Featured Adoption Stories

I want to encourage all of you to visit http://straightfromtheheart.typepad.com/ - and leave comments for those who have shared very personal details of their lives and adoption process...for the world to read.

There is a story about Cindy - a woman who was adopted as a toddler. So encouraging to hear her thoughts on her birth mother, her feelings knowing she was adopted, her challenges growing up.

Then the Baker family, who have adopted from South Africa. So interesting to read about a family who have followed God's prompting - and go where He sent them!

The Chassion family who adopted from China. So interesting to see the similarities between our experiences, and of course - the major differences! Their adoption story was followed by the local news.

And us - most of you know our story, but I think Julie asked me some questions that I haven't talked about here - might be interesting for you to read through our plight. If not - that's OK! Read the stories of the other families.

stories of adoption - a must read!

Hello All,

I would like to share a link to a blog I frequent. The writer is a mom to an adopted child - and is writing stories of adoption...those who were adopted, those who are adopting, those who have adopted.

I found the stories that have been posted thus far to be uplifitng and very interesting. I encourage you to visit the site - and pass along the link to those in your individual adoption communities. http://straightfromtheheart.typepad.com/

Tell Teleflora what you think!

UPDATE: Teleflora did change the website and classification of this kind of Mom. Now, instead of 'non-Mom' it says 'adopting mom'. I will say that I still don't like this - a mom who has adopted a child is every much a MOM as one who birthed a child. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE! A mom is a mom! It is unfortunate that Teleflora had to make a distinction between the 2.

Having said that - I do, however, know there are situations where there is a woman who is a mother figure who isn't really a mom. I have a close friend who has a mother figure in her life (she calls her 'adopted mom')...so, I do see how this can be. Teleflora should call this classification of Mom 'Mother Figure' or "Filling a Moms Shoes".

I was reading one of the chat boards I frequent today, and was SHOCKED to read this!

NBC and Teleflora have this incredible Mother's Day contest going on where an adoptive mom has been labeled a "Non-mom Mom".

http://www.americasfavoritemom.com/mothers-day-2008/static/semiFinalists

Their definition of a "Non-mom Mom"?

"Grandparent, stepmom, or mom to adopted children, each one raising and loving a child. A priceless gift for everybody."

Unbelievably insulting!

Can you believe that?! Saying that an adopted mom is a NON MOM! I am spitting mad! And I plan to tell Teleflora and all of the other sponsors what I think about this insensitive comment. Horrible! What do you think?

WE TV tonight

On We TV tonight at 8PM Eastern, there is a show called 'Women Behind Bars'. Peggy Hilt (the women in Virginia who killed her Russian adopted daughter - that started the downward spiral ultimately leading to all the trouble we're having) will be featured.

No - I'm not kidding...

Here is some more info on the program:
http://www.wetv.com/shows/women-behind-bars/episodes/EP010293120004

Another adoption tragedy

On FRUA (www.frua.org) I read about another tragedy in the adoption world. Horrible. I can't understand - why don't these adoptive parents who seem to be overwhelmed seek help?

http://www.abc4.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=74d63310-3625-487b-a782-9390b58176f5

TOOELE, Utah (ABC 4 News) - A child is dead and his brother is hospitalized.

And now their parents are in jail in connection to the crime.

It was a 9-1-1 call from the Emilyantsev home in Tooele Friday that alerted police to the situation.

Dispatcher: " Yes, what's the problem?

Mom: "I have a problem with my baby. It's a little boy we just adopted ."

Dispatcher: " What type of problem?"

Mom: "...breathing problems."

Inside the home, police found an 14-month old on the floor, barely breathing.

Dispatcher: What exactly happened?

Mom: He is breathing. I don't know. I don't know. We've got five ... He's out fifth child. We just adopted him from Russia."

A day later, the child died at the hospital and the autopsy revealed a cause.

"The child suffered a significant skull fracture and when the child suffered the injury it appears from the investigation that it would have been mom who was in custody of the child," said Tooele County prosecutor Doug Hogan.

Kimberly Emelyantsev is the child’s mother and was jailed. Wednesday she was brought to court to face child murder charges.

