Kim | International Adoption

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Sean. And I'm Lynette. We're so happy to be here this week with an interview with Kim Perry. Kim Perry is an adoption social worker and she's also an adoptive mom. We talked to her in a previous episode about some of her professional thoughts about adoption, but in this episode we'll be hearing her thoughts and her story as an adoptive mom and her experiences in adopting her two daughters who are both from Ecuador. In this episode Kim shares specifically about adopting older children,

0:35adopting a child with special needs, and also about adopting international children. We hope that you enjoy this episode with Kim Perry. Music Alright, well we are now on the podcast with Kim Perry again. Kim, welcome back. We're so glad that you can join us again. Thanks. I'm so happy to be here again.

1:07Alright, well to start off, can we have you tell us a bit about who you are, where you're from, about your family, some of your favorite things. I know we did this last time, but you can tell us different things if you want to now for anyone who didn't hear our last episode with you. Okay. I was going to say I can't remember what I told you last time. So I am originally from Idaho. I don't think I said that last time. That's a new fact. From Idaho, born and raised there. And then I've lived in Utah my entire adult life and all my family is still in Idaho. So we visit up there all the time.

1:38I am married and I have five kids, two of whom were adopted from Ecuador. I think we're going to talk about them quite a bit today. And let's see, I also work at a hospital. I think that's a new fact. I'm a social worker in a hospital, which is also a fun and not very fun thing at this point in life because of COVID, but it's a good job. And things that I like to do, apparently people think I should take up painting because recently two people in my life sent me, one of them sent like a big paint by number

2:09that you paint little tiny squares. I'm not a perfectionist. So I just paint it however I want to and it turns out fine. And then someone else sent me a watercolor book that I've started painting. So that's a new hobby that I have, which is great. And I love baseball and the Braves just won the world series yesterday. So that was super exciting for me. So you're happy. Yes, I'm so happy. How's that for a really random introduction? That's perfect. Yes. All right. Well, let's let's have you just jump in a little bit and tell about your experiences

2:39as an adoptive mom and maybe your experiences there. What got you there too? Okay. So I have adopted two daughters. My first daughter that we adopted, her name is Laura and we adopted her when she was seven years old from an orphanage in Ecuador. And my second daughter's name is Michelle and we adopted her from a different orphanage in Ecuador when she was 11 years old. So both of their stories are kind of intertwined, but also obviously have their own separate elements. I met both of my daughters when I was a volunteer in a program that sends, you know,

3:15volunteers down to Ecuador to work in the orphanages. And I went for three months and I met Floor on the very first night that I was there. So the program asked for a volunteer to go spend the night in the hospital with a baby that was there in the hospital and needed someone to be with her. And nobody volunteered. And so the director of the program randomly chose me out of the crowd to get to go spend the night with her. And that was pretty disappointing for me because it was New Year's Eve and the rest of the part of the rest of the volunteers were going to a big party.

3:48And of course I wanted to go to the party and I wanted to get to know these people better. So I kind of went with a bad attitude to be honest with you to this hospital. But the hospital was a really humbling experience. There was a it was just a really old rundown hospital that was a free hospital for children in the city. And so as you can imagine with providing free care, it wasn't the fanciest of places. So I was put in a room next to this crib of this baby and there were four other babies or three other babies,

4:18sorry, in the room, you know, each with a mom at their bedside. And here I am walking in this white girl into this Hispanic hospital, not speaking language or not knowing anything. And I didn't have a good attitude as I mentioned. So I sat next to this baby in her bed and I stared out the window of the hospital for hours. I just looked out the window and eventually this baby as babies do started to cry. And she I just remember she was just wrapped up in this pink blanket. I couldn't even really see her face. She had this tuft of hair poking out and I couldn't really see her face, but she started to cry.

4:50So eventually I decided, OK, I better pick up this baby and I better rock the baby or better feed the baby a bottle. I do better do something. So I picked her up and pretty soon she was crying and I was crying. I was crying right along with her because I recognized that my I was just being selfish. You know, I I wanted to go to a party with these volunteers. And yet here I was in this hospital with this baby girl who literally had nothing in the world and not even a mom at her bedside, you know. And so my heart just kind of softened over the course of the night and I held her and I rocked her and I loved her.

