On one hand it seems like a lifetime ago, and yet it feels like it was just a blink of an eye. The past 13 years have been an incredible journey of growth, of love, of hurt, of joy, of disappointment, of birth and of death. I feel that I have grown more comfortable into my own skin and have begun my own inner transformation.
Tarak and I ended our Where 2 Next blog back in 2006 after our truly life changing world trip. The past decade has been spent working hard, experiencing the joys of parenthood, the struggles of life and really becoming more aware of everything life has to offer. We have felt blessed by the fortunes we have received, and learned lessons from the mistakes and losses we have incurred. Ultimately the biggest lesson we have learned is that this life is a gift.
One thing I can say that has always been on our minds and our hearts was knowing that we had more to give. I think both of us felt such a strong connection to kids and helping others that becoming parents felt very natural (this doesn’t mean WE were very natural all the time). Honestly, it felt as though it was naturally the next stage after being married for several years. We just had kids because that's what you did. But I will say what we did NOT anticipate was what our children would give to us. Our 3 girls have taught us truly what unconditional, infinite love truly is. They opened up our hearts in a way that we did not even know could expand. They have taught us to look deep within ourselves before reacting to their unique selves. They inspire us to be better parents, better role models, better people. They have taught us that to grow and choose love is always the best option. We have tried to instill in them that how we show our love, is through kindness, through service, through consideration and perhaps most importantly through gratitude.
Four years ago, after our youngest was barely 2 years old, I looked at Tarak and told him I felt as though we still had so much more love to give. We brought up the idea of adoption. The joy our girls gave us was unparalleled and seeing them grow and develop their own unique personalities and spirits has been a truly incredible experience. We talked about our transformational trip and the impact of the medical missions that we had served on. Back 15 years ago, we had talked about how if we ever had an opportunity to adopt a little girl from India that we would do it. The sight of all of the beautiful children who due to circumstances beyond their control, were destined to have a tough life with little or no opportunities to rise, was always a thought that circle our minds. As a young girl, on my many trips to India, I would feel this inexplicable feeling of sadness and confusion, as to why my life was so fortunate and just by a chance of fate, some other little girl my same age, would live a life of poverty and hardship. The older (and hopefully wiser) I have gotten, my childhood sense of pity and sadness was replaced by a desire to help. The sense of pity was replaced by truly realizing, as we all do, that all of the world's riches and luxuries doesn’t guarantee internal fulfillment and happiness. I have seen that more is not always something to be sought after and less is not always a negative thing. The reason I mention all of this is, quite frankly, we had to evaluate our own reasons for adopting. Yes, we would be helping and doing a big act of service to a young girl. Yes, we would have the opportunity to help her change her life for the better. But, that wasn't the main reason. It was from a place of abundant love. We had more love to give and wanted to grow our family. It would also be a gift for our 3 girls to fill and grow their love in a way like none other.
So with this in mind, we started our adoption journey back in 2015. Now as life always has plans for us and things don't always go as we anticipate, we had quite a few roadblocks along with way. First of all, the what seemed like an insurmountable amount of initial paperwork, background clearance, medical tests, homestudy reports, training quizzes were the first hurdles. After that in 2016, our initial agency lost their India Hague accreditation, which is required to adopt from India. This was a tough time. We had literally just spent 9 months frantically doing the first rounds of all of the paperwork, dossier to get registered onto the CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority) in India- only to find out that we had to find another agency. We were shifted to another agency, which after 6 months was unable to continue their India accreditation and we were then shifted to a third agency. By this point, it had been nearly 2 years since we started the process and we had finally got registered onto the CARA site. We thought, "Yay- maybe now we can get a referral and have some real motivation for ongoing paperwork. Well just then, we were notified that India had changed some of its rules regarding adoption. We were made aware that if you had 3 biological children, you were then only eligible to adopt a special needs child. Now this really had us pause and think. Of course, the fact that we are both pediatricians and Tarak takes care of so many amazing and wonderful special needs kids, we understood the magnitude of this commitment. I will say, seeing and taking care of kids and their families with special needs is incredibly humbling and inspiring. I have nothing but the utmost respect especially for the parents/siblings/caretakers as I think it takes such a special person with a beautiful heart. I feel strongly that spiritually, children are placed into people's lives for your own growth based on your own capacity. So with this, we had so many questions.. "Could we do that? Would we be able handle the needs and demands of such a child? Would we be able to manage the other 3 children? Was this the right thing for us?. So again, we talked and discussed that we would be open knowing that for our family personally, that we could take on a minor special needs but something that was quite major, would perhaps be too much. Well, with good thoughts and prayers, we went ahead and waited… and waited.. And waited. It was literally months before our first referral. By this time, it was already coming in the later part of 2017. When we did get our first referral, it was exciting but then at the same instant, heart breaking. It was a little girl whose needs and limitations were beyond what we felt we were able to take on. After much discussion and a heavy heart, we had to decline the referral. We had a few more referrals that came our way. Each time, we would get our hopes up and then really start looking into the situation and knew deep inside, that it was more than we could take on. A couple of referrals slipped away before we could "reserve" them as India is really trying to increase domestic adoptions.