Prosecutors said the 14-month old was a baby with Down's syndrome and was adopted by the family two weeks ago.

"It’s hard to reconcile those two facts...somebody that would adopt and then the child suffers a significant injury," Hogan said.

But prosecutors said their investigation uncovered another allegation against the parents.

The husband, Fyodor Emelyantsev was jailed on suspicion of child abuse.

Police claim the couple adopted another four year old baby with Down's syndrome from Russia. The child was malnourished.

"This was also a special needs child,” Hogan said. “This was a child that would not have been the size and weight you would expect for the age."

Back at the Emelyansev home, neighbors are stunned with what's happened to the children.

"As a parent you worry about your kids and that's the absolute worst thing that could happen to them and you can't imagine anything worse,” said neighbor Celese Hansen.

Kimberly Emelyantsev remains in jail and will return to court Thursday for a detention hearing.

Need an Oprah Hook Up

I was surfing the net today, and went to www.Oprah.com. There is a section on the 'be on the show' part of the website that used to have a show topic called "do you need an Oprah hook up?". It's too bad that topic idea is gone...because I do!

I can't help but to believe that getting Anya home is going to be because of someone we know (who knows someone). I have had this feeling for a LONG time. If you do any research on Russian business culture, you will quickly learn that most business agreements happen on relationship. Well - we need to find that relationship connection to Judge Stepanova! and/or to the Supreme Court in Russia.

Maybe you know someone who is connected with someone powerful. Oprah knows everyone. I also know that Martha Stewart has Russian connections.

OK, so maybe I am thinking out of the box - but hey, it can't hurt!

I Surrender All

To know me is to know a few truths. I love shoes. I love clothes. I love Oprah. Although I don't have a subscription to O Magazine, each month, I read parts of the online version. My favorite thing is reading Oprah's words.

In the Feb edition - she talks about real love. How you are loved through hard times. Pretty good stuff.

So, after reading this - you will understand the title to this post. And - to all you PAPs out there (pre adoptive parents) - SURRENDER ALL. "You don't have to carry the load [of adoption] all by yourself. You can surrender all."

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/200802/omag_200802_landing.jhtml
...from Oprah

I've gotten a new taste of what love is the past few months while trying to right the wrongs at my school in South Africa. A dormitory matron was accused of sexual and physical abuse at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Recognizing how emotionally draining this time has been for me, people reached out with their encouragement. People I knew well and many I had never met built a bridge of support allowing me to laser-focus on doing what was necessary, moment by moment, to help each girl.

Yes, I was devastated—devastated times 150 trusting hearts. I couldn't stop thinking about the girls, every single one of them—remembering when I first interviewed them to come to the school, and their high hopes and happy smiles the day they were accepted. So many of them had already had such difficult lives: poverty, death, violence, grief. I wanted their lives at the school to be not just better but easier and free from all harm.

So that dream was temporarily thwarted.

But I can say today (as I write this, I'm on a plane to Africa once again) that the sweeping changes instituted since the report of abuse have put us on the path to a more stable and secure future than we had before. The crisis has forced the school's staff, administrators, teachers, students—and everyone associated with their well-being—to create a more open and collaborative environment. So the new birthing I spoke of in last month's column has begun.

Throughout this process, I've been sustained by my abiding faith in a power greater than my own. I've recognized in every dark moment that this too shall pass. That's the mantra that's kept me going from the moment I received the first phone call of suspected abuse.

After many days of constant conversations and working through a multitude of concerns, I was worn out, but my spirit's never faltered. I've remained encouraged by the grace and love of friends who've e-mailed, written, or called. So many people asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"—not knowing that they already had, just by asking. Gayle was as exhausted as I but still attended every meeting with police, and parents. Maria Shriver left daily messages reminding me to hold firm to my intentions in building the school.

Every note or message felt like an embrace, like the greatest valentine anyone could receive. None came with frills or fancy bows—just its own heart-spoken truth. This last line in a handwritten letter from Sidney Poitier spoke volumes: "The universe and all your friends have your back."

To know that people care about how you're doing when the doings aren't so good—that's what love is. I feel blessed to know this for sure.

