Stories of Impact

Ambria Gee found herself surprised by a gift she hadn’t anticipated receiving while traveling to her birth country of Kazakhstan on a GIFT grant! Take a listen and be prepared to smile along with her.

Meet GIFT Recipient James Zissulis

Will you consider helping international adoptees that, like Ambria and James, will otherwise never be able to visit their birth country? A “YES” will change the life of an adoptee in so many important ways.

As adoptees and their families travel, they explore the sights, soak in the culture, and visit local homes and schools. Many adoptees travel to their place of birth or founding, meet foster families or caregivers, visit orphanages, and sometimes birth family—all pieces that provide an important foundation for adoptees. “It was the best thing a kid like me could ask for,” said 13 year old Alexis Casey. “It’s like starting from the beginning.”

IT’S ABOUT IDENTITY BUILDING 

Identity is a continuum. Who I am today is not who I will be tomorrow. For tomorrow I will be a culmination of who I have been in all my yesterdays and who I hope to be in my tomorrows.

At pretty much every level, in every country, identity building is front and center in a homeland journey. Adoptees talk about their language ability or lack thereof. They talk about trying to blend in, and about how they stand out. They talk about the dual nature of their existence, and struggle to find a spot where they are comfortable. They talk about their physical features, the communities where they live, about birth families, and about dating. They explore “why?” and simultaneously explore loss and grief. They interact with people in their birth country, and ask “Could that be me?

A constant set of questions running through their minds leading to a better sense of “Who Am I?”

IT’S ABOUT OWNING THEIR STORY

International adoptees grow up hearing their life story as told by their parents who share the wonderful details of their preparation to adopt, the trip they took to bring their child home, and the experiences they had in the adoptee’s birth country. And that’s great to a point.

 

“Whenever anyone asked questions about the circumstances of my birth and adoption, or my birth country, I recited it like I was telling a story about someone else. When I got to my birth country, all of that changed.”

The narratives of our lives are important, and for international adoptees owning their information is truly significant. “Perhaps the most powerful experience adoptees can have is to travel to their birth country and learn first hand about their roots,” reports Heather Ames, MSW. For ten years, Heather was the director of Post Adoption Services at Wide Horizons for Children, one of largest adoption agencies in the U.S.

IT’S ABOUT FAMILY & BONDING

International adoptees do not come into this world with their adoptive families. As a result, the bonding process is unique. Spending time together on a homeland journey creates bonds that strengthen family relationship in a way no other life experience can.

“Grace and I are so much closer now. She has really opened up and found her wings. Words just can’t express how perfect this trip was!” –Robbie Rose-Poel

IT’S ABOUT FRIENDSHIPS AND FITTING IN

The experiences the adoptees are having with the other adoptees cannot be overstated. Their comfort level with each other is evident from the start. No explanations needed.

With a foot in two worlds, they gain a realization that they also have a community they can be part of if they choose. We often hear, “Wow! I am not alone. I have made friends that will last a lifetime.”

“We all bonded on the first night. We came here as strangers and left as a family,”  Nicholas Brunson, 15

We often think community is the greatest gift of the journey — built around two cultures shared experiences. To find a place to belong is among life’s greatest gifts.

IT’S ABOUT GRIEVING AND HEALING

The journey’s significance is deeper yet because it allows adoptees to grieve the losses of adoption, heal and move forward.

Parents never want to see their child hurting, but if they are hurt, we would all like to see them heal. A homeland journey allows for healing by giving adoptees a chance to grieve in the ways they need to grieve, which is almost always a different experience than what parents expect.

Most adoptees do not go through the trip overflowing with tears. In fact, on a typical Ties trip, we sing on the bus, laugh hysterically, and enjoy the sense of “being” in birth country with other adoptees who share a similar history. When grief comes in the outward and traditional sense,  it comes in waves and bursts.

But for most adoptees, it comes in ways that go pretty much unnoticed by all around them. It comes in linking—the finding and holding on to points of connection, in the same way a grandmother’s wedding ring, passed from mother to daughter can bring comfort.

Linking often involves a very tangible piece of of something as they travel—a small baggie of soil, collected from their homeland and cherished forever or a brick from the orphanage where a child once lived. 

But linking can be much more invisible–Amy’s Story

Linking can be invisible and abstract, as it was for Amy. Amy and her family were visiting the clinic where Amy was born, nearly 10,000 miles from where she had been raised in a wonderful adoptive family. They were scheduled to meet the doctor who delivered her. After their visit, Amy’s mom came to our staff hotel room, crying. She said the visit had been awful. “Amy couldn’t have cared less. While we were in the waiting room, she was all over the place, first sitting in one chair, then another.” We hugged and talked about visits not always being what we dreamed about. Mom left and we were all sad.

About 30 minutes later, there was a knock on our door again. It was Mom.

Through her tears, Amy’s mom said, “Amy just told us she sat in every chair in the waiting room so she would be sure to sit in the chair where her birth mom must have sat.” Linking. At nine years old.

IT’S ABOUT POSITIVE ROLE MODELS AND IMPRINTING MESSAGES

“We LOVE Analisa.” “Thom is SO cool.” Like camp counselors, the people adoptees interact with on a homeland journey are oh-so-important. In a study by Hollee McGinnis, MSW, of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, traveling to the birth country and interacting with role models of the same race were rated very high among the things internationally adopted people use in forming identity.

Adoptees on a heritage journey are imprinted with positive messages by interacting with people in their birth country. One young Vietnamese adoptee relayed this story to me. “I never felt pretty before I went to Vietnam. But then, I was in a shop, and a Vietnamese woman came up to me and said, ‘Oh what a beautiful girl you are.’ It felt so amazing to have someone who was really Vietnamese think I was pretty.”

The imprint is deep, lasting, and useful in the work of identity building.

 
IT’S ABOUT CULTURAL AND GLOBAL AWARENESS

It is impossible to travel and not be touched by the amazing people and cultures that make up our global experience.

It changes the way you see the world,” Caroline Conway, 14.

As we all become more culturally aware and global in our thoughts and actions, adoptees of all ages soak this in, and in many cases express a distinct desire to help a world cause. Check out Peruvian Hearts–It’s founder, Ana Dodson is a Ties adoptee! And she was only 11 years old when she started this wonderful organization. 

Gift of Identity Fund, Ltd. is a non-profit 501(c)(3)
sister organization of The Ties Program—
Adoptive Family Heritage Journeys.

Note: Gift of Identity is 100% volunteer run.
All donations go entirely to the grant fund. 

Your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

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