We canceled the adoption of our niece, Rana.

It’s taken me a long time to decide whether to not to post this. It’s personal and if I write about it, how much can I write without offending family or putting too much out there? I’ve decided that since this is my website and it’s essentially about my life, I can and will write about this. Instead of deleting all posts I’ve written about adopting our niece, Rana, I’ll just post an update.

Adoption? What?

If you aren’t caught up with why we were adopting our niece, you can read about that here. We knew that it would be an extremely difficult process when we decided to bring Rana home with us. Legally, financially, physically and emotionally it was going to be a struggle. We knew that Rana’s childhood was marked by traumatic experiences of all kinds, although I won’t go into that here.

My husband and I are very firm believers that just because someone has been abused, that doesn’t mean they will turn around to abuse others. I have immediate family members who were abused by various means and they are wonderful people. They used their experiences to become even better and help others who might be hurting. So when we brought Rana home, even knowing her past we didn’t hesitate. It was simply about loving a child and helping her.

difficult doesn’t begin to describe it

I still don’t want to go into details about what happened here, but Rana is having an extremely hard time not repeated abuses that were done to her. My family, my children, and Rana were hurt. No matter what preventative measures were taken to protect EVERYONE in our home, the temptation was still there.

Our home turned into a prison of sorts. We installed a camera into the game room upstairs where the kids like to hang out to ensure that even if we weren’t there, we had eyes on the situation. The kids were not allowed in each other’s bedrooms at any time for any reason. The house was filled with lies, screaming, and tears constantly. I couldn’t sleep soundly at night for fear that I would miss something and that someone would get hurt.

The Decision To Not Adopt

Rana’s psychiatrist recommended that she not live with us as it wasn’t ideal for our family or for Rana’s own healing process. Her therapy needs to continue for years, if not for her entire life in order to heal from the trauma of her past. In the meantime having her in an environment that causes more stress and could cause more harm to everyone just isn’t smart.

We agonized over the decision for weeks AFTER the psychiatrist told us her recommendation. When we decided to cancel the adoption process we spoke to Rana about it. We explained why, and she really seemed to understand. I told her that no matter where she lived it didn’t change the fact that we love her. We will always love her. We will always be there for her in any way that we can be. She just shouldn’t live with us right now.

Moving Foward

Rana moved in with another family member who lives alone and works from home. That family member plans on adopting her.  I’ve only heard from her once in the month that she’s been gone…and I honestly miss the kid. She’s a stressful hot mess. All kids are, especially teenagers. I miss her terribly and wish we could talk more. The family member she lives with doesn’t get along with me, despite my absolute best efforts. It’s okay…but it makes communicating with Rana difficult.

I hope Rana’s doing great. I’m excited for her future and for the future of my family as well. We are healing and have a ways to go ourselves. Our entire family doesn’t understand how we could “give up” or “walk away” from the child we offered to help. There are some bad feelings about it, which have been hard to deal with. That’s fine. I can deal with other people’s opinions. In our eyes, the only way we were giving up would be to allow abuse and hurt to continue to happen under our watch. And that will never happen.

Thanks for reading this experience and understanding why it’s difficult to open up about. We really planned and wanted adoption. It’s not what we imagined or wanted, but life has a funny way of throwing curveballs.

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