re-framing the adoption narrative

She came to us on a Saturday night, after lying alone in a room for nearly 48 hours. We hadn’t planned for her. In fact, earlier that morning, I stood together with Jeremy in the storage shed while we debated getting rid of all the clothes our youngest had outgrown. 

We’re done, right? 

Uhhh… I think so???

…

Let’s just hang on to them a little longer, ok?

Ok. 

And an hour later, Bana K was at our door explaining what happened. 

Mom had been on the way to the clinic when baby M came. Somewhere between home and safety, she birthed, bled and died. A neighbor pulled them both into a hut and the funeral began. Baby M was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a back room. With no one to nurse her, the family prepared for not one, but two burials. 

Something in her cries that night must have pushed the family to think differently. Several of the funeral attendees knew us, and a messenger was dispatched. I arrived to find Dad, his seven other children, and the 200 or so mourners typically found at a village funeral. I was ushered into a two room house. The four-year-old on the other side of the brick wall was wailing for his mom who wasn’t coming back. The family sat with me on the dirt floor while other curious bodies crammed in, blocking what little light would have come through the door and triangle windows built into the exterior walls. Dad leaned on the wall across from me, no longer coping with the two-year-old fussing on his lap. The fifteen-year-old next to him was little help. They both looked like they'd been run over by a truck. 

The family asked me to speak, and I asked first to just listen. In turn, old women said the same thing, one after another. “We need help. We can’t manage. Please help us. Please help.” I said, “I want to help. She needs to eat. It has been too long. I can have milk here in a few hours.” 

They had already decided though what kind of help they were looking for. 

“Take her.”

“Uhhh…”

“We just can’t right now. We’re not managing with the other seven. We need you to take her.” 

There we sat, between a rock and a hard place. A shell-shocked family desperately asking for help. Me, rolling over attachment theory in my head. Above the clamor expressing this challenge and that, I blurted out, “She needs her family!” And they upped the volume a notch and yelled back, “We need YOU.” And ten minutes later, someone was shoving into my vehicle a bundle of blankets, at the center of which was a darling little girl. 

Every year when Adoption Awareness Month (November, fyi) rolls around, I get this sinking feeling in my gut as I see the internet filled with stories and pictures of happy adoptive families who would center the narrative around the beauty of adoption. And truly, adoption is beautiful. To choose to love is beauty incarnate. But, truly-truly, it is beauty from ashes. We owe it to the adoptees in our midst to acknowledge that ashes are a bi-product of something being burnt to the ground. 

There is no other way to arrive at adoption other than extreme trauma and loss. A mother dies. A family breaks. Addiction. Disfunction. Abandonment. We can’t manage - take her.

Sometimes I feel like we are so busy celebrating the redemption that we hold precious little space for the tragic. It is both lovely and awful at the same time. Like my favorite Ann says, “Joy and pain are arteries of the same heart,” and intentional orphan care means we handle both well. 

It might seem unreasonably pessimistic to even suggest re-directing the conversation towards trauma. Who doesn’t love a happy ending? What’s wrong with you, Emo Adoption Lady? 

What’s wrong with me is that I grew up in the first world and have lived my entire adult life in the third, and now as a foster and adoptive mother, I see the trajectory of orphan care from two different continental views, and I’m still unsettled. 

In America, we have focused on keeping children safe, and with family when possible, which means we major on two actions: removal and reunification. “The system” is swamped and foster parents, bless them, are doing their best. In Zambia - to our shame - we have largely focused on crisis management which has meant institutionalization. As I’ve written about before (here and here,) the funding flow out of the West fuels the glorification of orphanages and the result is thousands of children in “care” (a misnomer) while their DNA is out there. 

What has my gut twisted in knots and wrapped around my heart is that, on either continent, in any context, when I hear talk about adoption awareness, the thing that I’m NOT hearing people talk about is prevention. 

