The Raging of the Storm

Hello, everyone,
First of all I'd like to acknowledge the sources of this idea. Well, to start with, as with everything else, I should thank God, Who created everything and Who turned the stormy night into a lovely warm summmer morning.

Furthermore I want to acknowlege that I had just finished reading Susanna's awesome advocate post about the children of Pleven. If interested, the link is: http://theblessingofverity.blogspot.com

I was trying to get something done at the computer during night hours but a horrible storm was raging right out of our window. Thunder was roaring and lightning was flashing so near that I decided to play it safe, turn off, and unplug my computer. Getting a little something done did not justify risking to lose all the files stored in it. I prepared a coffee and had a night snack, which is almost a tradition for me. Looking out from the kitchen windows to the wooded ten-acre property that we rent we could imagine that to be the perfect spot for a re-making of Snow White's dreadful walk through the forest in the middle of the night until she found the cozzy cottage inhabited by the dwarves.

Without being able to use the computer, I was thinking about going back to sleep--but then in a matter of a few minutes, the storm seemed to stop, the skies cleared up with the morning light, carrying the promise of a beautiful summer day. The wind had stopped, and the birds were beginning to greet the morning with their song.

Before arriving to plug the computer back in, an idea came to my mind. "The calm after the storm" is a concept shared by people from all countries and all cultures all over the world. When something goes wrong, we try to find comfort in prayer, family support, the memories of much better times stored in our hearts, and the hope that things will get better soon. Yet, not everyone has those resources to hold on to--particularly not the children in an orphanage or in foster care, not the children without a family to give them something to look forward to, something to work for, something to hope for, something to make an effort to achieve.

For those kids there is no hope, no future, no goals, no life ahead. There is no "calm after the storm," no "rainbow after the rain," no safe haven, no open door. As in one of the well--known songs in the world-famous "Annie" movie, those kids know that nobody cares whether they "grow or shrink." And I don't think anyone of us can properly even imagine how very much that must hurt. We may try to understand it in order to justify some acting out--but we cannot fully arrive to grasp the idea of living with that knowedge during the first years of life. . . sometimes for quite too many years.

Adopting a child is saving a life. Can you do it? Or--can you do it one more time?

They all deserve better than an institution or a life all alone

I don’t think anyone can disagree. Can anyone say it’s not important for a child to be wanted and loved, receive proper medical care, and have the feeling of belonging into a forever family and a forever home? Independently of socio-economic status, most children have parents who give them as much or as little as they can—but at least give them the most they can. That’s something that an orphan child can never have.

Growing up in impoverished areas, underserved communities, or crime ridden neighborhoods is bad enough. For children who grow up without a family it’s even worse. They do not only face a very bleak future. Worst of all, they face that bleak, hopeless, ominous future alone.

Whether locked up in an institution or all by themselves in the world at the mercy of the first human predator hunting for human prey, kids without families face an undeserved life of misery with no way out. This does not only apply to children in orphanages in remote corners of the world.  No matter what the U.N.I.C.E.F. may try to make us believe about the alleged wonders of the foster care system, things are not much better for foster kids once they are on their own. On the contrary: quite often children who have been through multiple foster placements are much more adversely psychologically impacted than those growing up in the same orphanage with many other children similarly situated who share the same fate. Foster kids instead are being exposed to the wonders of family life by finding themselves assigned to a family to which they very well know they don’t fully belong. That can be even worse.

Anyway, none of those children has a future ahead. Those children don’t worry about what they want to major in. They don’t worry about the need to improve their GPA’s in order to be admitted to a good college. Quite often they don’t even care whether they live or die—because they know that nobody else cares either.

It is extremely sad that so many innocent children face such brutal destiny when they grow up. And it is even worse to think that we’re talking about something avoidable—but not avoided yet. Against what pro-choice propagandists try to make others believe, there are no unwanted children in this world. No medical condition, disfigurement, or cognitive delays make any child unwanted. Some may be surprised to hear that—but those who are in the Pro-Life and special needs adoption communities very well know that no matter what challenge, disease, or combination of both children may face, there are always families willing to come forward to adopt them. There are families praising God for the adoption of children who will never function beyond infancy level. There are families willing to adopt children with serious attachment disorders or behavioral issues. There are families willing to adopt children in need of life saving yet highly risky surgical procedures. There are even families willing to adopt children who are terminally ill. Honestly, I admire those who can do it. I confess I wouldn’t adopt a child who doesn’t have a normal life expectancy. If something happened, we would never recover. I have three children by birth, ages 26, 15, and 15, and all three of them are willing to commit for life to their younger brothers with special needs—to a much more devoted level than any parent can expect, ask for, or even dream about. Yet, none of them would be prepared to say a premature good-bye to a younger sibling. A good-bye would destroy their lives—not their voluntary commitment to never allow any one of them to end up in a group home.