One day while I was doing the show, my friend BeBe Winans appeared in the audience. "BeBe, why are you here?" I asked during a commercial break. "No one told me you were coming!"

"I just came to see you, see how you were doing," he said. That's strange, I thought, but continued with the show. Afterward he followed me to my office and said, "There's something I came to tell you." And as I sat behind my desk, he started singing what he knows is my favorite spiritual: "I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all."

I sat silently, closed my eyes, and opened myself to accepting his magnificent and humble offering, this gift of love and song. When he finished, I felt a release of all pressure to do anything. I was content to just be. And for the first time in weeks, I experienced pure peace.

When I opened my eyes and wiped away the tears, BeBe was beaming. He started laughing his huh, huh, huuuagh laugh, and gave me a big hug. "Girl," he said, "I just came to remind you, you don't have to carry this load all by yourself. You can surrender all."

And in that moment I did.

Listen to I Surrender All Here http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/200802/audioplayer/mission_player_180x200.html

Peggy Hilt talks to Newsweek.

To bring you up to speed...in my world, Peggy Sue Hilt is THE REASON we are not able to bring Anya home. She is the whack job who killed her child that was adopted from Irkutsk. When she was being sentenced, I called the Judge's office who was sentencing her, spoke to the media - did everything I could think of to make sure everyone knew that her actions didn't just effect the life of that poor little girl.

Well, in this piece from Newsweek, it seems to paint Peggy in a 'poor peggy' light. UGH! That just makes me so mad I can't see straight! In my world, NO CHILD DESERVES TO BE KILLED - ESPECIALLY AT THE HAND OF THEIR PARENTS! The load of crap that Peggy says here that she didn't know there were resources available to her - NOT! She was a member of several of the chat boards I am a member of - so she knows how to use the Internet. There are so many resources out there, it's stupid.

Bottom line, Newsweek shouldn't give 5-minutes of fame to a mental whack job who killed her child. Period. It does nothing to help anyone.


When Adoption Goes Wrong

Most Americans who adopt children from other countries find joy. But others aren't prepared for the risks—and may find themselves overwhelmed.
By Pat Wingert
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 3:16 PM ET Dec 8, 2007

Peggy Hilt wanted to be a good mother. But day after day, she got out of bed feeling like a failure. No matter what she tried, she couldn't connect with Nina, the 2-year old girl she'd adopted from Russia as an infant. The preschooler pulled away whenever Hilt tried to hug or kiss her. Nina was physically aggressive with her 4-year-old sister, who had been adopted from Ukraine, and had violent tantrums. Whenever Hilt wasn't watching, she destroyed the family's furniture and possessions. "Every day with Nina had become a struggle," she recalls now.

As the girl grew older, things got worse. Hilt fell into a deep depression. She started drinking heavily, something she'd never done before. Ashamed, she hid her problem from everyone, including her husband.

On the morning of July 1, 2005, Hilt was packing for a family vacation, all the while downing one beer after another and growing increasingly aggravated and impatient with Nina's antics. "Everything she did just got to me," Hilt said. When Hilt caught her reaching into her diaper and smearing feces on the walls and furniture, "a year and a half of frustration came to a head," Hilt says. "I snapped. I felt this uncontrollable rage."

Then Hilt did something unthinkable. She grabbed Nina around the neck, shook her and then dropped her to the floor, where she kicked her repeatedly before dragging her up to her room, punching her as they went. "I had never hit a child before," she says. "I felt horrible and promised myself that this would never happen again." But it was too late for that. Nina woke up with a fever, and then started vomiting. The next day she stopped breathing. By the time the ambulance got the child to the hospital, she was dead.

Hilt is now serving a 19-year sentence for second-degree murder in a Virginia maximum-security prison. She and her husband divorced, and he is raising their other daughter. She realizes the horror of her crime and says she isn't looking for sympathy. "There is no punishment severe enough for what I did," she told NEWSWEEK in an interview at the prison.

