The Promise-always a tear jerker

2002

Meghan among her many of toys.....2003

I just spent some time reading emails written by Sarah Settelen from 2002, wow, how very sad and the conditions of the orphanages were terrible.

http://www.elliesettelen.net/sushki.htm is the email log, Sarah talks about her time there that first trip and the reason The Promise came to be. I watched the video a couple of months ago, but I did not venture past it, I was crying too hard, and I watched it over and over until I am sure my family was sick of hearing it, I could only get them to watch it one time.

Reading about the conditions the children are forced to live in reminds me why Tom and I decided to adopt in the first place. The children have nothing of their own, but those are just things, what they need is loving attention, arms to hold them when they are scared, someone to praise them when they accomplish milestones, someone to call Mommy and Daddy.

Despite Meghan's delays, she really is just a normal little girl, and I see her playing with her toys and the cats and watching her movies, or her brothers plays, or sitting next to me at the movie theater. Funny though; we take her everywhere we still get weird stares in "enlightened" America too, and more often than not someone stops me to tell me how well behaved, cute, or special Meghan is, and they always seem to surprised that we take her everywhere! One older woman blessed me for not shutting her away? My world just is not like theirs?

Today I saw the images of the children with disabilities in the Russian orphanages sitting in corners, or all alone in their strollers or in playpens; shut away from the rest of the children, it made me cry. The workers at the orphanages then said the children with Down syndrome were too small brained to learn. They do not see that the children have no abilities because no one teaches them anything, or nurtures them, and so the children fulfill the expectations people set for them. Their potential wasting away in neglect and disdain.

We really cannot wait to get our little Eva home, I can picture her all alone in a crib watching everyone else live while she waits.