::Guest Post #2: Rose & James' Transracial Adoptions::

We would like to share our second guest post about Rose and James' transracial adoptions with two beautiful daughters, Jada and Tiana. We thoroughly enjoyed reading up on their experiences as a multicultural family, so here it is:

"Thank you, Brooke for inviting us to share our story!

My husband, James and I adopted our beautiful girls in 2009 and 2013. We are a multicultural family and I call our family “multicultural” because we all have different cultural/racial identities not only through adoption but also through marriage. James is Black and from St. Thomas, USVI. I am Irish-Canadian. Both of our girls were born in Canada but come from different cultures. Jada is 8 year old and Jamaican-Canadian. Tiana is 1.5 year old and Native (Ojibwa)-Korean. James, Jada and I are Deaf. Tiana has unilateral hearing loss. On top of our racial and cultural identities, our children also have special needs. Now that I’ve given you some background about our family, I can begin to share some of our experiences!

Jada was 3.5 year old when we adopted her in 2009. During the process of adopting her, James and I had many conversations about our racial identities and how we can, as a family, bring those cultures together in one household. We did not fully appreciate the beauty and the challenges of transracial/transcultural adoption until we actually brought Jada home.  Jada shared same race as her new daddy but she shared same gender as her new mommy. For a while, she wanted to look like me and that was heart-breaking. I sought advice from many other adoptive families online, from books and from the Black community, and implemented many of those advices. I learned how to do Jada’s hair and decorated her hair in many different styles (at present day, she has braidlocks and absolutely loves it!). We brought home books from the library about Jamaica. We made sure we had toys, books and movies that reflect her cultural and racial identity. We’ve visited barber shops and through the barber shop in our town, she got to know some Nigerian women. We made an effort to visit them every weekend after Farmer’s Market for over a year but unfortunately, the barber shop closed last year when the owner moved back to Nigeria. Every now and then, we cook Caribbean food at home. This summer, we will be going to the big Caribana event in Toronto and hope to go there every summer. My husband’s family lives in the US, so we do not see them as often as we would love to but when we do visit with them, Jada gets the opportunity to be submersed the culture. We’ve visited St. Thomas and hope to visit Jamaica one day in the future. A couple years ago, Jada shared that she feels stronger affiliation with the Deaf community and feels it is too hard to immerse herself in the Black community as a Deaf person but appreciates knowing about her culture. This would be a blog for other time on my website one day!  

Tiana was 8 months old when we adopted her in 2013. Our experience with incorporating Native-Korean culture into our family is a different from Jada’s for many reasons. The Native community here is very strong, very present and very well-known. The adoption process before bringing Tiana home included a band representative from her Native community and their approval is required. The adoption agreement includes a contract with the tribe and a ceremony at the reservation. In the past 8 months, we’ve been to several teachings and ceremonies. The Native community also includes Jada in their events and treats her as part of their family. We’ve gotten several gifts from the community and have slowly added them to our home decor. Needless to say, there has been almost no real effort on our part to include the Native culture in our home because their presence is very strong and we absolutely love it! On the other hand, the Korean culture has not yet been incorporated in our family and we hope to learn more in the months ahead. My sister is Korean (she and myself are adoptees) and has two children who are Korean and white. Tiana and Sanja share same middle name.  Tiana will always have an aunt and cousins who share same racial identity as her but we hope to learn more about the Korean culture and share what we learned with our children.  

Tiana & Jada

Becoming a multicultural family has been a beautiful experience and we’ve learned so much along the way. We know there is so much more to learn about and so many more ways to celebrate our cultures and races within our family unit. Our goal is never to blend our cultures, but to celebrate each culture for what they are. We would never be a traditional family (not in today’s society) but we are a strong, loving and an authentic family who celebrate each member in the family.

I tried my best to share our story without turning it into a novel! It is a bit long but I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!" 