5:22And she discharged from the hospital a few days later, which happened to be her first birthday. So I volunteered to go with the with one other volunteer to take her from the hospital and ride in a taxi to back to the orphanage with her. And as we went, we were, you know, thinking like this little girl is turning one and probably nobody is celebrating her, you know, in the world at all. So we stopped at a bakery and we picked up a cake and we took it to the orphanage, even though she couldn't eat the cake. But we wanted her to feel like there was some sort of celebration for her.

5:55So over the course of my three months, I just really fell in love with this baby. I would go every morning first thing when we arrived at the orphanage and go straight to her and see how she was doing and hold her and change her diaper and do all the different things with her. So I just developed this bond with her. So fast forward to when it was time for us to leave the country. We left on a trip to the jungle for a week, which was standard for the groups of volunteers to go to the jungle for a little while. And on the day we came back from the jungle, we all rushed back to the orphanage to go say goodbye to these babies, these kids we've grown to love before we flew back to the United States.

6:31And I rushed in to see her and she was not there. I was devastated. I thought like, what in the world? How could they have moved her without me knowing this little girl had special needs? And it was obvious that she had special needs, but I wasn't really I didn't really know what they were, what they entailed. So we came to find out that she had been moved to an orphanage that was better suited to meet her needs, that could meet her special needs. And through definitely a series of miracles, the director of our program found out where she had gone and knew that I loved her and that I would need to say goodbye to her.

7:05So he made arrangements for me to take a taxi across town to go see her right before we flew out to come home to the United States. And that was a huge blessing for me because this little baby was transferred to an orphanage where the director of the orphanage was from the United States. And she was a white woman that wasn't much older than me. And she spoke English and she used email and all these different things. And she promised that she would keep in touch with me. And so she did over the course of many years, she sent me emails and updates on this baby.

7:36None of the other kids that I met in the orphanage, did I ever get to keep track of not one. The only one I got to keep track of was this one baby that I fell in love with. And that ultimately is my daughter, Floor. And when I left Ecuador, I just felt this connection with her. I just felt like this is my daughter. And I didn't even know what that meant. Like I had no idea what those feelings were or where they came from because I was single and I wasn't married. I didn't have any children. I didn't have any idea of what those feelings actually were.

8:09So fast forward a couple of years and I married my husband, my now husband. And when we were dating, I told him, I said, hey, there is this baby that I love. I'm in love with her and I'm going to I'm going to adopt her one day. And he was just kind of like, OK, you know, like, I don't know if that's really possible or anyway. But he was just like, yeah, OK, that's that's OK. So we got married and by Ecuador's laws, you have to be 25 before you can start the adoption process.

8:42I guess I'll back up a little bit. We had two biological children before we turned 25, which sounds so young at this point in my life. But we had two biological children before we turned 25. And I when I had my first biological baby, she was born and the feelings that I had for her were so familiar to me because I'd had them for this little girl in Ecuador all those years before. And I recognized then that it was the exact same feeling I felt for my two daughters, basically.

9:12So we had our oldest biological daughter while I was pregnant with our son. My husband, when I turned 25, surprised me with an account, a bank account. We were young, poor, dirt poor college students. And he opened this bank account that he'd been saving money despite I didn't know. I didn't know about it at all that he'd been saving money towards the adoption expenses for floor. And so he surprised me with that on our on our my 25th birthday.

9:42And he turned 25 two weeks later. So we were both then eligible to start the adoption process for her. So we we started that process right away, even though I was pregnant still with our biological son. And we just had this desire. We had no idea, honestly, like we were young and we were naive. We had no idea what that process would entail. But we just felt like it was the right thing to do. And we felt this desire to bring this little girl into our family.

10:12And so we started the process. It took 18 months from start to finish before we were able to travel to Ecuador. And in that time frame, I had been getting updates on floor. She had moved multiple times to different orphanages because of the level of need that she had. She has pretty severe special needs and she has a diagnosis, which we didn't have at the time we went to adopt her. But since bringing her home, she was diagnosed with something called 1P36 deletion syndrome. And so she has global developmental delays and we didn't know when we went what that meant exactly.

