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One of my favorite sites regarding Guatemalan adoptions is Guatadopt. Prior to adopting Beauty, this was my go-to site; the CNN of the Guatemala adoptive world. I checked it daily, and while I haven’t continued that trend with the same fervor since Beauty came home, I do check in several times a week. In light of the start of Three Days, Three Daughters: An International Hunger Strike tomorrow, I read this article with great interest. The comments on said article were quite thought-provoking in their own right. In essence, they really got me thinking about the binary opposition of the win/lose concept. In regard to these girls stolen from their mothers and adopted out of the country, is it possible for anyone to really win?
I ask this because I don’t have an answer, not even for myself. My heart feels so close to breaking when I think of the agony of the birth mothers. I honestly cannot begin to wrap my mind around a missing child—it’s beyond all reasonable sense of comprehension. I almost won’t allow myself to fully, truly think of that scenario; it’s as though my subconscious is trying to protect me from the mere thought. But I digress. Every fiber in my being wants to cry out on behalf of the birth mothers. But flipping the coin…
My heart aches for the adoptive families as well. Someone will have to lose, won’t they? When you sign on with an agency, you’re taking a leap of good faith. I feel more than fairly confident the adoptive parents did not voluntarily choose to adopt a stolen child. And now this child, their daughter, is living a life of routine—her life, their lives. She loves her adoptive family and I don’t doubt they love her back with the same intensity, if not more so. So what happens if/when she is found?
Above all, my heart aches for the child. It’s easy to say, “uproot her, bring her home” but the life she has come to lead everyday is home. She’s—more likely than not—fallen into a steady routine with familiar faces, scents, activities, places, etc. Is it in her best interest to return to her birth mother? What about all she’ll leave behind? While the love heading her way from both directions won’t waiver a bit regardless of her geographical location, someone—at the end of the day—will not be able to tuck her in bed at night. Someone will lose.
These are difficult questions, and I don’t have the answers. I don’t know for a fact that I will ever fully reconcile the conflicts within myself and find the “right” response. What’s your say? Is there a “winner”? And if so, who is it?
In less than two hours, it will be midnight in Chicago and my fast will officially begin. I can’t lie—it will be difficult at times, yet contemplating the reasoning and message behind the strike will make it that much easier.
This may be discussed in the Guatemala blog here at Adoption Blogs; the strike may be focused on three Guatemalan daughters, taken from the arms of their mothers, but the issue at hand is not one that is specific only to Guatemala. The voice being raised by this strike–it is on behalf of all the silenced mothers everywhere. It is the voice of injustice, of hope, of strength. And there is no binary opposition to be found in that.