Thank you Rose and James for sharing your experiences with all of us! :)

Much love,
Brooke & Brian

::Noonday Collection Fundraiser::

shop. style. share. advocate. 
We want to share with you that our Noonday Collection fundraiser is now AVAILABLE for orders! 20% of the proceeds will go towards our adoption.  

First, we want to share with you about Noonday Collection's inspiring mission:

"Noonday Collection's first trunk show was hosted by founder, Jessica Honegger, in her home as a means to raise money to adopt her son and third child from Rwanda. The style and purpose of the products drew an overwhelming response, and the business quickly grew beyond a fundraiser. Thanks to Noonday sales, Jessica and her hubby brought home their son Jack in October of 2011. Orphan care and prevention remain a core value. At Noonday Collection, they believe every child belongs in a family. In the summer of 2011, they launched the ambassador opportunity. The desire for women in the US to earn an income while creating pathways out of poverty for the vulnerable was overwhelming. Jessica needed help! She soon partnered up with another socially minded friend, Travis Wilson, to enable her to grow the business beyond what she could do alone. Both Travis and Jessica spent years living in resource poor areas of the world and both dreamed of starting a business that would alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship." 

Check out their awesome website with the artisans' bios and further information regarding Noonday's mission. They even have a blog! It's very inspiring to read. 

(Brooke): I really LOVE their beautiful, handmade items! Hats off to the artisans because I know how difficult and time-consuming it is to make precise details for jewelry! Hint hint, Mother's Day is coming up- those items would make a great gift! :) 

Please be sure to go to this SPECIFIC link to order at:

www.KristineShafer.NoondayCollection.com

and write for  

"BROOKE SIPEK" 

at the check out when you are done with your orders 

for us to receive the 20% for our adoption.

You could order now anytime between April 17-May 1.

THANK YOU.  :)

Much love, 

Brooke & Brian

::Transracial & Transcultural Adoption::

What is transracial or transcultural adoption? 

When it comes to transracial and transcultural adoption, we automatically think of Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt's family! It's true. The media really gave them the spotlight on transracial adoption and how Jolie-Pitt truly assimilate every child in the family as one. Beautiful family. Six is a lot. We don't think we will go that far. Unless our first child convinces us to go for more. :)

Ok, back to the point, the formal definition of a transracial/transcultural adoption means placing a child who is of one race or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another race or ethnic group. Once we become a multicultural family, we will value all cultures and teach our child(ren) that every ethnic group has something worthwhile to contribute and that diversity is this country's and our family's strength. We cannot wait to immerse ourselves in Colombian culture to soak in new traditions such as art, music (no, not really...), drama, literature, clothing, and food. We will do anything to help our child(ren) become a stable, healthy, and happy individual with a strong sense of cultural and racial identity. We are not saying this will be a piece of cake; we are certain that we will face some challenges throughout the process. Everyday, we are learning and reading about adopting a child from another race/ethnic group to best prepare ourselves as new parents. We are very eager and excited. Heck, we are already checking into Colombian recipes to get the idea of what they eat!

"Just as we cannot prevent our children from experiencing the loss of their birth family, we cannot prevent them from experiencing the loss of growing up in a same-race family.  What we can do to take care of our children is confront our own blind spots and biases and work to become effective anti-racist allies." --Inside Transracial Adoption, 2nd ed.

We stumbled across this cool website at Rage Against the Minivan about how to talk to kids about race, especially adopted children of different race. We think her blog is follow-worthy! The mother of four birth and adopted children shared some great information about complex concepts related with transracial adoption.

Of course, when we adopt a child(ren) from Colombia, it's most probable the child would be dark skinned-probably Latino/Hispanic, which is the most common race in Colombia. We are completely fine with that as long as we get a child to love. Naturally, we would probably face some "curious (an euphemism for rude) question askers" out there regarding our child. "Is she/he adopted?" "Is he/she yours?" and so on.

Again, another great post to tackle those questions from Rage Against the Minivan: Top Ten Annoying Things People Say To Adoptive Parents That, Even Though They Mean Well, Drive Adoptive Parents Up A Tree.