Yet, families know what they can and cannot handle—and my point is that there is no child with so many or so severe issues that no family can handle.

This takes me to the crucial argument I’m trying to make. Quite often kids are not adopted not because there was not any willing family to give them their name, take them home, provide them with proper medical care, and surround them with love. In many instances there may have been a willing family, and even more than one—but there were some deterrents. Ironically, in many cases those deterrents were neither related to the child’s behavioral issues  or special needs nor to any concern on the part of the applicant family about their own ability to cope with those issues or needs.

I do understand that the foreign country where the children are located may have certain eligibility requirements for prospective adoptive parents. Whether or not those eligibility criteria make sense, it is still undisputable that a country may have a say regarding who can adopt kids who are citizens of that country. It is also only reasonable that the parents’ country may have its own eligibility checklist that applicants need to meet before being allowed to proceed with the international adoption of one or more children.

Yet, I cannot understand or condone that quite often adoption agencies that claim to be working in favor of the orphan children as well as in favor of their clients are the ones that impose more stringent eligibility requirements than those set forth by the foreign and domestic countries. I cannot understand or condone that quite often and for no valid reason social workers make their own clients cry by refusing to update a homestudy to include one more child, or to approve concurrent adoptions, or back-to-back adoptions, or the adoption of a child with more severe special needs.

Our own family story is a vibrant testimony of the nonsensical nature of such arbitrarily imposed limitations. First of all I’d clarify that even though I’m widowed, and therefore a single applicant, when talking about adoption I always use the plural due to how totally, absolutely, unconditionally involved my mother and my three biological children were at all times, and are, in each one of the processes. Thomas and Nicholas joined our family from Haiti in 2008—and we cannot be more thankful to God than we are for having them. Yet, there was also a younger boy with more severe c.p. whom we desperately wanted home as well—but it never happened because the home study agency refused to approve for three children with special needs to be adopted concurrently. I cannot put in words how many tears we all shed for that little boy whose name would have been Jonathan. My Mom was praying to die—not thinking that God might want her life as a trade-off, but only thinking that a stroke due to distress might make the agency change its mind out of fear of liability. We still intended to pursue Jonathan’s adoption later on, after Thomas and Nicholas were home—but the adoption laws would change in Haiti, making it much more difficult for families with biological children to adopt. We know that Jonathan was adopted by another family. That’s as much as we know, though. When I went to Haiti to pick up Thomas and Nicholas I had had a chance to hold Jonathan in my arms. That picture is all we have about him, together with an earlier one of Thomas still in Haiti and lovingly holding him in a small inflatable pool.

Perhaps my family suffered more than I myself did over Jonathan. And we all suffered together again over a little boy in Russia whom I’ll call John. He’s the one for whom my heart was really torn apart. Assuming that he is still alive today, John has arthrgryposis, with severely underdeveloped legs and some hand malformations.  Back in October 2007, with the reddish glow of the rapidly spreading wildfires in San Diego being quite ominously discernible in the distance, still it was our unanimous wish that I should take the time to go to Kinko’s and fax a basic initial application to the adoption agency so that more information could be disclosed to us. We were panicking because of those antiques from our family from Italy for generations which are testimonies of a much more illustrious past—but still we all felt that sending that fax that very same day justified some delay in the packing needed to be ready for the emergency. We were not in an evacuation area yet, but would get evacuated around 4:00 a.m. that night. During that odyssey, we still kept on thinking about that little boy whom we desperately wanted to bring home. Soon the evacuation odyssey would have for us a happy ending. Our possessions were safe, and are now in storage, still in San Diego. But the odyssey around John’s adoption would be a much longer one and would turn into a real nightmare of tears, anxiety, heartbreak, and sheer agony. Thomas and Nicholas were legally mine by then, but were not home yet. In Haiti, the adoption decree is not the final document. Following the granting of any adoption, the file goes to the MOI (Ministry of Interior) for a second-level scrutiny, and that process can take several months. The problem was that having two adoptions still in process, no agency would approve to adopt one child more.  One agency pretended some confusion, charged its fee, and then refused to do the homestudy. Leaving details aside, by the time when finally one agency in Orange County, namely Life Adoption Services, agreed to do it, there was the murder case in Utah, or, actually, the aftermath thereof—which would cause the region where John was to close down to special needs adoptions.

