Keeping their culture alive in our home

As I’ve said in many of my blogs – I’m constantly learning in life and through those life experiences – I am growing….

I learned many things about adoption through raising Becca – especially during her teen years. She did the required school heritage report in 7th grade and no longer wanted to be “Albanian” – it broke my heart. I still remember feeling so lost when I tried to have her see my view of Albanian. We discussed adoption and the journey to her openly through her entire youth – she shared her story and her heart with those around her. It wasn’t till she was a teen that she wanted to “not be adopted”, “not be from Albania” and had a lot of anger towards her birth mother in particular. I realized that I failed to let her meet other families formed through international adoption – like our family was – she would of had a support “network” in place to speak openly with her peers about the feelings that bubbled up during these critical years.

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Because of those turbulent teen years — I knew I needed to do a better job of keeping my children’s cultural alive. One thing I did was I formed the Midwest Kazakhstan Group in 2001 during Max’s adoption – you can visit this group this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MidwestKazakhstanGroup/ It has been a HUGE blessing to our family – we have met many treasured friends and hope to continue meeting more through the years. We will be hosting the 2007 event in July and anyone can join the group to get details as the event weekend approaches. My hope is that our boys will see and meet many families that built their families in the same way. The they will know other children from Kazakhstan – that they will see first hand – they are not “alone”. I know lots of people “supported” me through my years of infertility – but it truly was my RESOLVE friends that I connected with the most. They “knew” how “it” felt – they experienced it too – and although we all may have chosen different paths to “resolve” – we connected, we understood one another – we didn’t have to explain it all. I know many people who form friendships through the common “thread” of life experiences. I hope this group gives my boys the opportunity to have a support network in place – not to mention – some really good friendships.

A HUGE dream of mine was to have a cultural camp available for my children — as many other countries provide and that dream became a reality when Susan Saxon founded The Kazakh Aul of the United States! They have announced their 2007 Kazakh Heritage Camp for Families – August 13th – 18th – so mark your calendars and visit their web site for additional information: http://www.kazakh-aul-us.org/index.html

Another GREAT experience that has brought the boys’ cultural into our homes — we hosted an Exchange Student from Kazakhstan, she spent the 2005/2006 school year with us. The program she came over on is hosted by our government (FLEX) – and we can’t say enough – how nice it was to have our children learn words in Kazakh and Russian and share in some traditional foods that we prepared together. Masha returned to Kent State University on scholarship – so we get to continue the relationship!

I hope you write with some ideas to help keep our children’s birth country alive in our hearts and our homes. Because I enjoy learning and growing!

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