A reader asks: Are agencies working together?

One Real World Adopt reader asked whether the Ranch for Kids (listed in previous post, soon to be featured on 20/20) worked with A Child's Waiting. There are many adoption agencies throughout the U.S., and it's possible that someone knows someone who knows someone else...you get the idea. But whether a formal working relationship between the two exists, or if a relationship is dependent on a particular child's needs, that would be a question for the agencies. I've provided their websites here.

http://www.ranchforkids.org/

http://www.achildswaiting.com/

20/20 segment on The Ranch for Kids postponed...keep checking your local listings!

I just received this email from Joyce Sterkel regarding postponement of the 20/20 segment featuring The Ranch for Kids.
"Dear Parents and Friends;
As much as we hate to cancel one more time, we must! ABC 20/20 has moved us forward due to the hurricanes and the Republican National Convention with its unprecedented news stories. As soon as we get a new date we will let everyone know. Many of you were looking forward to watching the program and I am sure that they will schedule us soon. They know how important this subject matter is and do not want it overshadowed by the before mentioned events. We are content to wait for the "perfect timing."
Thanks for your patience and we will let you know as soon as were are re-scheduled.
Our best wishes
Joyce Sterkel and William "Bill" Sutley
with The Ranch For Kids Staff"

November has been dubbed National Adoption Month, so I'd suspect it might air at least before the end of the year.


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Adoption Disruption featured on 20/20 - September 5, 2008

I received this in an email from Joyce Sterkel, who is the manager of The Ranch for Kids, a Montana program that offers respite and adoption services for children who have experienced adoption disruptions.

"ABC's 20/20 will air a program about adoption disruption on Sept. 5th 2008. This program was filmed in part at The Ranch For Kids. They rescheduled us from the original date in July so as to avoid the Olympics and political conventions. There will be a follow-up segment on Nightline with my adult son Sasha who was adopted from a disruption at age 14.
Please give us and ABC any feed back after you see the program.
We are hoping for the best and that it will draw awareness to the growing problems for families with international adoptees.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Our best wishes and thanks for continued support of our efforts with families and children in crisis."
The note was signed by Joyce Sterkel, Director & Bill Sutley Ranch Manager

I know I'll be watching.

Check your local television listings for time.

Don't be lost in translation

If you're interested in adopting from a non-English speaking country and have been trying to do research on the Web only to find a promising site is presented in a language you don't understand, don't despair: Google Translate is to the rescue!

Check it out:
http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en

Choose from more than 20 languages.

How dare they call us non-moms?

What's wrong with Teleflora is what's wrong with the rest of the world. That may seem like hyperbole, but wait.

In describing adoptive mothers for a contest they jointly sponsored for this year's Mother's Day, they invited people to nominate their favorite "moms" by writing an essay about what makes that person special. There's a category for working moms, military moms, and also a category for "non-moms" which, folks, I have to say, was where they plopped adoptive moms.

For starters, don't these people have proofreaders to check for accuracy? Don't their copywriters know what adoption is? Apparently not. And worse, the brains who conceptualized all this, and the other geniuses who signed off on it, must be the same people who say to adoptive parents, "Are you sure you want to adopt? Who knows what you'll be getting?"

The site verbiage has been changed. It now reads:

"Teleflora is immediately changing the name of our "Non-Mom" category to "Adopting Moms". After closer examination, we can see how this may have been offensive to moms who have adopted children -- moms who are indeed real moms to their children in every sense of the word. In fact, many of us at Teleflora are “adopting” parents ourselves, including our president and owner. The essence of this category still focuses on a grandparent, neighbor, step mom, or mom to adopted or foster children, each one raising and loving a child. This show of insensitivity on our part was in no way intended and we deeply apologize for any concern or distress we may have caused. It was always our intent to salute and celebrate all moms."

Why do we have to be placed in a category outside of the mainstream "Mom" category in the first place? This is a question I've pondered ever since I became a mom, and I've hated having to accept that adoption is still seen as second best, and that adoptive moms are, in a way, seen as a second-best form of mother--though we are not better or worse than any other mother, we just come by motherhood on a different path.

