Subaru Swamp

In the July 3-10, 2006 issue of Newsweek online there is a small article about an adoptive family returning to Russia to visit the birth family of the two daughters adopted into the author's family. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13528589/site/newsweek/

The article starts: "Last year my husband and I were in St. Petersburg, Russia, meeting the family who had given up our daughters for adoption."

I am so thankful that my husband and I (who have had the great blessing of adopting two beautiful boys) had a superior social worker spend several hours with us prior to our adoption experience. We learned from her that our sons' birthparents did not "give up" their children (as if they had been held at gunpoint and forced to relinquish them), but rather they "lovingly placed them in our adoptive home." This phrase allows the birthparents and the adoptive family to see the depth of love it takes on the part of the birthparents (no matter what the circumstances surrounding the adoption) to actually seek out an alternative family for the child they love and yet feel they cannot care for as well as they wish.