Red threads

I was not sure that I would ever be allowed to adopt due to my medical history. (For those of you who don’t know me personally, I received a kidney transplant in July, 1987, when I was 23 years old. I am quite healthy now and just take daily meds to prevent rejection). I began to explore adoption in earnest in 2004 (thank God for the internet!) and spent many hours on the computer, learning about the requirements to adopt from many different countries. I soon found out that my options as a single woman were rather limited because many countries require that prospective adoptive parents be married. At around the same time, I learned about a Yahoo group, Adoptive-Parents-China (APC), from a friend who’d recently adopted from China. I joined APC and after lurking for several weeks finally got up the courage to post a question to the group: as a transplant recipient, would I be prohibited from adopting from China? I received several replies, but one in particular gave me hope. It was from another single woman who lived in Nebraska. Like me, Laurie is single and had had health problems in her twenties but is now perfectly fine. She told me that she had applied to and had been accepted by her agency to adopt from China and was at that time putting her dossier together. She encouraged me to do it, too—without her encouragement, I don’t think I would have pursued adoption. I become emotional when I think about it now, because I love my child beyond words and cannot imagine my life without her...After exchanging emails with Laurie, I called many, many agencies around the country in the following weeks, trying to secure a singles spot. At that time, China had placed a quota on the number of singles who could adopt in any given year, limiting the number to 8% of all dossiers submitted by each agency each year. My name was placed on several different waiting lists, and I waited and waited and waited until…I received a call from Adoptions Together, offering me a spot! I couldn’t believe it! I then put together my dossier over the next few months, but Laurie and I lost touch (totally my fault!) at some point around that same time. I know that Laurie traveled to China and brought her beautiful daughter, Olivia, home in January, 2005. My dossier was logged in to the CCAA in February, 2005, and I received my referral in September, 2005. Elizabeth and I officially became a family on October 24, 2005! Soon after we came home to Maine, I emailed Laurie, and we renewed our friendship over the internet, which quickly progressed to weekly telephone calls that often lasted for hours! We had SO much in common and really enjoyed our talks! One of the things we talked a lot about was about wanting to adopt again. Laurie already had secured a singles spot with the same agency that she had used to complete Olivia’s adoption and planned to send her paperwork in at some point in 2007. I planned to do what I had done before: to contact as many agencies as possible, put my name on waiting lists, and take the first singles spot that was offered to me. Neither one of us was in a great hurry to begin the paperchase again. We’d both waited about 6 months from DTC to LID for referrals. We knew we had to wait at least one full year between adoptions (China rules). Although wait times had begun to increase at just about the same time as when I’d traveled to China to bring Elizabeth home, the rumors all pointed at wait times stabilizing at around one year. We thought that we had lots of time...Then, Laurie and I both began to see other rumors on the Yahoo groups and on the Rumor Queen—that China soon would impose strict new requirements on prospective adoptive parents (PAPs), including that all PAPs be married. These new rules were believed to go into effect on December 1, 2006 (later, it turned out that the new rules became effective on May 1, 2007). No one knew at the time whether or not singles currently in process would be grandfathered in. It was a very uncertain, even scary, time for singles to adopt from China. I started to explore adoption from other countries again because I wasn’t sure that I would be able to adopt from China for a second time. I looked at agencies with programs in Vietnam, which at that time was just beginning to open up to international adoption again, because I really wanted to adopt another Asian child...As I’ve already mentioned, I belong to several different Chinese adoption Yahoo groups. One of these is SAC (Single Adopt China). In June, 2006, one of the other members posted a message to this group to say that her agency, Harrah’s, had a couple of singles spots, and that they would be ‘first come, first served.’ I immediately called and spoke with one of the dossier consultants that night (Thursday), faxed my application to Harrah’s from work on Friday, and was accepted that same day! I also wasted no time in calling Laurie to tell her to call Harrah’s immediately—she did, she applied as well, and she was accepted, too! We were SO excited! We assembled our dossiers and were DTC on November 15, 2006, and LID on December 18, 2006. Our younger daughters will be from the same orphanage, and we will travel together to bring them home! I truly believe that an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break...