Hilt's story is awful—and rare—but sadly it is not unique. Adopting a child from another country is usually a positive, enriching experience for both the child and the parent. Over the last 20 years, foreign adoption has become more popular, and Americans now adopt about 20,000 children from Guatemala, China, Russia and other nations each year. (In the last few years, as restrictions and red tape have increased in some countries, the number of overseas adoptions has begun to drop.) Longitudinal studies show that most of these kids do quite well, but in a small but significant number of cases, things go very badly. Since the early 1990s, the deaths of 14 Russian children killed by their adoptive parents have been documented. (That disclosure was partly responsible for Russia's decision in 2006 to suspend its intercountry adoption program while it underwent review.)

Cases like those are extreme, but clinicians who specialize in treating foreign orphans say they are seeing more parents who are overwhelmed by their adopted children's unexpected emotional and behavioral problems. And though reputable agencies try to warn parents of the risks, not all succeed. "In the past, agencies were a bit naive," says Chuck Johnson of the National Council For Adoption, which is responding to the problem with a massive education initiative. "Now we're urging them to give parents a more realistic message." Some parents struggle to find effective treatment for their kids. Others seek to give them up. Reports that a growing number of foreign adoptees were being turned over to the U.S. foster-care system recently prompted the Department of Health and Human Services to order its first national count: 81 children adopted overseas were relinquished to officials in 14 states in 2006.

Why do some adoptions go so wrong? Clearly, it's not the kids' fault. Their behavior is usually the result of trauma, mistreatment, malnutrition or institutionalization in their home countries—problems more common in places like Eastern Europe. But "the country of origin doesn't matter so much as the child's experience," says Dr. Dana Johnson, director of the University of Minnesota's International Adoption Clinic. Some are found to suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, mental illness or reactive attachment disorder, an inability to bond with a parent. Prospective families undergo an arduous screening process, including home visits, and specify how much disability they can handle. But even families who specifically request a "healthy" child sometimes go home with a troubled one. In some cases, the mismatch is inadvertent. But in others, orphanages or adoption agencies overseas—eager to find homes for difficult children in their care—mislead prospective parents or fail to disclose the full extent of a child's problems or personal history.

Emotional and even physical problems can be difficult to detect at the time of adoption, especially in infants, and often aren't diagnosed until months or years later. Hilt says that's what happened to her. She and her husband decided to adopt after being told she'd probably never conceive. After passing their agency's screening, they brought home their first daughter from Ukraine in 2001, and that went so well they decided to adopt two Russian sisters. But when they flew to Siberia to meet them in May 2003, they were told the sisters were no longer available. Instead, they were told, they could adopt Tatiana, a lively 18-month-old, and Nina, a quiet, withdrawn 9-month-old. They visited Tatiana every day for a week, but officials never let them see Nina again. "They said she had a bad cold," Hilt said. Nonetheless, they signed adoption papers for both girls. But when they returned to finalize the adoption in January 2004, they were told that only Nina was still available. The Hilts hesitated. They suspected a bait-and-switch, especially when officials insisted they sign papers testifying they'd spent many more hours with the baby than they had. "The whole process didn't feel right," Hilt said. "But we figured we could love any child. You convince yourself that everything will turn out OK."

But from the start, Nina "literally pushed me away," Hilt said. Over time, Hilt found herself resenting the little girl. "We'd been such a happy family, and then Nina came and everything changed," Hilt says. "I began to realize that we had made such a big mistake." (Tatyana Kharchendo, the doctor in charge of the Little Sun Child Home #1 in Irkutsk, where the Hilts adopted Nina, did not directly answer Hilt's charges, but insisted the child "was absolutely healthy and beautiful.")

No one is exonerating Hilt or others like her. But Joyce Sterkel, who runs the Ranch for Kids, a Montana boarding school for disturbed international adoptees, says she's come to see the parents as well as the kids as victims in these tragic cases. "It's a horrible thing, but I understand how some people end up killing these kids," she says. "They have no empathy, no affection, no love. My heart goes out to these parents because they don't know what to do."

When Sterkel, a nurse, first started working with international adoptees in the early '90s, she didn't see many deeply troubled children. But 10 years ago she adopted two Russian boys whose American parents had given up on them. One of them, a 14-year-old boy, had just been released from a juvenile-detention center after trying to poison his mother. Over time, Sterkel was approached so often about adopting other children that she decided to open her camp. Today it houses 25 to 30 kids from all over the country, and has a waiting list. The overwhelming majority are from Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, but she also has had children from South Korea and Colombia. Some were bullied or raped while institutionalized or were the children of prostitutes, drug addicts or alcoholics. "I have gotten calls from parents who say the child they adopted has killed the family dog, threatened to kill them, and no one will help them," she says.

