I never saw Philadelphia Story but when I
adopted my daughter Lidia my mother would sing, “Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say, have you met Lydia? Lydia
The Tattooed Lad. She has eyes
that folks adore so, and a torso even more so. Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say, have you met Lydia? Lydia The
Tattooed Lady.”
I don’t even
know the rest of the words, but for some reason that stuck and I would belt out
those lyrics randomly and my baby girl would smile, run to me and give me a
hug. Good times. Then she became a tween. Parents who had or currently have
tweens - I just heard you exhale.
You know what I mean - moods that are subject to change without notice
and eyes that roll at you sometimes just because you entered the room. Do I hear an “amen”?! Now when I sing the song no one runs
and hugs me. Instead I hear a
voice from another room yell “That’s just stupid!” It wasn’t very long ago that she thought “stupid” was a bad
word. *sigh*
Still, she is my baby girl. And still, it is simply impossible to
love her more than I do – even on the days I don’t necessarily enjoy being
around her. As an adoptive parent
I am thankful every single day for the selfless sacrifice that a birth mother
makes to hand her child to a stranger in the hope that the baby will have the
life that she dreams for her, the life that for a number of reasons she can’t
provide. For the last few years I have
been saying this gratitude out loud.
I think it is in the hope that if I say it often enough and loud enough
it will actually be true. It
probably is…I have to believe it is.
The alternative is just too horrible.
My daughter is a Mayan Indian from
Guatemala. After a successful
domestic adoption and two failed ones I decided to adopt internationally. I researched my options and selected
Guatemala. At the time it was the
only country that utilized foster homes instead of orphanages. I knew that if a baby was able to
emotionally bond they would be more likely to be able to transfer that
bond. That was important to me. I wanted to do everything I could
to avoid reactive attachment and all of the other scary things that they tell
you about when adopting. But what
I later learned was far more terrifying than any attachment issues.
In 2012 I read an article that stated
that Guatemala's adoption
system had been the most corrupt in the world for over a decade. News
organizations reported in detail, repeatedly, that the country's babies were
systematically being bought, coerced, or even kidnapped away from families that
wanted to raise them. I used a
legitimate adoption agency, I read the social worker’s report on the birth
mother, and I still have contact with the foster mother. How could this be true? It couldn’t be true for my Lidia…could
it?
I wish I knew then what I know
now. And I wish that I could “unknow”
that in every human endeavor, there is a chance for abuse. For every legitimate agency and every mother
in Guatemala who desperately wants a better life for their baby, there are also
nefarious practices and families are deceived or coerced into giving their children
up for adoption. Traffickers
target the most vulnerable – children, those living in poverty, refugees and
migrants – because they are often desperate. In Guatemala around 60 percent of children live in poverty.
Criminals know that parents who are poor will have less resources and money to
search for their missing children.
In a related story, just this month the news reported that a 12-year-old
boy was trafficked to England to harvest his organs.
Take Action: It is important to know that
trafficking exists. It is
important to know that there are those who are willing to hurt even babies and
children for a profit. It is even
more important to do something.
Not sure what? The U.S.Department of State has 20 suggestions to get you started on your path to helping
end modern day slavery: If those suggestions don’t
work for you then give the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force a call and ask
what you can do. But do
something. Because I have to
believe that the only thing worse than imagining that your child was taken from
a mother who wanted to raise her is actually being that mother.
Jennifer Fopma, LMSW, is the Executive
Director of S.A.F.E. Place, a multi-county domestic violence service
organization and a member of the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force.
