A(nother) Year in Her Life...LOST.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since I first saw my daughter's face. Here she is when we first saw her and again today.

Age 2 years 8 months

Age 3 years and 9 months

Sigh....I mourn the changes. We've missed so much (more) of her life waiting. How I wish I could have been there from the first moment that her mother decided she could no longer parent.  I suppose that is every adoptive mother's regret...the time lost to orphanages and temporary care. The love and protection we desperately wish we could have provided supplanted by circumstance. 

Worse than my loss though is her's...since the age of 4 months SHE HAS BEEN WAITING.

The adoption process is apathetic to her waiting; it's an unmerciful, self absorbed task master with little compassion for the child. It's half sighted priorities focus almost exclusively on the needs and desires of adults..the kids are, (let me say this nicely), SECONDARY.

Birth Mothers determine a life long course for their child.

Orphanage Officials arbitrate if and when paper work for a given child is processed.

Government Bureaucracies cling to a process fraught will inefficiency, undue costs and misconduct.

Adoption Agencies advocate for some and not others.

Adoptive Parents choose who and when and under what terms they adopt.

And meanwhile....The Child...vulnerable and powerless, the supposed focus of our attention... waits, and grows, and loses (months and years and far too often all of) their childhood.  A victim of chance in an adult controlled lottery.

I don't have the answers...I just know we can do better than this.

It's already too late for our daughter. The better part of four years, her entire babyhood,  has been lost to "adoption".  All we can do now is try to make up for that loss after she joins our family. We can help her deal with the unavoidable pain she will face as she comes to terms with her "adoption reality" and we can try to make her whole again but we will never be able to make up for those lost years.