10:47We didn't know if she was walking. We didn't know she was talking. We didn't know if she was potty trained. We didn't know any of those things, but we just felt like it was, you know, that she was our child and we needed to go get her. So we went to Ecuador and I hadn't seen floor since I left Ecuador. It was six years prior. I'd seen her once more that summer. I made a quick trip back to Ecuador that same summer after I'd left the volunteer experience and I saw her for a week at that point.

11:17But it had been six years since I'd seen her by the time we went back to adopt her. And so as you can imagine, my emotions were just crazy and they were all over the place. And we went to this little house where she was living and they opened the door and out she walked and I just had my arms open. Like, come on, like come and give me this big old hug. And she walked right past me and went into my husband's arms and gave him a hug. And for me, it was so heartwarming because I knew that I had a connection with her and I knew that I had those experiences that he had never met her.

11:50And it was just this kind of, you know, blind leap of faith for him to go forward with that. And I it was just one of those experiences that I was like, okay, like this is right. And it's right for both of us. And she's both of our child, even though I had been the one to have those initial experiences. So we had to stay in country for 10 weeks that time around because of their laws and the way that they just go is, you know, whatever pace they'd like to go, they go at that pace in Latin America.

12:20And they did. So we had some challenges trying to get out of the country and getting all the paperwork processed and everything. But we had so much support at home. Again, I had mentioned that we were in a position like my husband and I were both students. You know, he had been going to school and my husband was working at a grocery store and I was working. I think at that point I had been working at LDS Family Services for a few years, but it was very part time. You know, we didn't have a lot of money, but we had a lot of support and a lot of love from our family members.

12:50And so many people at home were rooting for us. And so my husband had to come back with our biological kids who were three and nine months when we traveled to get Floor. So he came back and Floor and I waited for three more weeks on our own in Ecuador and then returned home at that point. So Floor has now been with us. She was seven at the time. She's 16 now. So she's been with us. I'm terrible at math. How many years is that? Nine. Nine. She's been with us for nine years.

13:21And it's been there's been some challenges, of course, adjusting to an older child and especially a child with special needs. So I don't ever sugarcoat that. I do talk about, you know, how difficult some of the challenges were adjusting in the beginning because she had been through four different homes, you know, so being to coming to our home was yet another transition for her where she doesn't have skills to communicate or to talk about how she's feeling and what she's thinking and things like that.

13:52But we've navigated those things. We've had a lot of help. And it's fantastic now. She's definitely adjusted nine years in and we're adjusted and we we just adore her and we love her and she is just the sweetest and cutest thing. So that's her story. So once we returned home with floor, as I mentioned, we had some some adjustment things that we had to work through. We had a lot of she had a lot of medical needs. Again, I mentioned before she didn't have a diagnosis when we got home. We had to take her to every specialist under the sun to try and figure out what was going on with her and what help she needed and things like that.

14:28So that took some time. And in that time period, I also felt prompted to go back to school and get my master's degree. And so that took up a good chunk of time. And there was reasons for that, which led to my forming of my business, which I've done. And my husband needed to get into a career job. And so life was just really busy. Plus, we were raising two other kids that were toddlers. And yeah, and my husband and I felt for a long time that this was our family, that our family was complete with those three kids. And we felt good about that. So we were moving forward, making plans, moving forward with life.

15:04And I got started getting. Oh, I'm OK. So I missed a part of the story before. OK, so my daughter, Michelle, when we went to adopt floor, we went to the orphanage where floor originally lived just for one day, just to visit, because I that's where all my memories were. I had spent so much time at this place and I just I wanted to go back and visit. So we had to make special arrangements because it was a Catholic run orphanage with elderly nuns and they were hard to communicate with.

15:38And so, again, a lot of hoops were jumped through and people made it possible for us to go back for one day to visit that orphanage. So while we went there, I was steadfastly looking at the little faces of all these kids as we went into these houses to try and figure out which ones of them I had known as a baby. And I went through there was three houses that we went through all the different houses and I looked at all these faces of these kids and I didn't recognize any of them. And then we made it to the final house. And the first face that popped around the corner was the face of our now daughter, Michelle.