Another agency’s inexorable mandatory waiting period and its capricious refusal to update our homestudy to start the adoptions of Maximilian and Philip immediately following Stephen’s homecoming resulted in our move all the way from San Diego County in CA to RI. In the end, things took longer than if we had stayed in California—but we hoped we’d be speeding up the process. Personally I don’t regret the move at all. Yet, Catherine misses her friends from her former parochial Young Adults group—and working on her dissertation from the distance is proving really difficult. At the time of making the decision to move, Gerard and Warren seemed to be extremely enthusiastic about the colleges and medical schools on the east coast—only because they wanted Maximilian and Philip home as soon as possible. Once we were definitely and permanently established in RI, the twins finally disclosed the truth: they’d rather had transferred from junior college, which they had been attending since the age of 10, to U.C.S.D. University of California in San Diego) for college, and then would have gotten priority consideration for admission to their medical school—without all the fierce competition they’ll have to fare now for any of the medical schools on the east coast.

Even if not so dramatically, many other willing families also had to deal with social workers who, instead of congratulating them on their desire to adopt, only made things much more difficult. Some outcomes were successful, and in other instances families were forced to call it quits. Many children who could be home by now are still waiting. Some may have been adopted by another family, some may still have their chance—and for some others such chance will never arrive.

I should feel guilty because I cannot advocate and fundraise for other children as many of you relentlessly do. First of all, I don’t have the time. Secondly, fundraisers are extremely uncomfortable for me. I desperately need to do it for our adoptions—and still I’m finding one excuse after another to endlessly wait “one more week.” I cannot contribute to other people’s fundraisers because God heard me when I was a child and thought I had too much—in privileges, in dedication, in love, in care, in everything. I thought that being short of funds might be some sort of unknown and yet fascinating adventure. Well, as an adult I’m constantly short of funds. I know that advocating does not cost any money—but I never have the time, and besides I must confess to being too possessive. I simply cannot go through photo-listings if not for the purpose of bringing one more child home. 

I do feel thankful, though that notwithstadning the reality that my advocacy for other kids in the past may have been limited to one group post about Victoria K. and one blog post about Kolina, the latter may have been instrumental to some extent in geting that little girl who's been through the horrors of Pleven a family. Now Kolina is soon to be forever in the arms of a wonderful mommy: Linda Duncan, among lots of wonderful siblings.

So, I found another way in which I can do something. I started a petition to the NASW (National Association of Social Workers) asking the Association to issue a recommendation to its members indicating that discouraging adoptions for no objectively valid reasons goes against the principles of the profession.

Please, click on the link below, sign, and share.

http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-national-association-of-social-workers-clarify-that-discouraging-adoption-is-against-professional-values

In addition, I also started another petition, this one as a last appeal to Obama’s conscience (assuming he has one) about the sanctity of human life. Needless to say, even not directly related to adoption, it is strongly related as well because it is about babies. As we know, there are always families, whether biological or adoptive, eager to give each and all babies all the love, dedication, and care they need. We also know that the special babies are the ones who are most severely at risk of never being allowed to see the light of day.

I’m not so naïve as to think I can change Obama’s position on abortion—but still it is always important to point out that there are no unwanted children, that there is always at least one family willing to adopt every single child. By spreading the word there is always the possibility that after a concerning ultrasound report a pregnant woman who finds herself unable or unwilling to raise a challenged child may hear the good news just on time.

Please sign and share!!! Here is the link:

 http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-president-of-the-united-states-to-acknowledge-that-killing-babies-in-the-womb-is-not-health-care

Thank you so much.

God bless,

Lillian Godone-Maresca

  

The above picutes show me holding Jonathan four years ago in Haiti, and the little boy from Russia whom we never saw but who is still in our hearts. In order to protect his privacy, I covered his facial features.

I will advocate for three little ones who desperately need families to love them and to whom to give all the love they have inside:

Kolya - Who wouldn't want to have him home? Kolya is a high functioning loving boy with DS, with a kind personality and great loyalty to anyone with whom he bonds

Victoria - That smile melts anyone's heart!!!

Emmitt. It is simply beyond our comprehension how such an amazing, courageous boy doesn't have a family yet. How very much we wished he could be adopted by a widowed mother!!! The same as Victoria, Emmitt has been institutionalized for quite a long time now. Yet, he remains nice and considerate, kind to everyone, and intelectually active. No, none of these precious children deserve to have their lives wasted away in horrendous institutions where all they can look forward to is premature death. Who is getting Emmitt home??? And who's getting Victoria K.??? And Koyla???