Happy Fourth of July

The Fourth of July is a holiday with new meaning for me since we adopted transracially and internationally. Before, it was always a fun day of family, friends, barbecue, parades and fireworks. It was our country’s birthday. I have always been proud to be an American, and yet at the same time I think it was something that I took for granted.

Now that I have four children who were born in other countries, I have many mixed emotions on the Fourth of July. Of course I am still proud to be an American and enjoy the day to celebrate our country and all of the many freedoms and blessings that we enjoy as U.S. citizens.

And yet the fact that my kids are all wearing red, white and blue and celebrating the holiday as American citizens themselves, is a reminder that their birth countries have lost some of their most precious children, and my children have lost their first nationalities and cultures. It is not something to be taken lightly.

Of course at the same time I am grateful for the opportunities that being American citizens haa brought my children. America has given my Belane the opportunity to live a long, full and healthy life, with her HIV being a chronic but very manageable condition, instead of a death sentence.

America has given my son Ben the opportunity to get a top education and use the amazingly smart brain that he was born with to do wonderful things in this world, instead of being trapped in poverty so severe that his education and potential would likely have been minimal.

America has taken my daughter Amanda, and allowed her to be a happy, healthy little girl in a family, instead of a child stuck in an institution for life because she was born with some physical challenges.

America has given my daughter Maggie the chance to grow up without being one of countless orphans in a government-run orphanage as a child, and then alone on the streets when she hit her teen years, in a place that it is not safe to be a young, beautiful girl without a family.

I am grateful this Fourth of July to be an American, and I am grateful that as an American, I was able to adopt my children internationally. I am grateful that my children are U.S. citizens, and that medical care, education, clean water, plenty of food and so many other things that we often take for granted, are no longer things that they have to worry about.

I am grateful for the countries in which my children were born, that they were willing to allow the children to be adopted. I am grateful that they were willing to give up some of their most precious resources, in hopes of giving the children a better life.

My children come from beautiful places and beautiful people and are proud of who they are and where they are from. They are not “just” American, they are Vietnamese-American, Korean-American and Ethiopian-American.

And as my kids run around with the rest of us, (who are a crazy mix of Polish, Irish, English and a bunch of other things), as we celebrate our nation’s birthday today, I am grateful indeed to live in this country, where people of all different cultures and backgrounds make America what it is.

Happy Fourth of July everybody!

More reading:

Fourth of July and Adopted Stepchildren

The Independence Day Blues

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