16:14And I was so excited because I immediately recognized her and I knew who she was. And I had remembered her as a baby as well. She was a she was a really chunky fat baby. She was really funny. She was a little bit older than floor, so she had some personality and she didn't have the same developmental delays. And I remember one of my fellow volunteers was always singing to her, Michelle, my bell, the Beatles song, because her name is Michelle. And I just immediately was so excited. I saw this little face and I gave her a hug and I asked the nun for permission to take a picture with her because you're not allowed to take pictures in this orphanage.

16:52And the nun granted me permission to take one picture with her, which is so lucky. So we do have a picture from that day of me and Michelle. Sadly, Michelle's eyes are closed in the picture, but that's OK. We still have it. So fast forward, we get home. We're home with with floor. Life's a little bit hard for a little while with all the adjustments and everything. And I could not get Michelle out of my mind. I just continued to think about her and to think about the fact that she was the only child left amongst the group that I had known,

17:23which means that all of those other babies that were babies at that time had either been adopted into other families or returned to their birth families, which did happen in some cases. They'd be returned to their birth families if they found some family members to take them. And so I thought, you know what? I'm an adoption professional. I've been doing this for a lot of years at that point. And I can find this girl a family. And so I remember getting her profile from the agency that had kind of custody over her here in the United States.

17:54And they had these pictures of her posed with this really awful teddy bear. It was like bigger than her. They're pictures of like trying to put a profile together for her. She's wearing this green turtleneck. Anyways, they sent these pictures to me and a little bit of information about her, because I said, listen, like I know a lot of families that are hoping to adopt. I am going to work towards finding this girl a family. I want her to have a family. So I did that for three years. For three years, I sent emails and I probably still have them sitting in my email to various families.

18:25And I would post on social media and say, I'm aware of a child in Ecuador that needs a family. We've been through the process. We can coach you through this. We can let you know how to do this. And yeah, well, nothing ever came of any of that. Surprise, surprise. Nothing ever came of any of it until one day we, my husband and I had been trying to sell our house. And my husband had been commuting an hour a day to go to his job that he had gotten. So well, an hour each direction. So two hours a day he was commuting. And so we put our house on the market and it had been for sale for like four months and nothing like we'd had nothing.

19:02We'd had a few people come and look at the house, but nothing had ever come of it. And for whatever reason, one day Michelle was on my mind as we were sitting at home. And I had a distinct impression that I was a spiritual impression for me that our house would sell, but we needed to use the funds that would come from the house for Michelle's adoption. And I immediately was like, oh, oh my gosh, what? Like Michelle's my, Michelle's my daughter too.

19:33You know, I didn't ever, ever consider that possibility just because as I said, my husband and I were feeling pretty good about those three kids. We felt like our hands were full and everything. And but I had that really strong impression come that our house would sell, but the money was needed to be used for Michelle's adoption. And so I told my husband, it was like, okay, you got to sit down for this. Like I have this bomb to drop on you. I think we need to go through the adoption process again.

20:04And he was like, oh my goodness, what? You know, credit has always been very good about figuring things out on his own. So he said, give me a little bit of time. And so he came back to me later that same day and said, I've thought about this. I've prayed about it. I feel really good about it. We need to, we need to move forward. And I said, okay, well, let's move forward. Well, the very next day, the very next day, we got an offer on our house that had been sitting on the market for four months.

20:34And the offer that we got on our house was for more than our asking price. Like explain that to me, right? How does that even happen? You don't, you don't offer more on an asking price on a house that nobody's like trying to outbid you on. Right. But it was a very clear sign to me that this is the path you need to be on. And so we sold our house and we used that money to begin to start the adoption process for Michelle. So we move forward with her adoption and it went quicker that time.