Here is the link to website, now with the new verbiage that is still, in my opinion, insincere:
http://www.americasfavoritemom.com/mothers-day-2008/static/semiFinalists

My adoption truth, 1999

About my daughters, who were a teen and a "tween" when we first saw them. All I knew for sure was this: I wanted these children as much as any mother wants the unborn baby who swims silently in her stomach.

Never a question.
Never a doubt.

Most adoptive parents know exactly what I mean.

Adoption Statistics

The number of children born out of the United States adopted by US citizens is always in flux. This chart, which details the number of immigrant visas issued to orphans coming to the US, is published every year by the State Department. China has topped the list since 2000. Keep checking back to see which country will be the leader in 2008.

http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/stats/stats_451.html

A cornucopia of adoption bumper stickers--who knew?

Save a life; adopt.
Adopt. I did.
Adopt them, don't kill them.
I love adoption.
Celebrate adoption.
Adopt. Because every single child is entitled to a family.
Pro-Adoption. Because every child deserves a family.
Adoption is an option.
Opt to adopt.
We don't have to look alike to be a forever family.
Consider adoption.
Adoptees deserve their original birth certificates.
Adoption not abortion.

[the list goes on]

And what they said, 2008

"What happened to their real family?" they ask, while looking me straight in the eye.
Never biological, birth, genetic, Russian--always real.

What people said, 1999

“You must feel desperate.” “You must feel sorry for them.” “You must feel sorry for yourself.” “You must save them.” “They’re going to have so many more issues than a baby.” “The older they are the more problems you’ll have.” “Are you sure you can handle their history?” “You won’t have control over what they think.” “Do you think they’re even capable of loving you?”
--What people told me and my husband, in 1999, about our plans to adopt two older children

"I didn't long for a baby; I longed to be the type of woman who did." ~Meredith Resnick

I didn’t long for a baby who melted into me, who captured my hair between her soft fingers. I longed to be the type of woman who did.

But I was ambivalent about childbirth. And pregnancy. Babies, with their hands like rose petals and their toes like creamy pebbles, were natural. My lack of maternal instinct was not. Secretly, I worried that my lack of desire to have a baby, to be pregnant, to carry a child, indicated something fundamentally wrong with me. That I’d inherited my mother’s ambivalence and transmuted it, that in some odd twist my own maternal gene was tweaked in her womb, forging a disease that could take generations to cure. I was meticulous about birth control, about preparing my Ortho diaphragm, and when I used the foams, creams and jellies, and the doughy sponges that never stayed put. I’d lie in bed and watch Jon don the prophylactics, the Trojans that stuck like glue, wrapped in the knowledge that as two mature, responsible adults who were learning to grow together, we’d know when it was time, when it was right, to grow our family.
Until I went to a baby shower.

If babies were there, I held them, fed them with bottles of expressed breast milk or soy formula that smelled faintly like whey. The babies were always tiny enough to manage with one arm. I felt the new moms watching me, looking me over, trying to figure me out.

The Beginning: Real World Adopt

I am in the process of building a website called Real World Adopt. The site is devoted to real world news and views (mostly views) on everything having to do with adoption from the kids, the parents, and the pros.

I'd like to hear from as many people who have been touched by adoption as I can. I want to hear stories up to 900 words that use adoption as a springboard or a landing place, stories of change, humor, transformation, surprise, disappointment and hope--and know others will, too.

The site is seeking vivid, honest prose in the form of personal stories and essays, and commentary/opinion. There are plenty of sites devoted to helping families and giving support to parents who are trying to do the best for their kids. Even more are devoted to legal advice, all aspects of health, attachment and bonding. These existing sites and forums address those issues quite well. Real World Adopt is something quite different.

Let's get the word out about this new online salon and community and help it reach around the world. Submit your stories at realworldadopt@att.net. Then forward this information on to others. Let Real World Adopt give all our amazing stories a unique and exciting platform for all the world to know.

In the meantime, I'll be posting my stories here. Feel free to comment with yours.