Some Things I Know Nothing About

When I sit far away from Haiti in the comfort of my own home, I find it easy to make great plans about all the things I’m going to do when I get here.  Then I arrive.  Haiti kicks my butt.  Again. 

            I’ve been thinking all weekend about the many things that I know nothing about:

11.  The devastating grief a mother must feel when choosing which child to give up.

22.  The abandonment a child feels as Mom walks away from the orphanage gates.

33.  The mixed emotions when a child sees her birth brother at school every day, knowing that Mom           chose him.

44. The complex emotions a mother deals with when faced with the final decision about whether to sign    the adoption papers.

55.  The excitement of going home to Mom and extended family while leaving the only home and “sibs”   you’ve known in your eight short years.

66.   To be an adoptive parent-to-be and find out that the adoption is off.  Without warning.  After years      of work, love, and energy invested, suddenly it’s just “no.”  To grief the loss of  a child that society    has not yet recognized as “yours.”

I’ve never seen Sophie’s Choice, but I’ve heard a lot about it: the great acting, how hard it is to watch it and imagine going through something like that.  But, that’s fiction.  Real mothers in Haiti have to make those decisions regularly—which child goes to school this year, which child eats today, which child stays, which child gets adopted?  Poverty sucks.

More things I know nothing about:

17.  Having your birth mother working at the orphanage where you live and not know it?

28.  To see your child every day and not acknowledge her. Not hold her.  To know that she will be    adopted.

39.  What does “family reunification” really mean?  Is it always better?  If nothing has changed for the    family, and the child returns, what happens if Mom has to give the child up again?

410.  What is best for the child?  Is it adoption?  Is it going back to the family of origin? 

I would argue here that the answer is “no.”  I’ve heard too many accounts in the U.S. where judges sent children back to birth parents who were clearly unfit because “a child should be with her birth parents.”  The birth home may not always be better simply because it’s the birth home.

I feel profound sadness because there’s not a thing I can do about any of it.  I can’t even begin to understand it, so how I can even begin to become a part of the solution?  What do we—the wealthy (and by “wealthy,” I mean pretty much all of us), the people of the world, Christians, Jews, Muslims, pretty much everyone who knows wrong when we see it—do?