21:05So we I can't remember how long the paperwork took that time because we'd done it before. We were a little bit more familiar. And so we traveled to get Michelle in the fall of 2015. So we went down to Ecuador. And another kind of crazy part of this story is that same volunteer group that I had gone down to Ecuador with was still taking volunteers. And one of my cousins happened to be volunteering with the group at the same time. So she was at the orphanage when Michelle was given the information that a family was going to adopt her and that she was given like a profile of us,

21:38like a book of pictures of us and a video and stuff like that. And so my cousin was there to be able to say like, and this is there might there you're my family now, too. And this is what they're like. And this is what our home is like and all this stuff. So did Michelle remember you? She did not. She did not remember me because when I was there for like the chunk of time, she was too young. And then that one time when we went back, she was one day like I just dropped in and she'd been through like they have volunteers cycling out of that orphanage

22:10over and over and over again. So she was just kind of used to people coming in and out. So anyway, yeah. So she my cousin kind of got to help prepare her for the fact that we were coming in. Her family was coming in. So that was a special part of the story. So we went down, we adopted Michelle and she we were in country six weeks this time, which was much faster than well, ten weeks better than ten better than ten. So we got home a lot faster this time and we had prepared ourselves a little bit better this time around thinking like we have some adjustment things with floor that we didn't anticipate. We better be prepared for some adjustment things with Michelle.

22:44But truly her her adjustment period when she got home was like magical and it always has been. She's just been a dream child. She is easy. So she left the orphanage on her 11th birthday. I didn't mention that. So she left on her 11th birthday and joined our family on that day. And she's just been yeah, like I said, just a dream child. She's been a wonderful addition to our family and just a happy, easy going, just such a fun kid, like such a fun personality.

23:16And so we didn't have the same struggles with her. We all bonded very quickly. We all attached very quickly and it was just really a smooth process. That's not always the case. We kind of had one of each, which was a little bit interesting for me because floor was the one that I had that connection with from the beginning. And so I expected it to be a little bit easier, but hers was the harder one than Michelle. We just attached really quickly and really easily. So she's always just kind of felt like she belonged in our family. And of course, there's things that are hard on her end and that's something I'll leave for her to talk about.

23:47Sometimes she did say a little bit on a podcast with you guys earlier. And it's not all, you know, rainbows and butterflies by any means. There are struggles that she has. But as far as the adjustment and the attachment process, it was pretty quick and smooth. And then maybe one more question to kind of like fill out the rest of your story. So you have a fifth child. Oh, yeah. How did it what was the timing on that? Yeah. How did that all happen? Yeah. Okay. So as soon as we got home from Ecuador, I found out I was pregnant and I was like, oh no, that is how does that?

24:20I mean, I know how that happens. You can edit that. But we were not planning on having any more children and we were using protective measures to not have any more children. But I found out I was pregnant and I was really sad about it because I thought Michelle is going to feel like she is just being replaced. Like we just came home with her and we're going to have a biological child. We're going to have the real deal. You know, we're going to do it that way. And I was really sad throughout that whole pregnancy. But my daughter, Lizzie, was born about nine months after Michelle came home.

24:53Good math. She's been a fantastic addition to our family, too. I feel like actually it was a huge blessing for Michelle because she was there for the whole process. She got to see a sibling come into the family and Michelle and Lizzie have just a fantastic bond. Like Lizzie wants Michelle to tuck her into bed every night and she wants Michelle to do the story time. Like they have a really, really cute bond. And I think that that's been important for Michelle to see that she has an important role in our family in different ways. So that's how we rounded out our five kids.

25:24So we always joke like our oldest biological child came on her own. She was born first and then the other two, the other four came in pairs. Flora and Jace came within nine months of each other and then Lizzie and Michelle came within nine months of each other. And we look at each other and say, how the heck did we get here? But here we are. That's such a beautiful story and a beautiful unanticipated path that has led to something awesome. Well, we have lots of questions for you. And this can come from your experience as an adoptive parent mixed with maybe your experience as an adoption professional.

26:01So we'll just jump in and ask you lots of questions. Good deal. All right. So what are some of the biggest differences between domestic and international adoption and those processes with each? Okay. So as a professional, I work only really in domestic adoption. I do write home studies for international adoption. But after that, I pass the home study off and then I don't do anything else with it. So all my experience with domestic adoption or with my professional life is with domestic adoption. International adoption is, I would say, a lot trickier for a lot of reasons.

