AdopTalk

.

I am pleased to announce that since the book became available on the first of March, copies have already sold to one library, several copies have been sold in Canada, Australia...one one to Brussels, Belgium!

It is very exciting to see.

As the news comes of yet another U.S. operation stealing foreign babies - this time from Somoa - it fortifies the importance of sounding an alarm and connecting the dots of these seemingly isolated incidents while many continue to praise adoption as one big win-win situation for all. Not all adoptions are bad, but certainly not all of them good either. In fact, like most of life, there are perhaps few that could be categorized as all good...

I wrote in the book about Olympian Toby Dawson's quest to find his Korean roots. It was quite interesting to hear this young man's quotes recently after competing his search and reunion. Here is someone for whom adoption would appear to have been a God-send. He was taken from a Korean orphanage and given the best opportunities a child have - and reached great success. And yet he speaks of feeling "lost" and "confused" because of his mis-match with his parents. he speaks of not knowing in what world he belongs.

I think that many internationally and inter-racially adopted people feel this to a greater extent - and/or are more able to vocalize it.

This aspect of adoption, as expressed by Dawson, is the one that needs to be heard, and understood. Adoption is not some magic cure-all for infertility or for a child's feeling lost and alone in an orphanage. And no matter how good, caring and loving adoptive parents are they cannot erase the facts, the truth and the past of a child that is filled with pain and loss.

Dawson understand this and want to start a foundation to help Koreans keep their children in Korea.

This week I also had the opportunity to see a documentary about Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy in South Africa...and then read that Angelina Jolie is planning yet another adoption. One wonders why someone with so much wealth to give would choose to help individual children rather than build a school or send medical supplies to help a whole village? How do you walk into a impoverished two and choose just ONE child to save and leave the others behind?

And what will her children say years from now...will they and Madonna's son ans so many others not feel the same as Toby Dawson...still lost and confused and wanting to prevent others from being "saved" as he was?