Emotional, behavioral and physical problems are not unique to adopted children. Biological children can have the same range of issues. But adoptive parents often assume they know what they're getting into because they get the chance to meet their child in advance. That was the case when Kimble and Shellie Elmore of Los Angeles met a 10-year-old Russian child named Tania in 2005. The director of the orphanage proudly described her as an "angel."

But as soon as they took custody of their new daughter, her behavior changed dramatically. "She was completely out of control," Kimble says. Tania would scream for hours at a time, then fall into deep sullen silence. After signing Tania over to the Elmores, the Russian court handed them her file. They were stunned to find that she had a history of violence and had been transferred from one orphanage to another. They called their adoption agency back home, but were mistakenly told that there was nothing that could be done, that Tania was now their legal daughter. (The American Embassy could have helped, if they'd known.) Seeing no alternative, they boarded a plane and brought Tania back to California. By the end of the first week, she was admitted to a hospital psychiatric unit. She came home a few days later, but things grew worse. She tried to stab her father with a spike and attacked a police officer who came to the house in response to a 911 call.

Doctors diagnosed Tania with bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and attachment disorder, and suggested she be sent to Sterkel's camp. In the past year the Elmores have exhausted their savings and retirement funds trying to pay for private residential treatment. "We know she's just a child and we want what's best for her," says Kimble. "But we don't know how to help her. Adoption is supposed to be a touchy-feely thing surrounded with the glow of new parenthood. But no one says, 'What if the worst happens?' "

Psychologist Karyn Purvis of Texas Christian University, who has done extensive research on troubled adopted children, says many of these kids simply don't respond to stern lectures and timeouts. Lab workups of her patients often reveal extremely high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. "The children, for the most part, were in safe homes living with safe people," Purvis says, "but those cortisol levels told us that their children did not feel safe with them, even if they'd been living safely with them for years." Children like them are almost constantly in a hypervigilant state, she says. They don't let their guard down long enough to forge affectionate relationships.

Over the past several years Purvis has developed new methods to restore a sense of security and trust to traumatized kids. If a child becomes violent, for instance, Purvis often responds with a "basket hold." She cradles the kids firmly but gently in her lap, facing outward, with their arms crossed in front of their chests. She rocks and quietly soothes until they calm down, then asks them to look her in the eye and tell her what they want. Purvis's assistants have taken to calling her the "Child Whisperer."

Sometimes techniques like these result in dramatic turnarounds. The family of a 5-year-old adopted from Russia thought they had no choice but to seek psychiatric hospitalization after she threw her baby sister down the stairs. But after the parents adopted Purvis's methods, the little girl finally started talking about the serious abuse she'd experienced. The child's behavior changed markedly. But her mother "changed even more," Purvis says, "because now she has hope."

Purvis is quick to say that her techniques don't work with every child, and older kids can take much longer than younger ones. "They have to unlearn what they've learned," she said. The next step, she says, is for prospective adoptive parents to get more training before and after they adopt. "Very few agencies are training parents to deal with brain damage, sensory deprivation, aggression," Purvis says. "A lot of these parents are smitten with the hope that they'll make a difference in a child's life, but they need very practical tools. I consider myself very pro-adoption. But I'm also very pro informed adoption. "

Peggy Hilt wishes she'd heard this message years ago. "If I knew then what I know now," she says, "I would have gotten help for Nina and for me." The best she can hope for now, she says, is that her story will prompt others to seek that help before it's too late.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/74385
© Newsweek Mag

story in the Elkhart Truth

Long road homeWait of nearly two years to adopt Russian girl nearing an end for Bristol couple

Published: Monday, September 18, 2006 -- The Truth,

Last updated: 9/17/2006 9:57:56 PMBy Jennifer OchsteinTruth Correspondent


BRISTOL -- Their Anya could be home by Thanksgiving, ceasing Marty and Kathy Friend's two-year eternity.