26:35First of all, you're never going to be adopting an infant by the time you do all the paperwork and all the processes and all the clearances have been done on the other end in the other country for the child to be declared adoptable. They're almost always going to be toddler or older. So that poses some challenges. It's the same thing as adopting a child out of foster care. You know, they're going to have some things that have happened in their background that are difficult no matter what, no matter what. They've had something hard happen if they're in foster care or if they're in an institution like an orphanage.

27:07So those are some challenges that you're going to have to be aware of and know that you're going to need to do some due diligence to help your child through those things. I think another challenge is just international adoption rates have gone down quite a bit, even since my husband and I adopted our two daughters. Like they are dramatically down. And I think a lot of that has to do with government stuff, which I completely understand because you want to make sure that everything's happening the right way and that there's no child trafficking going on and stuff like that. So there's just a lot of red tape involved in international adoption.

27:39And so the paperwork processes are going to be longer almost always. So I think it's just a harder path sometimes. As an adoption professional, what kinds of differences have you seen in adoptees experiences when comparing international and domestic adoption? Yeah, so similar to what I said, I think that there's higher rates of attachment issues and things like that because they always have come from a prior home

28:09or a prior living situation. And so having a solid or set caregiver from the beginning of life is really important for attachment processes. So international adoptees are always going to have a little bit more challenges with that, not to say that infants can't have some challenges to the can with attachment, but definitely older child children. And then, like I mentioned, whatever has put them in that circumstance, whether it's foster care or an institution, it's been hard. No matter what, it's been hard.

28:40They've faced trauma already in their young lives. And so that's something that they are going to have to have some help with, you know, professional help and some extra different ways of parenting even, you know, as you parent them through those traumatic incidents that they've been through in the past. You can't necessarily just assume they're misbehaving because they're being bad or they want to be naughty or whatever. A lot of that stems from what they've faced as a young child. So just being aware of some of those things and helping getting into counseling or therapy, things like that are good.

29:12Great. All right. So what are some of the unique challenges of being a special needs parent? Oh, there's so many, so many. Floor, so like I talked about, she has really global developmental delays. So she functions on the level of probably about a two year old and she's 16. I remember when we very first adopted her, I was walking down the hall with her at a hospital because she had an appointment and I was holding her hand. And then the next thing I knew, I looked down and she was not holding my hand anymore, but she was holding the hand of a random man walking down the hall.

29:49And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm mortified. So some of that is her attachment coming out because she was whoever was nearby was her caregiver. Right. But also some of that has stayed with her into her older years because she has these severe special needs. So she quickly wants to become friends with people. And that means sometimes getting into their personal space or sitting on their lap or holding their hands or whatever. So we've had to really and she's really small, whereas really small. So she looks a lot younger than she is. And so people want to baby her sometimes or let her get away with some of that stuff.

30:22And so we sometimes have to be a little bit firm about boundaries with her, with other people and what's appropriate for her and what's not appropriate for her. So that's always been a challenge that we've faced with her. But additionally, just finding resources for her has been also difficult because she didn't she came at age seven. She kind of missed the window for head start programs or early intervention programs and stuff like that, that she may have had access to if she'd been here earlier. And so we really haven't had floor has been on a waiting list for services for people with disabilities to state the state.

30:59Since she came home at age seven and she has still not received any services. So it's always just kind of navigating everything on our own. You know, we work with her pediatrician a lot. We've worked with Shriners Hospital, which has been fantastic and Primary Children's Hospital, and they've connected us to a lot of resources. But it would be so much easier if everything was kind of streamlined and she had one like a case manager or someone through the Department of Services for people with disabilities that was managing all of that.

31:29All of her needs and helping us kind of go through things one at a time. So that's always been a major challenge to I think that would be for any parent with a special needs child. But I think because she got a later start on connecting to the services, you know, we waited a lot longer for them. Yeah. Yeah, that's really hard. Yeah. So you're a multicultural family or multiracial. What are some of the unique challenges that that has presented being an adoptive parent? Oh, so many.

