It's her story, she should know it

For some time I have been thinking about how to navigate information about our daughter's birth and foster families. How can I prepare her to process her adoption and her own history? How can I prepare her for all the questions she will soon get from classmates and strangers about why she doesn't look like her white parents in this at times invasively-inquisitive culture? It has felt unnatural to avoid the topic and wait till she is much older so, so far I have just gone about this in the same way I approach most things in my life - with my gut. And my gut has been telling me to be open to building some sort of a connection with the information and maybe even the people in my daughter's history that she is inextricably linked to and will forever be.  I am thankful we know as much as we do about Ella's background and see value in facilitating connection between her and her story in a way that benefits the development and understanding of her identity and at the same time preserves the privacy and autonomy of our nuclear family. I have a feeling that is a tricky balance to strike and so we are going with it one small step at a time and feeling things out as we go.

What we have decided for now is to write a letter to Ella's birth parents telling them how Ella is doing (without disclosing our last names or the city where we live), including photos and asking them if they would be willing to write us back with some information about their family, specifically some information about their children - Ella's biological siblings - their names, ages and photos if possible. I will also ask them if they would like us to send letters with photos every year to keep them up on how Ella is doing as she grows up. Any communication we have will go through a social worker from the social welfare office in their area who will serve as an intermediary. They don't know this yet haha, but that is what I'm hoping for.

As for Ella's foster mother, I have been in phone/email contact with her over the past 2+ years and have gotten to know her enough to now feel quite ready to meet her. She has sent just a few photos of Ella - a few of her as a newborn and a few of when she was around 1 year old, but I don't have any photos of the foster mother and I have tons of questions for her about Ella as a baby/toddler. These days Ella has been asking me to tell her about when she was a baby and I'm sad I don't know much. So I tell her the little that I know and I tell her about her time with Momma "R". I've been impressed with this woman's respectful distance she's given us and how aside from the very occasional email to say, "Hey how's Ella? Tell her Hi from us!" she leaves the communication up to me. I was the one to track her down soon after we got Ella and called her to meet her over the phone. Up until recently I haven't felt like it was the right time to meet her but do plan to set something up (after making some clear boundary clarifications) next time we're in Manila (she's since moved there with her foster son, Ella's former foster brother). I am approaching this relationship like I would an extended family member and see potential value in Ella, at this stage, knowing about and meeting her once or twice, and later in her life choosing to keep in touch as she is willing/comfortable. I have read that allowing a child to meet or have some kind of contact with someone as opposed to just hearing about them, helps bring that person from an abstract idea to something concrete and this helps them to better process the information.

So next week we will be in the city where Ella was born to file some paperwork to amend her birth certificate in order to obtain her Filipino citizenship under her adopted name. Aside from eliminating the need for a visa to live in here indefinitely with us as American citizens, having dual citizenship will give us the opportunity to better facilitate a connection with her birth country in the future if she becomes interested in living or studying here, owning property, etc... They require us to file in person so we thought it was the perfect opportunity to bring Ella to see the city where she was born and drop off a letter to her birth family to the social welfare office. I noticed on the map that the government office where we will be going is directly across the street from the city health birthing center where she was born.

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We will be flying in and out of the city where Ella lived in a children's home for about 6 months before we came to bring her home. I told Ella we could visit there if she liked but we wouldn't have to. Both times I asked her she said she would like to visit. We regularly talk about the women there who took care of her including the the young social worker who's leg Ella clung to the first day we met,

and the women we talk about in our photos, who cried when they said goodbye to Ella that day at the airport.

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The way I see it is she will at some point have to face and deal with the emotional impact of her adoption and the loss related it. I want what we know about her history discussed enough so that it is a normal, natural part of her upbringing and it is easy for her to talk about it and as much as possible I want to combine those conversations with concrete experiences. By making information available and by acknowledging the loss of not one but two families and even more relationships after that, that she will know that we are here to help her walk through whatever comes up.

Just the other day Ella and I were playing with her baby dolls. Ella handed me her doll and told me that she had given birth to her baby but that she had to give it to me because she was very poor and she couldn't take care of it because her other baby was sick. This is quite close to what I've shared with her about her birth family's situation at the time of her relinquishment. I was amazed at her understanding and processing and I'm so so glad she is already doing it at home naturally and safely with me.