That’s Gabby with one of her brothers. She’s been home one year. And, she is really something amazing.
On vacation at the beach last week, I read a few books; I’m a reader. One of them was An-Ya and Her Diary
It’s fiction–not her daughter’s stories or any one girl’s story–yet, An-ya, a girl adopted from China at school age, completely came to life to me in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Her struggle to fit in, her anger and grief, her strained relationship with her adoptive mother and her questions about her first mother, her getting her first period and not knowing what to do, her parents clear efforts to walk her through her trauma and help her be the young girl she didn’t get to be, her memories of the children who lived with her in the orphanage in China, her desire to find the young girl with albinism she basically mothered though imperfectly when they lived together there…
Reading Diane’s words–An-ya’s diary entries–words like “I never imagined that being adopted was going to mean so much work” and words like “So you think we are lucky? You think we are lucky to not know anything about who our family was before now? How does that make us lucky?”–and beginning to grasp what may be the experience for children like Gabby and like Christina is enough to make your soul ache.
Read Gabby’s words, words that her mom is going to share regularly on her blog. Help her to know she has a voice.