32:00That's something that we've really had our eyes open to honestly over the years. Our daughter Michelle is black and floor is Hispanic. So they look different than the rest of our family. So we are a conspicuous family, which means that we get questions a lot of times that we have to answer out in public and there there becomes you know, sometimes you are willing to educate people and other times it just becomes it feels like it's not appropriate. Especially when your children are right there to answer a bunch of questions about them. So we've had to come up with ways to kind of divert those questions.

32:30But further, it really has been very eye opening for us to see that there are some realities of racism in our world. And our daughter Michelle has faced some of that. And it's sad that even having white parents affords her some privileges that other kids who are in her position may not have. We've been in situations where Michelle's been on her own and someone's treated her a certain way.

33:00And then my husband or I will walk up and they see that we are her parents and that we are white and the tone automatically shifts. So we've had to have some really difficult conversations with her in particular about the going on in the world and what to do and how to navigate those hard things. And those are ongoing conversations. They're not fun and they're not. It's really hard to have your child come home in tears because someone's treated her a certain way or said a certain thing.

33:30And to have to help her figure out how to navigate that and how what she can do in a situation like that. And so there's been some really tear filled and painful conversations that we continue to have to have. And with our other children, we face a different reality than many in our community. And that's really the truth. So we have to be the best parents we can be. And that means opening our eyes to these things and also educating ourselves.

34:00You know, that means listening to the voices of other people who are black or people of color and learning what their stories are and learning how they've navigated things and trying to listen to to, you know, their advice on how to navigate that as well. So I'd say that's the biggest couple of things I mentioned there. Your your adoption journey has, you know, lasted almost a decade at this point. If you could go back in time looking at that from the beginning, like knowing what you know now, what advice might you give yourself?

34:33Oh, man. Education, education, education. You can never be educated enough. And I think the topics that I personally needed most were attachment, especially with older children and transracial adoption and how you navigate those things that those two things with each of my two daughters individually have been the topics that we've had to navigate the most. So I would have done a heck of a lot more reading. I would have talked to a lot more people and I would have been a little less naive.

35:05I think I think I was one of those people that thought we're going to adopt and love is all you need, you know, love is all you need. And that is not the case, especially in the types of adoption that we've pursued. So education for sure. I would be better educated. So on that note, what are some of the different ways that you've tried to educate friends and family about adoption, about respecting your family and about race and conversations with racism?

35:35Oh, there's been so many. There have been some really, again, painful conversations where this is a sore subject for me because we've had to put up boundaries with people in our lives that we can't really have the same level of relationship with them anymore because they haven't seen the need to be open and educated about those topics. And so our priority is to our daughter and especially in the racism topic, you know, our priority is to her.

36:05And if someone is not going to recognize those realities or they're going to diminish them or say that's not really a thing, like we don't need to worry about that or even participate in some questionable, you know, racist type activities, they don't get to be part of our life anymore, unfortunately, in the same in the same degree. And like I said, there's been some really painful things said over the years by family members and other people that it just, you know, we have to talk about it and then decide what do we do from here? How do we put up a boundary that protects our child?

36:35We chose to bring her into our lives, and that means we need to be the very best parents we can be for her. And that sometimes means having some painful decisions like that that we've had to make. And so, yeah, I think that's the what was the question I just rambled on about. That was great. Different ways of educating. Yeah. Ways of educating. Yeah. So I think just being willing to have conversations. I use my social media platforms to do that sometimes and then be willing to have conversations behind the scenes as well.

37:13And then just, yeah, I had an incident with a family member that occurred over social media. And then I decided like this is too much. I can't I can't do this on social media with this person. So I need to text or have a conversation in person. So we then took the conversation outside of that platform. And again, some some hard things were said in that conversation, which then led me to to say, you know, I we have to we have to have a little bit of a boundary in place here. But sometimes the social media has been a platform to like spur those conversations and see how people react and see how people are thinking and they'll reach out if they have questions or whatever.

37:51So that's been good in a sense, because it's not always like in your face confrontational, but people can see the education and some people I've talked kind of more on the negative side. But a lot of people have been so receptive towards it and want to know more and want to do better and they want to have the resources. And that's so heartwarming to see. Like I'm in your corner. I didn't understand this before, but I'm willing to learn and I want to learn because we love your family. You know, so Kim, how do you help your girls connect to their culture and their heritage?

