Category: Adoption
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About being special
Humility was bred into me. It was the status-quo. But what I can vividly remember it that it was freeing! Hardy and common. Like the general low expectations. It was often declared with decisiveness from the school pedestal, that we are not special! I was born during communism after all. Yet. Telling our kids that…
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Hike in the hills
“Let’s pray together!” She says with a childish enthusiasm. It’s her birthday today. She turns 47. But there is a pleasant serenity about her. A youthfulness of heart and mind. A mother of four adolescents. A puzzle with such appealing kindness. I did not anticipate these new exuberant friendships. A few years ago I felt…
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A pillar of prayer
Ask and it shall be given to you. You do not have because you don’t ask. Ask without a selfish heart. I tell Jackie the story of her name. The week we met her we stumbled upon the significance of Jaclyn, rooted in the Hebrew Jacob, meaning “May God protect you”. That was our constant…
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Next stop: Fall
I wrote of faith, and as I got worried and impatient I wondered if my talk is empty. What of this tension between belief and action oriented trait. There is no exact recipe for a faithful walk. We adapt, we grow and we utter like David: “search my heart, Lord and straighten my steps.” I…
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Obliviousness
This long awaited Spring, showered with tears, more than cleansing refreshing rain. It’s a cold end of March, with temperatures oscillating around freezing at dawn. Today I felt moved to text the jurist who helped us finalize the adoption at the courthouse with Jackie, 2.5 years ago. The social workers hadn’t been much help this year…
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The good old days
My eyes are burning. Conrad took Jackie for a walk to give me a few moments of peace. It’s Monday and I’m exhausted. I’m trying to read a good book but I can’t. This morning I scrubbed the bathrooms and washed the windows while Conrad took Jackie to kindergarten, along with another kindergarten friend and…
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Book reading to kids in elementary school
Last Fall I started to volunteer once a week, at a Day Center. I usually do math homework with 5th to 8th graders. Preteens and early teens. I frankly started to love it early on, but even more so as I get to know them better. The other day, they couldn’t wrap their mind…
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O mamă pentru un copil
M-am bălăcit în autocompătimire, care a devenit mai intensă cu timpul. Odată ce mi-a sunat ceasul matern, fără o rezoluție evidentă la orizont, m-am simțit blocată și deznădăjduită. Ceva ce părea că ar trebui să fie așa de ușor, care li se întamplă tuturor, de ce nu mi se putea întampla mie? Ziua Mamei era…
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A mother to a child
I wallowed in self-pity. It gradually became more intense. Once my maternal clock started ticking, with no apparent resolution in sight, I felt hopeless and stuck. Something so seemingly easy, so abundant, why couldn’t it happen to me? Mother’s Day was hard. Hard because I didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I wanted…
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Ambitious & teachable
Never underestimate the ambition of an adoptee. Once they have taken a hold of a steady lifeline, even after they adapt to the good & predictable life, for better or worse they never loose that resilience, that keen awareness, the determination to survive, and to succeed. Yesterday Jackie got evaluated by four professionals to see…
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Parenting with an audience
“Do you ever yell at your kids?” I ask a good friend. “I do. But I yell mostly at home, in private.” She responds with disarming honesty which I love. When I see my parenting from from a far away perspective, it looks clever, funny and balanced. Except I often feel it’s not. For the…
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Attachment
Not long ago, in the job description of the state employees who cared for orphans said to not get attached, and to not let the children get attached to them either. If the state employee disobeyed the written law and did what their heart moved them to do, that’s when they truly served the the…