We could go on about this issue, but we would like to have a second guest blogger to share her transracial adoption story because she experienced it first-handedly. Keep your eyes peeled for her story soon! :)

Much love, 

Brooke & Brian

::Patience is the Art of Hoping::

Here's some new updates regarding our adoption process:

1.  Our home study is FINALLY notarized and ready for us to apply some adoption grants! (The hold up was our DC clearances.... if only we didn't live all in so many different states, this process would have gone by quicker!)

2. One of the two boys that we earlier mentioned turned out to be not a good fit for us. They discovered that he wasn't deaf, just non-responsive due to some severe neurological issue. We are still waiting on the first boy with PFO (condition where a hole in his heart has not closed) to receive his file, but there are other families who may be interested in him as well... we simply cannot have high hopes for this one. 

3. Our agency just found a little girl who is deaf-- but we received inadequate information on her. All we know is that she has GDD (global development delay) and was severely malnourished, too.  She is two years old. We will get her file within a week to see if she is a good fit for our family.

4. We received a surprising anonymous donation from Network for Good (some kind of online fundraiser) towards our adoption! Thank you to those who generously donated!! <3 

5. We also want to sincerely give thanks to Adobe for their donation (with awesome help from Uncle Larry!) It is exciting to see our adoption funds grow towards helping us bring our child(ren) home!

6. We will have two upcoming fundraisers later in the spring: Noonday Collection (gorgeous handmade items!) and another tee-shirt drive (custom designed by Jennifer Cavalcanti). We will keep you posted. The Noonday Collection fundraiser will start in late April. 

7. Our puzzle fundraiser's current status: 188 pieces out of 500! :) We love how this is assembled together with everyone else who donated as a part of our adoption story! You can contribute by donating $10 per piece via AdoptTogether.org/AdoptingASipek.

188 out of 500!

Over our recent spring break, we decided to start transforming our current guestroom to our future child(ren)'s room. We added some floating shelves to display some art/donations on the wall and also bought a floating picture frame for our fundraising puzzle once it is filled! The room is slowly coming in together. We painted one accent wall a "chilly mint" and it turned out looking great! There are a few more things that need to be done for the room. We plan to keep the room as gender neutral as possible. This is such a fun project for us!

A work in progress!

We will continue to keep you updated with our adoption progress. It definitely has been a long ride for us. Patience is hard. Sometimes, no matter how much you want things to happen, all you can do is wait. And usually, waiting is the hardest part. It's so true.

Off we go to apply some adoption grants!  If you know of anyone who has applied for adoption grants or has some advice/direction for us, we would love to hear from you!

Oxox,

Brian & Brooke

::Subsidy Shades Fundraiser::

Yay! This is a nice surprise! We are one of the featured families for adoption on www.SubShades.com Subsidy Shades to gather funds towards our adoption for two weeks! 100% of proceeds from all purchases through Subsidy Shades will be donated towards our adoption! The last day for this fundraiser will be on April 2, 2014. They have a variety of sunglasses, watches, and love knots. You can click on "Make a Difference" and view all the items.

www.subshades.com

Please be sure to put down "SIPEK FAMILY" in the "Note to Seller" bar when checking out for your purchases to assure that we receive the funds! Thank you in advance for being a part of our future child's story! We appreciate it very much.

Much love, 

Brooke & Brian

P.S. We will be sharing some new updates really soon!

::National Endometriosis Awareness Month::

March is National Endometriosis Awareness Month. 

It's time to raise awareness about this invisible disease: endometriosis. Approximately 176 million women are affected by this disease.. it's the same amount of women who suffer from diabetes as they do endometriosis!? But only 20% of the public have heard of endometriosis compared to 80% for diabetes! Unbelievable. I will be sharing with a lot of different information regarding endometriosis in this post.