Every single adoption is the result of a brokenness which we, the community of privilege, have failed to prevent. I think about this for our own son, and for all of our adoptee friends. I cry about how scared my son’s birth mom must have been, and how someone clearly wasn’t there to support her. I think about the parents who sign papers and hand kids over because no stepped in to say, “keep your child, I’ll pay for everything.” I think about the homeless mom and the addicted one and the one with an abusive boyfriend and I feel the burden of responsibility. How many steps along the way were we not there for you? 

Baby M stayed with us for three weeks at which point, I won’t lie, we kind of wanted to keep her. There’s something about waking up every two hours at night to feed a baby and wearing her close to my heart throughout the day – I think any mother would have to be a little off to not feel the bonds of love forming. And truthfully? It would have been easy to make her ours. 

Her family already had asked for a long-term placement. We could have shown off our house and resources and promised her the world and her family would very likely have made a “smart” and terrible decision to leave her with us forever. And we would have been praised by the internet as a beautiful, adoptive family. But thankfully we have super good and reliable friends who snapped their fingers in our ears and just repeated, “She needs her family. She needs her family.” And they were absolutely right. So we set our feelings on the shelf and got serious about getting her home.

Convincing the family to receive her back was easier said than done, but we kept at it because we know it was right. We can never bring her mother back, but we can work to PREVENT the trauma of adoption. 

And work it is.

The first week baby M was home, Grandma called me several times after midnight just to say, “M is crying and won’t stop.” I never slept after those calls. On my first visit to the home to deliver more formula, I was given a list of things they needed. She wreaked of pee and I noticed that the rats had chewed through every one of her bottle nipples. We talked about burping and why babies cry and why laundry soap is too caustic for newborn skin. I taught them what a selfie was because the day deserved some levity. I drove away feeling like the band-aid had been ripped off too fast. 

Driving home, the thought rushed into my mind and I pushed it out the other side – This is a huge commitment. We are paying for everything anyway - it would be easier to just keep her with us. Thankfully the grace of conviction swelled again – prevention is worth the work. 

Unfortunately, our adoption culture celebrates the exact opposite. How many times have I seen a viral facebook post of a cute couple offering (begging) to adopt some other woman’s baby. We christen them as saints and speak nothing of birth mom’s story out on the margins. And after 6 million likes and 50,000 shares, the words “We’ll take her!” have become more admirable than, “We’ll move heaven and earth to make sure she stays with you!” And just like that, we facilitate loss instead of preventing it. 

Is it possible that the narrative of redemption in adoption has desensitized us to the flaming mess we didn’t address on the front end?  Is it possible that we aren't serious about family preservation because we don't yet believe in the primal wound we are inflicting? Do our meager efforts through pregnancy centers and WIC programs really amount to all that we can do? Are we skilled at putting out fires before they create the ashes out of which adoptees must then rise? 

I don’t think so. Not yet. We’re not nailing access to health care, marriage counseling, education, mentorship, therapy, childcare, job support. Not even close. Smart people have made these lists for us: they have curated research around what destabilizes parents and what kinds of structural and relational safeguards must be in place to support and preserve families. The stats are there: we're not doing it.

It feels like, in November, of all months, when we are supposed to be most “aware” of adoption, that prevention is the message we should be pouring over. Prevention is what we should be discussing and rallying behind and setting goals for. Because we love our adoptees more than life – this is a fact – but we need to get honest and admit that our adoptees wouldn’t have needed the "traumatic blessing" that is adoption if someone – WE – had done the hard work of prevention in the first place. 

Obviously not every person of privilege is in a position to help every mom and family in crisis – for reasons of geography if nothing else. None of us is omniscient and unknown crises are impossible prevent. Which is why I think the overarching narrative around adoption is so important – because while you may not be the neighbor to the newly pregnant woman who needs long-term support to keep her child safe and in her own home, that facebook friend of yours who thinks adoption is all rainbows and sunshine certainly is. It is our responsibility to cultivate a climate that is wise enough to know what needs to be done, and courageous enough to do it. 

