Openness

The Lohse family first appeared in the April/May 1998 issue of Focus on Adoption magazine, where Annette told the story of adopting Mikayla. Today we catch up with them and hear about the following 18 years from three perspectives: adoptive mom Annette, adoptee Mikayla, and birth mom Lisa.

In part one, we hear Annette’s perspective.

My daughter Libby was born as I held her birth mother Carla’s hand, breathing with her through the agony of labour. When her daughter drew her first breath, Carla looked at me and said, “Congratulations on your new baby.” Then she asked me to cut the umbilical cord.

Meet the Imrie family: Jody, a special education teacher and foster-turned-adoptive mom who lives in Vancouver; her daughter, Kristina (6); and her son, Krillen (7).

How did you get started as a foster parent?

From the time I was a teenager, I always knew I wanted to adopt children.  I just always felt that there were so many children in the world who needed a home, and I wanted to give one to some of them rather than bring more children into the world.  I didn’t feel a need for my children to be biologically related to me. 

Open adoptions can be tricky, but they're the most realistic choice for adopted children, says an adult adoptee.

The question of a lifetime

The complexity of my adoption story makes it a challenge to tell, but telling it is, I think, essential. It’s a way to preserve memories of the living and dead, to lend their lives some meaning, and to give thanks for the good fortune of having been raised by loving parents. Here are the bare bones, which will give some context for the poem that follows.

Like any newly married young couple, we (Nazima and Riyad) loved to dream about the next stages our life together. We enjoyed the strong

In the ninth of our series, we present the secret thoughts of an adoptive mom of three kids. This time, mom loses confidence that she can cope.

The past ten days have been an absolute nightmare. The foster parents came for a visit last weekend. We'd planned this a month ago, and we all through it would be good for Grant and Lynn to see Susan and Mike. We believed this would help cement the concept of foster parents always being part of their adoption story.

Question: "We adopted our five-year-old daughter through a local adoption agency. We have never told her that she was adopted, and now we don't know how. Could you suggest how we could start the process?"

Yes, it can be difficult to know when to start the process of telling a child their adoption story. Following the guidance from the wonderful social worker that was involved in my son's adoption, we shared adoption storybooks and his personal adoption story with him form the time we began reading ot him.

There’s nothing like a harmless joke to set your day off in the wrong direction. Scrolling through Facebook, a friend of a friend was joking about kids not knowing who their father is. I assumed the joke was in reference to the fact that she used a sperm donor to conceive her children.

I remember the noise the most. Car engines idled noxious gasses into the air; heavy footsteps snapped across well-worn concrete. The delicious yet unfamiliar smells of Asian street food filled my nostrils. I stood close to my parents, at the edge of a street corner. Together, we gazed across the road to a building. Above its doorway was a sign filled with undecipherable Chinese lettering. Despite the language barrier, we all knew it what it said. Hospital.