FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hope Adoption Services, based in Abbotsford presented a 2 hour workshop on open adoption at the ‘Celebrating Family’ Adoption Conference held November 23 & 24th, 2007 at the Executive Plaza Inn, Coquitlam, B.C.
Hope Services social worker, Christene Buchanan, RSW, facilitated a panel of adoptive parents and birth parents sharing experiences involving openness in domestic, intercountry and MCFD adoptions.
One aspect of the workshop was a video produced by Hope Adoption Services…a ‘look back’ expressed through the voices of B.C. children of varying ages, who were placed through the Agency during its 20 plus years of existence. Open adoption experts and authors, Kathleen Silber of Children of Open Adoption and James L Gritter of “Adoption Without Fear” and “Spirit of Open Adoption” were consulted and are quoted throughout the video. Gritter says, ‘I remember an adoptive person saying a really interesting thing…She said, “You know, being adopted in a secret adoption is like arriving at a complex mystery movie 5 minutes late and you spend the whole time scrambling, trying to figure out ‘what is going on here’. You just don’t have enough information to get your bearings”. Silber: “Any little bit of information is better for a child than nothing…than to have a total void and not know anything. There is still a lot to do in bringing open adoption, which is now mainstream and the norm in infant placements, we need to bring that to older child placements as well and to international adoptions”.
Glenna Lundberg, Hope Adoption Intercountry worker was one of the panelists. Her 9 year old son, Cole is one of the kids featured in the video.
“Hi, my name is Cole and I am nine. I was adopted when I was 18 months old. I am from Thailand.
I had a question: “Is she alive or is she dead?” And I wondered if I had any siblings.
I’ve met my mom just last summer, so that’s happy! When my Mom told me she is still alive and that we were going to meet her and I was really happy and excited and happy and excited”.
Cole was brought to a Thai orphanage by his HIV positive birth mother when he was 3 days old. 18 months later, he was adopted by Glenna & Kurt Lundberg of Abbotsford.
‘There had been no further contact from Cole’s birth mom, Glenna told her audience. We had some information come to us that led us to believe that she may have passed away. When Cole was 6 he started asking questions. We openly shared what we knew…that she had a sickness she had probably died from. We worked through with him as much as we could. He came to me a couple of times to ask “probably isn’t for sure, is it Mom?”
Cole returned to Thailand for a 2 month visit with his adoptive family in the summer of 2006. His adoptive parents took him to the place where he had lived as a baby, until the Lundbergs took him home to Canada. Glenna longed to have answers for her son, Cole, so she started asking questions. She told the person in charge that Cole wondered about his birth mom and they wished he could know about her and whether or not she was alive. She said she felt like otherwise he would come back one day and who knows how long he would scour the country to try to find her.
What followed was beyond what the Lundbergs had allowed themselves to hope for. Cole’s birth mother was found to be alive! With the help of a translator, they were able to have a wonderful visit. Glenna says, ‘We met her at about 5 o’clock, had dinner and spent the evening together. We stayed over in the same guesthouse, then had breakfast and said our goodbyes. My boy turned to me and said “Mom, that was the best day of my life”. That was what meeting Radree meant to him. He didn’t love me less.
In some private moments with Radree, she told me as she thought about her unborn child she struggled with what she should do. Tears streamed down her face as she quietly told us she supposed that she would be sick at some point and that she had decided she would rather have the pain of losing him than for him to experience the pain of being in different homes and then loose her, too.
We send letters and pictures through a translator and of course hope to visit her again some day.
Lundberg says to adoptive parents, ‘I guess I’m on my soapbox for openness in adoption…I believe in most cases, with an international adoption, the adoptive parent is the only one that can make it happen. A poor, uneducated woman, working at a menial job 14 hours a day to support other family members does not have the resources to find you. Besides, the prevailing thought in her culture is that she shouldn’t find you. It will not happen if we don’t pursue it. The joy Radree experienced in being able to see Cole was very clear. For 8 years, she desperately wondered how he was. It is a commitment- to keep these relationships up – sometimes just hard work. But I believe our capacity to love expands to the need.’ Others may say: Well your kids’ birthparents are nice, but what if ours aren’t? I say,…But what if they are? And what if you make them nicer because of the love and confidence expressed towards them. What if it makes you nicer, too? What if your kids feel more supported and understood by you because you took the risk? What if meeting their birth parent/s could give them a better sense of self but you left the opportunity untapped because you didn’t want to disturb anything? It can’t be open if you don’t make the effort.’
Contact:
Ann Welwood RCC
Director Programs, Hope Adoption Services
#200 – 2975 Gladwin Rd., Abbotsford, B.C. V2S 1V5
Phone: 604 850-1002