#changethenarrative

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We adopted our son and daughter from South Africa to the UK after we discovered that having our own biological children was going to be unlikely. There are several adoptions in one side of our family and people we have known growing up who were adopted and it was always something we had considered. Being an interracial couple, we had done a lot of work on race and culture already and knew we would do our best to maintain our adopted child’s cultural traditions, as we knew if adopting from South Africa, it would be a transracial adoption. We wanted to adopt from South Africa as we have strong South African connections ourselves.We initiated the process for our daughter 3½ years before we eventually adopted her but there was no agreement between the UK and South Africa when we started, even though adoption from South Africa to the UK was legally possible. We spent two years, along with other couples in the same situation, encouraging officials in the two countries to speak and then to create a formal agreement. Children have to be unadoptable in their home country before they are eligible for intercountry adoption. We were matched with our daughter but there was an almost one year delay in us adopting her due to problems with Department of Social Development in KZN. We eventually got a ruling from Durban High Court which enabled us to proceed with the adoption and then we became her parents. It was amazing and terrifying at once, as it is for all new parents! She was a little ray of sunshine and she settled with us well. She has now been with us 4 years and is thriving.We initiated the process to adopt our son a year and a half before we were matched with him. Unfortunately, soon after we were matched, the pandemic hit and we had a 6 month wait before we could travel to adopt him. He was a little older when we adopted him than our daughter was when we adopted her and his first 6 months with us were challenging, mainly due to lockdowns and restrictions and him having little idea of what normal life with us involved. He missed his foster carers a lot. We worked through all of this with him, and he did amazingly well. He now frequently tells us he is happy in our family but also talks lovingly about his foster carers, knowing he will not return to live with them. It has been a joy to see his personality emerging and to meet the cheeky, affectionate and clever boy that he is.Some adoption websites and books say that adoption isn’t all “unicorns and rainbows” and it really isn’t. It’s also, for us, not about “rescuing” children. We know our children have lost their birth families and cultures to be with us and they have difficult stories which we are slowly sharing with them in age-appropriate ways. There is support available to help adoptive parents with these difficult conversations and it is worth taking it up. Our children are (like everyone’s kids!) the best little people in the world and we have more love in our lives than we ever thought possible.