For my part, I write words. I hug my son and mourn his loss with him, and celebrate the beauty of our forever family too. Together, we deliver tins of formula and become full-time cheerleaders of families preserved. We pour out, and advocate and hope. We do our best, which is all we can do. And we pray that you will too. 

lies from the orphanage

I live in a culture that loves stories. History, traditions, social norms - and of course a healthy amount of gossip - are passed down and disseminated through stories. Stories are shared around the cook fires late at night (and there’s a story behind that too.) Ask a question of my neighbors that requires a culturally-informed answer and you’ll surely hear the words, “Let me tell you a story.” My friends here have inspired me and I too long to be a great story teller.

In addition to having my imagination tickled, I love the power that stories hold. Michael Margolis, strategic story teller and CEO of Get Storied, once said, The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world. You need to change your story.

Different sectors leverage stories differently to effect change. Many depend on the stories they tell in order to safeguard their own existence. For example, orphanages in Africa. 

I’ve written before about my conviction that we need to be doing orphan care better, and how that fight has become personal to me in recent years. Still as time passes, whenever I see another round of praise for Traditional Orphanage X, my heart sinks. Why are we still on this path of heartache? Despite the ample research that shows the negative effects of institutionalism – and not to mention the social movement that led the U.S. to denounce orphanages decades ago – Americans are still obsessed with orphanages on every other continent. Why, I wonder aloud?

Then I remember my community. And the cook-fire. And the stories told that teach people what to believe. And the orphanage disgrace makes more sense. It’s the power of their stories. The stories the orphanages tell – stories of the kids in their care and the importance of their work – these stories are exported across an ocean and reach the ears of those primed to hear and respond and send money back the other direction. And that set of stories becomes an anthology with undeserved acclaim.

I understand on one level. "Liking" a facebook post of a cute baby in an orphanage is much less taxing than digesting an academic brief on the traumatic effects of institutionalism on children. When reality is too complex, the stories told by the orphanages curate everything down to a manageable size. The only trouble is that the stories being told represent a very specific bias.

I’ve seen it a few hundred times: Traditional Orphanage X posts, “Lie, lie, lie, all the lies, pray for us and our lies,” and instead of being disturbed by the falsehood, donors with all their power are moved with the emotionalism that these lies induce. The words coming from these orphanages is what drives the culture of orphan care around the world and I am desperate to see the storyline change for the better.

As per my title, I want to flesh out five lies orphanages tell. 'Lie' is an awfully strong word, I know. And I use it discourteously on purpose. A half truth, a partial truth, an over-generalized truth, an extrapolated truth – these are all lies with bow-ties on. But they are still lies. I’m sorry for being all prickly, but my patience is up. Kids are being abused every day and its for their sake that I’m willing to call it like I see it.

And so, with that bit of background, let me share with you the most common lies that I see coming out of orphanages.

five lies from the orphanage

Lie One: “Nobody wanted them.”

Such a heart wrenching statement, only sociopaths would remain unmoved, particularly when the post includes a picture of a beautiful baby with big eyes and dimples. And the moment those words go public, the orphanage workers are instant heroes for being the ones who DO want him!

Ugh. And my heart sinks. Out of all the lies, this one breaks me in so many ways, mostly because of how the conclusion is derived. Many people assume that if a mother willingly drops her child off at an orphanage, she MUST not want him. Likewise, it is assumed that if mom dies in childbirth and no one steps up to take the child that clearly the family MUST not want him either. What is often overlooked is that this conclusion is a sandcastle of assumption, and from where I’m standing, the mishandling of limited information is negligent.

The truth is that most abandonment and relinquishment happens not for lack of love (wanting the child) but because of fear. Fear that she won’t be able to feed her child. Fear that their home is inadequate. Fear that she’s “less than” what her child needs. Barring mental illness, which can absolutely lead a mother to do the unthinkable, one cannot hold her child in her arms and say, “nope, don’t want her.” We are designed by God to feel attachment and connectedness – a biological bond that does not “just” drop a piece of her heart off with strangers. A face value conclusion of “nobody wanted them” ignores the most profound workings of our own biology.

