I only have about ten minutes before I return to my stack of grading, so here goes!
2nd Post Placement Visit
We were so thrilled that our 2nd post placement visit (3 month visit) was already here! Three months goes quickly when you're parenting and not waiting for travel. (By the way, those four months were the longest four months of our lives!) Rai has been a daddy's boy lately, so I got some quiet time to run around getting things ready. We were thrilled with the about of information our social worker brought regarding activities and Preschool/Mother's Day Out programs and welcomed the ideas and feedback on Rai's transition. Every time someone asks, "How much longer do you have to have someone monitoring you?" we always stress that we've really relied on our social worker for help and don't feel monitored in any way. (I'm actually not looking forward to our last visit since I'll miss being able to call and say "HELP!" If we decide to transition to family of 4, well 6 including our cats, I'm sure we'll be begging our homestudy agency for the same social worker!) We also learned great news! We can begin working on our finalization NEXT MONTH! We can't finalize until after our last visit (October), but the head start on the process is always great.
For clarification, much of the US side of the immigration paperwork was for legal guardianship. The adoption program in Korea is a legal guardianship transition until the finalization six months later. Hopefully, we will have a court date in November/December which will mark the end of the legal process, making Rai a US citizen, our legal son with his official name: Rai Yun-Taek Young.
Birth Mother Workshop
Our awesome social worker also brought a great opportunity to our attention. Dillon International (an adoption agency in our area) was hosting an adoption workshop last Sunday which featured two Korean birthmothers and included 2 social workers from the Korean agency, 1 Korean adoptee (in his 20's), and 1 adoptive parent who has met one of her son's birthfamilies. Words cannot express how much this workshop meant to both of us. We went in curious and left emotionally changed adoptive parents. The stories of these two birthmothers has changed our lives and will greatly impact our lives forever. For those interested, a detailed account can be found on the Holt Forum at http://www.holtintl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=99100&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0. In short, we spent the entire car ride home discussing our new strategies for communicating with Rai's birthmother (or at least providing her with updates on a regular basis) and discussing how this workshop may change what we'd like to do as parents (i.e. making Korean language a top priority for all of us, not just Rai).
Thank you to Dillon International for providing us with this opportunity. Thank you to our social worker for bringing this to our attention. Thank you, of course, to the two brave birthmothers who flew from Korea to share their unique stories to a room full of strangers and for sharing their children with the families in the US. I hope their dream of one day meeting their children again are fulfilled and the relationship with these children is a long-lasting one. And thank you to Rai's birthmother who made an adoption plan that brought us together. As another adoptive mother put it, we hope our updated letter and pictures will begin the process of mending the hole in your heart and hope that one day Rai can come to know who his birth mother is.
Letters & Pictures
We are ashamed that it has taken us so long to send Rai's foster family a letter and pictures, but everything should go out in the mail tomorrow. Rai's foster family, especially his foster mother, has been in our thoughts since we've left. I've often wondered how she copes with the loss of her dear son who she raised since (most likely) his release from the hospital at 6 weeks old. She's a wonderful woman, and we hope that she will be a part of Rai's life, not only through letters and pictures.
My ten minutes has long been up, so more information will need to wait for another grading break...
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