Over the next few months we are excited to include in the China & Taiwan Newsletter an intimate and exciting recounting of one family's recent adoption experiences. The author, a father along with his wife are now parenting two boys from China. They adopted David in 2016 and they returned home with Roy earlier this year.We hope you find this heartfelt writing informative, helpful, and encouraging - wherever you may be in your adoption journey.
Part 1:
Tomorrow will be an exceptionally difficult and frightening day for our little boy. As he sleeps, as I write this, in his final night in the orphanage, he has no idea what is to come in the morning. Orphanage staff here typically do not do much by way of preparing these children for their adoption. They are awoken, told it is time for them to go, and they are given away.
This is what happened to our son David who we adopted from China two years ago. He was told one morning that it was time for him to go, that it was time for farewell, and he was driven to a strange place with strange people. He was, as far as he was concerned, abandoned for a second time: first by his family, and then by the orphanage. He was stunned and in anguish, and he is still in many ways working through it.
This is what is going to happen in just over twelve hours from now. A little heart will be broken. I will feel joy to see him, but he will probably only feel confusion, fear, and grief to see me — and that will only grow once he realizes he is never going back.
It is better to be in a family than an orphanage. We can know this, and we can know little Roy will be so much happier as a son than as an orphan — but it will not matter tomorrow. The price is so very high. This new life for him begins with great sorrow, and great pain.
