As the crisis at our southern border worsens, I can’t help but look at the little boy we adopted from China two years ago and cry.
I agonized over the decision to adopt, wrestling with the choice to take a child away from his culture and care system. I knew we could provide access to so many things — education, medical care, economic stability — but I also knew this access came at a steep price I wouldn’t be paying.
For Chinese adoptions, the day you meet your child is the day you take him or her home. To prepare for this first meeting, we told our children their new brother might not like us at first. We watched hard-to-watch videos of other families meeting their adoptee for the first time. We went to trainings on how to build trust with him.
Even with that preparation, our first meeting was devastating.
We waited and watched with other families as one by one orphanage representatives brought kids into the room. After 30 minutes of asking them questions through an interpreter, our son’s nannies tearfully asked us to distract him and, when he wasn’t looking, they tried to leave.
Our baby saw this and cracked open. He wailed, scrambling away from us to stop them. When he couldn’t push the doors open to follow them, he pressed his face flat against the glass and screamed, leaving a long smear of tears and mucus. The bubbles, toy phone and suckers he had loved moments earlier were poor substitutes for his aiyi (love).
During the remainder of our time in China, we did everything we could to help him adjust. Some hours were OK. Some were nightmarish.
He would thrash wildly and cry hysterically when we tried to put him to sleep. He was so frantic the first time we put him in a crib that we let him sleep in bed with us, but he often hit and kicked us until fatigue set in. He stopped eating. Sometimes he’d ask Chinese guests on the hotel elevator to take him away from us. He never stopped being terrified of our adoption group, and when we finalized the adoption a few days later, he saw the other families in the room and immediately ran out the front door.
This trauma affected all of us, and it didn’t go away when we got home. For months, I made pots of congee (a Chinese rice porridge) while his siblings used Google Translate to teach him what “shoes” were. We watched Elmo in Mandarin and went to Chinese festivals. Everyone took turns giving him completely undivided attention. And toys and blankets and books.
It's been almost 2 years. He loves us and we love him.
But loss still haunts us.
I’ve spent many nights awake thinking about his biological family. After a searcher located them, we cried when his grandmother saw his picture and burst into tears. The story of how he ended up in care isn’t mine to share, but as is almost always the case, it’s more complicated than it appears. Even in a rural Chinese village, his future at was impacted at birth by geopolitical and economic forces that dwarfed his family’s resources.
Outwardly, it seems he’s fully adapted to his new life. But he still won’t go to sleep unless one of us is in his bed. When we grab our car keys, he asks us not to leave. After his siblings go to school or work or practice, he spends 20 minutes asking me where they are and when they will be back.
Knowing migrant children have been separated from their families and are being neglected by our government makes me physically ill because I know my son will likely deal with abandonment trauma throughout his life. Even with a loving adoptive family and a connection to his biological family, he can’t hide from the gaping black hole of “alone” that is part of his story.
As asylum-seekers, these children are likely familiar with poverty, hunger, and/or violence. But now they have experienced it without a parent’s protection. Even if every separated family is reunited, the damage has been done. The dark alone is now a permanent part of their story.
Our country is founded on the expectation that citizens will check abuses of power. On July 12, Lights for Liberty (lightsforliberty.org) is sponsoring rallies across the country to protest the inhumane conditions forced on refugees by our government. Find an event and attend. Contact your representatives to demand the camps be closed and Congress immediately begin work on bipartisan immigration reform.
We must not allow this utterly inhumane systematic dismantling of families to continue. I can’t fathom the long-term consequences of this cruel crusade, but I’m certain the hope and health of an entire generation of children, both American and refugee, hangs in the balance.