And so when a child is brought to an orphanage and the staff is told, “no one wanted him,” too many orphanage owners respond too quickly with, “Great! We do!” and immediately post excited selfies with the new baby while failing to acknowledge the shambles of a broken heart they’ve just shut out on the other side of the gate. A more compassionate and controlled person asks the question: “Did they really not want him or did they just not want to fail him?” The answer to that question is discovered by slowing down the dialogue and digging to the heart, where more often than not, one will find not cold and uncaring family members, but deeply concerned and fearful ones. The lack of due diligence in NOT having these conversations with biological families is irresponsible to say the least. We owe these families more respect and support than Lie One affords them.

Lie Two: “The family couldn’t take care of them.”

Ahh, a favorite in the orphan care world. I’ve debated this one with more than a few people and the most important question I can ask is, “What do you mean by that?” If I’m speaking with Americans, they will talk about food and clothes and education and the size of house. If I listen to a cursory assessment of said child’s situation… “There were like eight kids in that family! All of the kids were sleeping on the floor! They only had one change of clothes each! They ate the same thing for every meal!” and so on and so on… I almost want to chuckle as I decide how to delicately drop the bomb of relativism on the concerned American. Pardon my candor, but you just described 85% of rural Zambians. Do you really think we should institutionalize all of them?

Orphan care providers do no one justice by going to a foreign country and whipping out an American measuring stick. Yes, in the United States, multiple kids sleeping on the floor without clean clothing and eating cereal every day is probably going to get CPS involved. But there has to be a translation of standards whereby we accept and embrace what is truly acceptable in the orphans’ context.

What I find really interesting is the juxtaposition of this Lie with fundraising efforts. How many times have I seen, “Look at our new baby! His family couldn’t take care of him, so they brought him to us. Who wants to sponsor this little angel?” And every time, I’m all HOLD THE PHONE. Are you seriously with a straight face saying, “His mama didn’t have the means and hey, hey, neither do we! Huzzah!” In short, you’re brazenly admitting that the only reason why you get to keep this baby and his family is because you have rich friends and a PayPal account and they don’t. Shameful doesn’t even come close.

Every family considering relinquishment because of poverty deserves to hear,

“You can manage. And this is your child. And he needs you! And I will leverage my connections to make sure you have what you need. I will not rest until you feel safe and successful again.”

Lie Three: “They deserve a ‘better life.’”

Privilege on a platter with a side of the American Dream, I have little patience for this ugly little sentence. My only rebuttal is: No. They deserve their real family. I think most orphanages exist under the pretense that physical care is the most important thing a child needs and that it must be provided without regard to the emotional price-tag. In fact, orphanages basically have to think this way otherwise they’d have to close themselves down.

While orphanage workers are so concerned about the food and clothes that the child isn’t getting (and won’t ever get as long as Lie Two is still in play,) what isn’t being taken into account when children are being admitted to institutions is the primal wound that is being inflicted upon the child by separating him from biological family. Abandonment is perhaps the most traumatic event that can take place in a human’s life and no amount of new clothing and fancy food can replace that.

And so, this “better life” that orphanages are giving these kids? There’s actually no evidence of it. Children raised in institutions suffer physically, mentally and emotionally FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Ignoring these facts is ludicrous and yet, for the love of orphanages, this is where we are.

Lie Four: “We saved a child.”

More blatant white-saviorism there ne’er was. A mother should never have to choose between feeding her child and keeping him. Orphanages dangle life and death before parents and extended family by saying, We will take care of your child and give him an education BUT you have to sign over your legal rights to us. Lies Two and Three  are used to strong-arm signatures of relinquishment that then become the anecdotes of Lie One and the fire burns in my bones as I type out the words, “You didn’t save them, you stole them.” When a child is robbed of his biological family, his cultural connection, his lineage, his identity, and subjected to the trauma of abandonment because the people with the financial means to help the family chose not to? There are no purple hearts for this.

Lie Five: “We’re doing the best we can.”