By this time, it was the Spring of 2018 and honestly I had done some serious soul searching and thought about our true motives to adopt. I had to make sure that I wasn't doing it to prove anything to myself. Or that I wasn't doing as a way to feel love that would only come from my role as a mother. I had to really look deep inside and know that regardless of whether this happened or not, that I would be alright. That perhaps this wasn't part of my plan and my focus should just be on gratitude and spreading love to those around me. I can say I had come to a sort of peace about it. I struggled early on feeling frustrated, angry, resentful about why things were not happening as they should. I realized all of those negative feelings were all stemming from a place of selfishness and ego. I just finally let all of that go. I even gave away all of our baby stuff and old clothes (well with a lot of tears). And wouldn't you know it? In April 2019, I got an email from our agency that started out "There is a little girl, who is 9 months old, she was born with a curvature in her spine. Here is her pic. Let us know if you are interested". Tarak and I quickly jumped on it and began doing our research into perhaps what other issues might be that we were not aware. We got 30 days to "reserve" her and decide whether we wanted to formally accept her referral. Now, mind you, I had prepared my mind and HEART to NOT have expectation. If it is meant to be, it will happen. We started reviewing medical files, we got more tests, I was fortunate enough to talk to a doctor that had seen her in India. And I still remember his words over the phone. "Her smile is beautiful and she is a joyful baby- You are doing the right thing". He sent me a picture (as the initial picture was a tiny blurry baby picture) and I just filled with tears and had to sit down. That was it. I just knew. So, on my middle daughter's birthday, May 12 2018, we accepted her referral.
The next few months were spent redoing ALL of our paperwork since we had done it SO long ago, much of our notarized documents and forms had expired. We frantically repeated blood tests, police clearances, fingerprints, psychological evaluations and all sorts of forms. We were held up for several months in US immigrations, and then we FINALLY sent our paperwork to India to get our much awaited NOC. This is a No Objection Certificate, which means, the Indian government literally has no objection to us adopting her. This had been for others on the same journey, quite an obstacle and some poor families were waiting many months for this clearance. We were positively surprised when we heard that received NOC within 5 days of our application and on Dec 10th 2018, we were eagerly awaiting the next steps. The last few things were a bit delayed by the Indian court systems. We had to wait to not only get registered in court, but had to have 7 hearings and finally passed court on March 10th 2019. Next, we had to wait to obtain our both verbal and written court orders- after which we had the green light to book our tickets!!! This was absolutely surreal. We had literally spent the past 10 months trying to cautiously optimistic. Our girls have known about our adoption process from the beginning and they are just as much a part as we are. When we first accepted our baby girl's referral, we shared it with the girls but had to do so carefully. We tried to teach them that we do the right work without any expectation, and we prayed every day for our little one. We prayed that she would come home to us, but then if not our home, to somewhere she was safe and loved. We did not want the girls to be devastated if something fell through at the end. This was an amazing lesson for all of us, in doing what is the right thing, without any attachment (or trying at least) for the result. So, fast forward to the end of March/early April. Then it become a discussion of who goes to get her. This discussion was NOT very long as we felt strongly that we did this process as a family and so it would be ALL of us that went. If it meant missing 2 weeks of school so be it. If it meant, going while it would be (gulp) 108 degree weather- well we would need to be careful. So, on April 10th, we booked 5 tickets traveling to Mumbai!
13 years ago when we did our world trip, we created our Where 2 Next blog as a way to share and stay connected with all of our friends and families on our incredible journey. Of course, since 2006, technology, blogs, and social media has come and exploded! But we felt strongly that this is such a special journey and not only for our new addition but again for all of our friends/families/well wishers to follow along on this journey with us.
