I wrote this story for our daughter Lily Rose Jiao Jiao (well as it turned out, I wrote it for her sister Gemma Mei Ge Ge as well) and gave it to her on the one year anniversary of what we call “Found You Day,” the day that we met for the first time as a family in a crowded Civil Affairs Office in Nanning, China. As it turned out, we were all in tears that day although probably for different reasons.
Before we began the long journey to bring our daughter home, I read as much as I could about adoption, attachment, abandonment, bonding and bringing an almost 3 year old into our home. I knew all the books on international and domestic adoption, all the stories you could read to explain to your child what might have happened to bring your family together in this unique way.
Some of them were about the birth parents’ loss and others seemed to focus on the adoptive parents and their yearning for a child.
But none seemed to make the child the centre of the story. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write my children a story about how strong and resilient and capable I believed them to be.
And even though I needed to address the loss and potential heartbreak inherent in adoption, I also wanted to express my faith that our children had been held by the heart of Love until we could find our way to them.