PERSONAL TRUTH

After I blogged last night, I checked my email and had a debrief email from our adoption counselor. It's very personal but I wanted to share some of it. All of us have gone through a childhood experience. Some of us had white picket fence experiences and some of us had harder struggles. Our childhood experiences help form who we are but they don't define us. We can do HARD things. We can CHANGE our course.

Here's the email in part:

Hi Leslie,

  Just wanted to let you know that today's session went really well during your "bathroom break" :)  We talked a lot about family and Kai was explaining the differences in American families and Chinese families.  He was making a ton of statements about being part of your family, which is wonderful!  I did lots of repetition, making a point to say "Christian, Kai, Caden, Madison, and Macy Egli" (to include him as part of the family, not as a comparison).  

  At one point, he did get a little quieter when he spoke of Chinese families. He talked about how Chinese moms and dads like boy babies more than girl babies, but made a very interesting comment along the lines of "my boy baby, but my china parent no like my."  This was a huge step in the right direction of where we want to be.  When we talked about how that felt for him, he didn't respond to much (only saying "I don't know" and "no like much").  This is expected, but I was sure to talk about how now that he was in America, he was a part of the Egli family and he never had to worry about ma and daddy not liking him.  I kept repeating "There's nothing you could do that would make ma and daddy not like you."  He stated, "Ma and daddy like my" and I corrected him and said "Ma and daddy love you." He said "yeah."

It must have been getting too gushy for him because after that, he changed the subject and pointed to "Egli" on the board and started talking about "Ma first no Egli" (which is how we got onto the topic of Sousleys and how when we talked about how when ma and daddy got married, two families became one-- his family). :-)

So heart-warming to hear him talk about being a part of your family.

I had no idea about this when I hugged him last night and then went through every person in our extended family saying their name and that they love Kai but I am thankful it reinforced what was discussed yesterday in counseling. His truth is changing. He is no longer a boy whose family gave him up. He is learning that his truth is that he has family now and forever.