Mmm. So tricky. In case reading thus far has branded me as the worst cynic, let me lower my guard just a little and say, I hear this. I hear you. Because of the circles we run in, we know many of these orphanage workers personally. They are not monsters. I don’t know anyone who gives up a comfortable life to come and serve the least of these who is not honest-to-goodness trying their best. This Lie deserves at least that much acknowledgement.

But here’s the rub. Doing “the best that we can” does not absolve responsibility to do better. As has been noted, supporting orphans well means supporting their extended support network in ways that allow the child to remain with family. I’ve hashed this with orphanage workers before and there are several common objections:

We can’t just give money – drunk uncle will spend it all on booze.

If we give clothes and food, other children in the family end up wearing and eating it.

We don’t have the staff capacity to interact with the community on that level.

It’s too much effort.

Etc. etc. etc.

So, train family mentors. So, work through churches. So, clothe the siblings too. So, work on your community integration. So, bring in some actual social workers. So, do what it takes and don’t punk out because if that were your kid, you’d sell a kidney to make it work. These are not pie in the sky solutions. Where there is a will there is a way; but most orphanages just aren’t in the market for a new way.

And it’s here where I need to respond to everyone who has been reading through these Lies and is dying to rebut, “NOT ALL!!!” Let me join your chorus: Yes! NOT ALL!

NOT ALL!

NOT ALL!

NOT ALL!

We know organizations that are inspiring movements with their work in reunification. Groups that have heeded wisdom and now work tirelessly to get kids back with their real families. People who do everything they can to empower families to care for their children without guilt or fear. These are the angel warriors that give me hope. As a mother with a son who was cared for by some of the good ones, I know his caretakers would have moved heaven and hell to see him reunified, and when that was impossible, they moved heaven and hell to make sure he had a forever family. And on a larger scale, we should all be watching what is unfolding in Rwanda - on track to become Africa's first orphanage-free country! Bless.

But at the very same time, far too many orphanages exist that continue to thrive under the above lies. What is worse, new orphanages are being constructed every day. And every penny raised for construction costs is thanks to these five Lies.

Savin’ babies that nobody wanted and whose families never could have cared for them properly anyway and so how nice it is that we can give them a “family” and a better life.

And the donors of the first world just douse their consciences with white saviorism like hot fudge on a sundae and they think how sweet it is to be a part of this awesome work… all the while Jesus is weeping that his children are being exploited, wounded and sold.

A better story is out there. One of hope and healing. One of restorative justice. And as it is told, my deepest prayer is that the support for Lies would dry up completely. Because it’s funding that drives all of this, after all. And isn’t that a demon to be exorcised. Orphanages afraid to change their “business model” because it would be costly. Because this is how they’ve always done it, and it pays the bills. Paralyzed by the fear of, “who will fund us if we don’t have any babies on site to claim as our own?”

And that’s where God’s people need to step in and say, We will. We will fund reunification and first families. We will support mothers and extended kin. We will fight trauma with our financial power. As key stakeholders in this hot mess we believe that better can be done and we unleash the purse strings to see that happen.

And when that story gets told? I promise you, it will change everything.  

orphan professors: how five kids have shaped my view of orphan care

We’ve talked to many people who have a passion for orphan care – their hearts blaze afire when they see the statistics of orphan children and read those scriptures telling us to serve. But one thing we’ve noticed is that even amongst the passionate ones, many people think of orphans almost exclusively in the context of the orphanage institutions that house and feed them.

We might have too, once upon a time. But outside of that institutional “box” are real humans – and five of these beautiful people in particular have dramatically shaped our view of orphan care. It would be my pleasure to introduce them to you now.

1. Meet Mulenga

Mulenga is a single orphan, his mother having passed away seven years ago. His father has struggled off and on to take care of Mulenga and his two other siblings, but extended family has banded together to make ends meet. One day Mulenga came home and told his dad that an NGO representative had pulled him out of class to take his picture. The father followed up on the action and discovered that this NGO was pulling orphans out of class to take their pictures for marketing purposes. They needed some “authentic orphans” to spice up their fundraising campaigns. Mulenga’s dad was furious. His rampage, a mixture of Bemba and English, roughly translated to “don’t exploit my kid and don’t patronize me.” I would feel hypocritical including a picture of Mulenga in my own write-up, except that we are not the typical fly-by-night NGO workers. Mulenga is one of our favorite people. Ever. We have dozens of pictures of him, not because we’ve sought to exploit his orphan status, but because he’s in our house every day and we clearly love him so much!