38:23That's a great question. OK. Ecuador is a big part of our lives. We talk about Ecuador. We celebrate Ecuador. We have lots of art and things that we brought home from Ecuador. We have a whole wall in our basement. That's just our Ecuador wall. It has like a flag and a banner from there and pictures of our time there, but also pictures like paintings that we purchased while we were in the country. So all of that is on our big wall in our basement family room. So that's our girls' heritage. That's their home.

38:53You know, that's where they're from and that's important to us that we maintain that. My daughter Michelle still listens to a lot of music from Ecuador. She has a lot of songs that she used to play in the orphanage and things like that. So we play those and she listens to that all the time. We talk about their home all the time. You know, that's who they are. That's where they came from. So we're open to questions. We're open to their thoughts. We're open to their feelings when they talk about how much they miss it. Well, Ms. Flora doesn't talk. So mostly Michelle talking about how much she misses it.

39:26And we have plans. We've had plans to go back to Ecuador. We haven't been back since we adopted Michelle and we had plans to go back this year-ish time. But COVID has made that really difficult. So it's kind of on the back burner that we have that on the agenda as soon as it's safe and feasible to go back down there. Because that's really important to Michelle. She would like to make a trip back down there and that's important to us too. So those are some of the ways that we celebrate their heritage. That's awesome.

39:56So what do you think prospective adopted parents should understand before they adopt? In general, I think that adopted parents should know that adoption is complex and there's not just one side to it. But all sides of it are worthy of attention and worthy of understanding their adoptees' feelings on the matter. They might be positive. They might be negative. They might be neutral. But not just viewing it as a one dimensional thing, you know, that there's loss involved in adoption no matter what.

40:26We've talked about trauma throughout this interview and how that's a piece of it. And especially adopting older kids, attachment, that's a piece of it. So just knowing that it's multifaceted and there's not going to be just, it's just we're going to adopt and then it's done. It's over. You know, that's the end of it. No, it's lifelong. It's a lifelong thing for the adoptees. And so just being present for them with whatever their feelings are, even though they may shift over time too. And that's okay. Well, Kim, thank you so much for sharing your story. It's a beautiful story.

40:56We're so grateful that you've been able to spend some time with us and we plan to have you back on the podcast again in the future. So thanks so much. You're welcome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. We loved talking to Kim and we're so happy to share her thoughts with you. I feel like in the adoption world, there's so much to learn all the time. That's one of the reasons we named our podcast, The Open Adoption Project. And we're so grateful that you've been able to be part of this conversation.

41:27And we're so grateful that you've been able to be part of this conversation. And we're so grateful that you've been able to be part of this conversation. And we're so grateful that you've been able to be part of this conversation. And we're so grateful that you've been able to be part of this conversation. And we're so grateful that you've been able to be a part of this little community fucking virtual community. Other than that, we heard today that it's been boots-on, I think. So, that was nice of you to share that. And, it was one of the most beautiful moments of the 자기-이다 I've ever had.

41:57For us, one thing that we've done in this podcast a few times is talk about how we feel like things were meant to be, right? As adoptive parents, I think that's a pretty common thread where things fall into place in a way that really does feel very serendipitous. But that can be something that's hurtful for adoptees to hear that someone thinks that they were meant to go through things that might be traumatic for them and hard for them

42:27and to be separated from their first family. And so I loved hearing her thoughts about that and about so many other things, about keeping our perspective, especially as adoptive parents, focused on adoptees and trying to help our kids and make the world a better place for them. We want to give a special shout out to Kim and thank her again for joining us on this episode. We really appreciate her perspective and her openness. I love how dedicated her life is to the adoption process and I feel like she has a lot of really

43:01valuable information for all of us in the adoption community. So thanks again, Kim. Thank you all for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. We'll see you next time. Yeah, next week we'll be back with a special Christmas episode where we hear from children who are adoptees and just hear some of their thoughts on adoption at this point in their lives. We're really excited to share that. It's always so fun to hear from kids. Thanks for listening.

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