understand why so many people would write me and say a particular child is calling to them, and then not do everything in their power to bring that child home. Help me understand. If you feel drawn to a child, and you are in a position to adopt, why aren't you pursuing it? Please tell me! The truth is that if these children are not adopted, most of them will be dead before they reach 25 years of age. Dead. What on earth is more important than finding their forever moms and dads? If you are called, why aren't you moving heaven and earth to make them yours?

Money is no obstacle. I've explained it a hundred times. Even if it takes you a year to raise the funds to adopt, eventually that child will be home. Even if you have to sell all you can and fundraise and take on extra work, eventually that work will pay off -- there will be a child in a home, safe and loved.

Please, please during this Lenten Season, look very closely at your heart. If there is room there for a child, why not commit right here and now to make them yours? It is a long and difficult road - no question -- but there are very few things in this world more pressing than giving a child a home.

Please spread the word -- not only about these 100 children that I so love, but of the estimated 143 million other orphans in the world. They need us. They need more of us willing to sacrifice for them.

Walk In My Shoes, Will You?

A nasty anonymous email will throw anyone for a loop. Why do people bother putting such effort into hurting another human being? I'll never understand it. This woman is angry, I take it. She doesn't like that I 'don't tell it like it is' in my blog concerning my daughter's RAD diagnosis and current behavior. She thinks I should take down the info on RAD and the mention of RAD in my profile if I'm not going to directly address it anymore. Obviously, this is a fellow mom dealing with RAD who feels the need to lash out. So be it. But aren't we here to help one another?

I choose not to blog about the significant spot RAD still holds in our lives because my daughter is older now, and she has friends online and these friends can read. I choose not to blog about the specifics because I respect my daughter's wishes and growing need for privacy. I choose not to tell you all the details of our current day to day life because, frankly, it's none of your business, unless I decide to share it.

I choose not to share about RAD much anymore for other reasons, too. Our lives are far more than my daughter's diagnosis. I actually purged my blog reader of some fellow RAD bloggers a few months ago simply because almost every post I read was so very angry. I hated reading about the parental rage. Even if it wasn't addressed directly, it was there simmering under the letters on the screen. It made me sad, and depressed. It wasn't getting me anywhere. I like reading about what works. I don't enjoy reading about another person's daily traumas that have no resolution. I have enough of my own, to be honest.

It's always best to be honest, so I will say very openly that I am also against many of the methods used by fellow RAD bloggers with their children. For me, it's all about love. I know it's easier in the short run to follow the likes of Nancy Thomas than to get down and dirty with what Heather Forbes asks of you, but I'd rather try harder and take longer, and be true to what I believe is right and true. It's scary to do that kind of work, especially when it requires your own self-reflection. I know not everyone agrees with me, and so that is another reason to keep RAD pretty much out of the conversation in my blog these days. I would rather be a light in the darkness than another mom ranting about how hard RAD is and how there is no cure and no way out.

Hard? You betcha. I feel like I have lived two distinct lives, if truth be told. I have my pre-RAD life and post-RAD life. I lost good friends. Heck, I even lost family for awhile. I lost my child-like exhuberance for life (or alot of it.) I lost the ability to laugh every day, but I'm working on getting it back. I lost a wealth of things. But when I said yes to my daughter, I said yes for life.

These days, we still deal with RAD issues, and of course I do talk with our therapists and a few very close friends about it, but not here. If a mom writes me privately and asks for help, I talk openly with her about my experience, but not here. Here, this blog, is where I try to inspire myself to keep going every day. It's where I explore my own need for inspiration and for my desire to find kindred spirits in this cyber-world. It's where I try to crawl towards the light and even point it out to others when I feel I can.

I'm sorry if this post offends any of you. I'm sorry I don't choose to be part of that RAD club anymore. I am on a different journey now. I'll still write about RAD when I feel inspired to, but probably not directly about our personal experience of RAD here at home. I'll save that for private conversations and emails. I want everything I write here, to the best of my often inadequate and naive human ability, to be about hope and light and making the world a better place. My old bumper sticker said it best,

'My job here is to comfort the disturbed, and to disturb the comfortable.'

Please let me do this without feeling the need to attack or control me. It's what God wants me to do, and who am I to argue with Someone who so obviously has the greater perspective?

Anonymous mom, I have no idea what you are going through right now, but I suspect it is rough and you are lashing out in pain. I will pray for you and hope you find the resolution you are looking for. but I promise you, it is not here with me. Look at your own path, your own shoes. Mine are already filled and hastening down my own path. And --I wish you peace and wisdom on your journey, even though you chose to disturb mine.