Sometimes this process of educating myself about adoption is quite painful. I have to force myself to watch the emotionally arduous and anxiety producing documentaries and movies about adoption and China in general.
Chinese Daughters was an enlightening (if brief) peek into the lives of three adopted Chinese girls living in Canada. At 9- and 10-years-old, they still have more questions than answers, and appear to be at the beginning of their grappling with the questions that adoption brings. They seemed to be focusing on their "real" mothers (their term, not mine), and listening to them talk about ther "real mothers" just about broke my heart. I don't think it's a case of semantics when discussing ten-year-olds--in this context, "birth mother" or "first mother" might have hurt just as much. The adopted girls want to know what their real mothers look like, one wishes she could write Chinese so that she could write her real mother a letter, and one makes up names for her real mother and grandmother. My skin needs to get quite a bit thicker, I think. I do believe that I will be quite a bit less insecure when our daughter is here, living with us, communicating with us, relating to us. This stuff is hard to process in a vacuum.
K. and I try to think "out of the box". This is easier some times than others. But this documentary did plant a little seed in our heads. The adoptive mom of two of the girls took them to China. For 3 months. While she did some type of consulting project. What a great idea! We were already convinced of the value of traveling to China with our daughter(s) as often as possible. After watching this, we are more convinced. And also thinking a little more out of the box. Take a 2 week tour? Well, that would be good. But wouldn't 3 or 6 months be better? Wouldn't it be great to find a way to live over there for a period of time? The mind boggles.
Recommended for you and your adopted child(ren).
Chinese Daughters. Dir. Naomi Wise, Prod. Dorlene Lin. Videocassette. OneStone Entertainment, 2002.
More info on ChinaSprout
More books and videos on my Annotated Bibliography
Thanks for the heads up about that video. I have never heard of it before.
We are planning on spending at least a year in china at some point. My husband already has spent a year teaching english there and I am very jealous. I am hoping to go in about four years, but in reality it might take longer than that.
Posted by: Amber at February 21, 2005 12:42 PM