They've imagined what it will be like.
And why not? When you've waited for nearly two years to bring home the child you hope will one day call you "Mom" and "Dad," you fantasize about finally being parents.
Marty and Kathy Friend have been trying to adopt 4-year-old Anya, now living in a children's home in Irkutsk, Siberia, in Russia, since the girl was 2.
This summer, monetary constraints and a host of other complications nearly derailed the adoption. But close friends threw together a fundraiser, yielding enough to finish the adoption process.

Envisioning
Mostly, Kathy said, when she imagines times together with Anya, she thinks about what the mornings will be like. Since she's not a morning person, Kathy envisions Anya crawling out of her own bed in her pink bedroom and toddling into her parents' room. Kathy sees Anya climbing up the steps leading to her parents' tall bed and snuggling in.
Marty sees "Daddy and Anya getting up at the crack of dawn, making fun of Mommy, who's trying to pry her eyes open."

Either way, the couple is praying they won't have to imagine much longer.
"I really feel like God chose her to be our child," said Kathy, who's unable to have children. While she wasn't devastated at the thought of not being able to give birth to a child, she's always wanted to be a mom. "God set us up to adopt," she said.
Once Anya gets home and the Friends' fantasy becomes reality, Kathy has one wish -- to be a good enough parent to break through whatever difficulties Anya has dealt with during her short life.

"I want to give her enough love to help her become whatever she wants to be," Kathy said.

Processing
Normally, the adoption process takes much less time -- about nine months -- but adoptions of Russian children to Americans have become more difficult in recent years, the Friends said.
A North Carolina woman recently was convicted of killing the child she adopted from Russia. In response, the Russian Ministry of Education enforced more stringent guidelines for foreign adoptions.

At about the same time, the Friends and hundreds of other American couples were in the midst of trying to adopt from Russia. All of them were stalled.

What made chances even more difficult for the Friends was they were using the same U.S.-based adoption agency as the North Carolina woman who killed her child.

The adoption agency, according to Kathy, had been recommended to them by friends who had adopted two Russian girls before the North Carolina incident. After the Russian Ministry of Education stiffened guidelines, the adoption agency the Friends were using was no longer accredited in Russia.

At that point, the couple had spent more than $24,000 during the adoption proceedings. They felt as if they were running out of time, money and options to bring Anya home.

"We decided to take matters into our own hands," Kathy said.

Navigating
In May, the Friends took their third trip to Irkutsk, taking the unusual step to go it alone, without an adoption agency. They didn't want the stigma, but did want to stay in touch with Anya's caregivers at the children's home so they would continue to feel comfortable with the couple, hoping to make the adoption process easier.

Speaking little Russian, the couple found an interpreter who has taken on the unlikely role of partner in helping them adopt Anya. Their interpreter not only helped them through their last trip in Russia to visit Anya and her caregivers, he also has helped them navigate the country's legal system to get the adoption paperwork into motion.

Despite difficulties, the Friends hope their most recent round of paperwork to a Russian judge, known to be tough and thorough when reviewing legalities surrounding adoption of Russian children in his jurisdiction, will be successful.

But for that paperwork to get through to the judge, the Friends had to pay for the services of an attorney, and at the time, they say, they were tapped out.

They had liquidated and sold nearly everything they didn't need when they first began the adoption process. The sense of urgency to get the last remaining $6,000 was palpable.
That's when Kathy's friends, Kathy Strukel and Pam Homan, stepped up.

Supporting
Within four days, Strukel and Homan set up a dinner, silent auction and raffle. Kelly Miller, Flytraps restaurant owner, donated food and drink for 200 attendees who came to Lucy's Rhythm Room in Elkhart. Thus far from the Aug. 30 event, $6,400 has been raised.
"I was blown away," Strukel said of guests' generosity.

She thinks people were so willing to give because the Friends "have hearts as big as all outdoors and they wanted to give back. And I think people know what wonderful parents they're going to be."

Strukel many have agonized over the situation along with the Friends.

"I think it will mean the world to them," to have Anya come live with them, Strukel said. "They've loved her for two years now -- ever since they first saw her."


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