Roots

In Search of their Roots – Ms Sulochana Kalro

Adopted children by being adopted, have a biological background – which holds their identity, and “Roots” is the journey in search of that identity, to find the missing link of their lives before being adopted.

It is an important journey for both – the adoptees as well as the adoptive parents for the sole reason that it is the adopted child’s need & right to know where he/she came from. Who were their birth parents and what were the reasons for them to be in Bal Anand? This issue is more pronounced in foreign adoption than in Indian adoption. To find out, they make the long journey to India and to the children’s home from where they were adopted.In my experience, there has been a vast variety of reasons to make this journey – ranging from simple reasons like a visit to their birth country, to see the children’s home from where adopted, to find out who took care of them – to thank them for giving them a future with their adoptive parents to know about their birth mother, or who gave them their name, etc. to the more extreme reasons like being besieged with feelings of insecurity over why they were abandoned or relinquished despite being happy with their adoptive families. The adoptees and even their adoptive parents wish to know how to help their children. It is also their right to know. Yet how much do we tell? In our concern for the adoptee’s quest, we cannot forget the young girl who had given up her child in secrecy and who does not want to be contacted again. If we tell, it amounts to a breach of trust. In such a scenario, we have to respect the trust vested in us by the birth mother just as we respect the child’s right to know.

It is at this point in the search that the adoption agency in the absence of the birth mother plays a key role in helping the adoptees generally adolescents or young adults to find answers. From the documents maintained, we give all the information except identifying information of name & address. If handled with understanding and sensitivity, they accept and are content to see how the children are cared for, to know that their names figure in our records and that they were not abandoned. They were given up for a better future by way of adoption. Seeing the children, and being with them takes care of many of their questions.

The following lines from an adoptee sums up the importance of the visit to the children’s home “ I am happy that I have seen with my own eyes what life is like in Bal Anand. I can now feel good about the first months of my life when I was living in Bal Anand myself.”

Another adoptee has said that “some of my questions remain unanswered for some valid reasons and I have learned to accept. And I have realized acceptance is cathartic. It makes living easier, it makes loving easier.” Many adoptees visit us with their families throughout the year or they come in groups every year, eager to know about their background. Receiving them warmly, listening to them patiently, showing them the home introducing them to any person or incident of the past makes them happy and they move forward in their lives.

Since about five years ago, we have given a Life storybook to every child telling them about their life while in Bal Anand. ‘This helps them greatly’ is our feedback from both adoptive parents and children. It is commendable what the adoptive parents do to support their adopted children in search of their Roots. These are the parents who say –

“Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone,
Yet miraculously my very own,
You did not grow under my heart, But in it”

The story of Adoption which starts for an adoptive child with severance of ties with the birth family, continues with the adoptive parents, and completes with Roots. It comes full circle.