How adopting my daughter helped me reconnect with my roots — IndigenousHistoryMonth
When I was a little girl, my appendix burst during surgery and I almost died on the operating table. My recovery was slow and complicated—my parents didn’t know if I’d live. During the weeks when I was in bed at the hospital—in great pain—my momabout an older girl who grew up in the foster care system. She was afraid to be loved, but a couple took her in, gained her trust and eventually adopted her. I loved that story and I remember thinking,I never wavered from that goal.
By the time I was married and had several kids of my own, I had all but forgotten my roots. That dramatically changed after my husband and I met Kira in theKira’s birth mother had used various drugs, so she was apprehended at birth and cared for in the hospital while she went through withdrawal. When we first saw her, she was lying in an incubatorin the darkest corner of the ward. She was in pain, and she still had tremors.
I was nervous about my first powwow, and I did a lot of online research to make sure I knew the proper etiquette. But I was mesmerized as soon as I heard a large group of women sing together. They stood in a circle, facing inward, with their backs to the crowd so that they could really focus on one another and blend their voices perfectly. The drumming was like a heartbeat: It was so powerful, and I remember wishing I could belong in that circle, too.
And I can relate. Back when Kira was an infant, I felt like I had so much to learn. I felt scared that I would say or do the wrong thing. After a few months, one kind elder took me aside and said, “It will take you four moons—four seasons—until you start feeling like you have knowledge and you belong.” I just kept showing up, listening to what people had to say and asking questions.
There’s a teaching in the First Nations community that before a child is born, he or she picks which family they are going to be part of with the purpose of teaching something to that family. I truly believe that Kira picked both her birth familyKira will have a lot of struggles because of the drugs that her biological mother took during pregnancy—she has brain damage, some developmental delays and.
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