Mulenga’s lesson for us: Orphans and their families are worthy of dignity and respect. 

2. Meet Maggie

Maggie’s mother died of when she was just one year old. After the maternal death, the village wondered whether Maggie would be abandoned, assuming no one would want anything to do with the “illegitimate” child of a known prostitute. Immediately however, a grandmother, two aunts and a cousin stepped in to claim Maggie as their own. They came to us for help as she had lost considerable weight when her supply of breast milk was taken away. The family made sacrifices to care for this child, worrying extensively about her healthy and wellbeing. Their involvement in Maggie’s life made us take note; the western concept of family makes us often assume that children would be unwanted by anyone other than the bio parents. “Not my kid, not my problem.” – is more of how Westerners would think about iis a western ethic. But the tribal concept of family gives greater grace. Extended families swallow up children with the same duty and conviction as if they had birthed them themselves.

Maggie’s lesson for us: Extended families are ready and willing to care for orphans to prevent them from being institutionalized.

3. Meet Mwewa

Mwewa is a unique case. Both of his parents are technically alive, but his mother is absent due to mental illness and his father struggles both with alcohol and mental health, landing Mwewa firmly on the community’s vulnerable child list. Despite his crazy rough family life, Mwewa is one of the most relaxed, well-adjusted, fun loving kids. It actually makes no sense, and we have wondered why he’s not in a corner rocking himself. Our answer? He is constantly surrounded by his friends and their families. Mwewa sleeps in his father’s home, but is otherwise almost always found in the company of his pals – eating all meals with them, goofing off with them, playing a hearty game of soccer with them. The adults of the community look out for his needs: school uniforms and shoes and toiletries. (And yes, we are a big part of that.) On paper, everything says this kid belongs in an orphanage where he would receive “proper care”, but we can see that this is exactly where he needs to be.

Mwewa’s lesson for us: Kids thrive in a place where they feel they belong.

4. Meet Asa

Asa’s mother died while birthing her. The clinic staff was afraid that the child would be abandoned and die if there was no one to nurse her. The sister to the deceased mother came forward and announced that she could take the baby, at least for a while. She was still nursing her then 14 month old and thought she could “spare some milk” for the helpless infant. We met with the mother and asked her what she felt she needed to help the newborn thrive. Nutrition, soap and some baby socks were the items on her list. For the next year we took the family extra food, talked to the aunt about milk supply and when to wean her older biological child, and helped her see that with a bit of support, she could care for this child and honor her sister. That baby is now almost four and she is fat and happy and an integrated member of the family that took her in. Her aunt no longer needs our help and she is more than proud of her “daughter.” Some food, soap and socks were all it took to give her aunt the confidence to raise her and keep her from being institutionalized.

Asa’s lesson for us: Sometimes just getting a family over a hump is all that is needed.

5. Meet Matobwe

I had known Matobwe for years before I found out that both of her parents had passed away. She has always called Ireen “mommy” and as far as I knew, she was just one of Ireen’s biological children. Come to find out, Matobwe is actually Ireen’s youngest sister. Ireen was already a married woman when Matobwe was born, and when their mother died, Ireen took her in as her own. Matobwe grew for years never knowing anything different, until she was mature enough to find out that “Mommy” was really “sister” – but after a decade and a half of care, that difference seemed trivial. Ireen stayed mommy and probably always will. Safe and secure, this child has parents who love her, even if they are technically her siblings.

Matobwe’s lesson for us: An orphaned child absorbed into extended family rarely feels orphaned at all.

Dignity. Respect. Family. Belonging. Thanks kiddos. You’ve taught me well.