 

After researching more about endometriosis (fyi, I am constantly learning a lot of new things about endo everyday!), I learned there are a lot of celebrities who are diagnosed with endometrosis such as Julianne Hough (dancer from Dancing with the Stars), Jillian Michaels (Biggest Loser trainer), Neve Campbell, Celine Dion, Pamela Lee Anderson, Bethenny Frankel (reality star from Real Housewives of NYC), Tia Mowry (actress), Whoopi Goldberg, Khole Kardashian, and many more... Even Hillary Clinton. Endometriosis is shockingly prevalent today with insufficient medical research about it. I mean, 1 in 10 has it (actually, it's now statistically increasing to 1 in 8).

Ok, I'm not alone. There are a lot of women out there who are battling endo everyday and the silence needs to be broken. It's ok to share and speak up about it. I'm grateful for the power of social media because it really helps me to get connected with other endo fighters by reading their stories and experiences (that I could relate to!)....and sharing different opinions on pain-reducing solutions. The social media also (instagram, twitter, and blogs) puts me as the patient in a much better position in terms of access to information about my condition and the power to make better informed decisions. 

There's one celebrity who surprised me with her severe endometriosis issues-- Marilyn Monroe. Do you know the story behind her issues that led to her unfortunate death? Read on...

"Marilyn was an American actress, model, and singer, who was 36 when she died. She never had children though fell pregnant numerous times. All of her pregnancies ended in miscarriage and reportedly, at least one ectopic pregnancy, due to her severe endometriosis. There is a rumor that she went in to one surgery with a note taped to her stomach, pleading with the doctors to not remove her reproductive organs. Although, there is much mystery surrounding her death, many think it is indirectly linked to her endometriosis. The disease, endometriosis, caused her to become addicted to painkillers, which in turn aggravated her psychological problems."

Padma Lakshmi (lead host/judge from Top Chef show) is one of the co-founders for  Endometriosis Foundation of America. Padma suffered with pain for more than 20 years and was told it was "all in her head" before she was diagnosed with endometriosis. She had surgery when it was revealed she had two cysts on each of her ovaries.

You will be surprised with how many doctors say, "No, no, no. You're young. You're fine." I was misdiagnosed with "stress" at first until my laparoscopy. Oh! Turned out that I actually had Endometriosis Stage II (which was considered mild) afterall. See the common endometriosis misdiagnoses in the infographic below:

Here's one article example from Cosmopolitan about the journalist/reporter, Lizzie O' Leary, who previously worked as CNN's Aviation & Regulation correspondent:

The reporter's battle with endometriosis recently forced her to step down from her high-powered gig as a CNN correspondent. But how did her chronic condition go undiagnosed for more than two decades?

 "We may not look sick, but turn our bodies inside out, they would tell different stories."

"Endometriosis is unpredictable, capricious, tenacious, a destroyer of careers, families and relationships, and it is worth more money and research effort – not only for what we would learn about the disease itself, but for the light that would be shed on infertility, immunology, and the connection between illness and psychological states." 

 

With my on-going research, I have decided to try the Eastern treatment by using acupuncture (with cupping therapy) with Chinese herbal medications since my endo has returned (probably for the worse). I started my first Lupron Depot injection four weeks ago and will not continue for another five months for the treatment. I didn't respond very well to Lupron Depot due to many irritating side effects (more cons than pros).  For the past year, my body did not respond well with Western treatments (although laparoscopy was helpful for a short term)-- which weighed out my decision to go with the holistic approach (Eastern treatments) as an alternative option to try.  I had my first acupuncture appointment last Saturday with my first cupping therapy experience! They cupped my tailbone area where my most intense pain was.  It was a weird feeling when the cup sucked my lower back's fat.. However, it surprisingly helped with the pain (so far)! They suggested me to continue with my acupuncture appointments 2x a week for a month before reducing to 1x a week. I took my first Chinese herbal medication, Shao Fu Zhu Yu Pian (Abdo StasisClear) today. We will see how this will turn out for me. *fingers crossed* 

Meanwhile, it is urgent that doctors, nurses, teachers know about endometriosis and act on their knowledge, to spare young women years of pain, loss and emotional damage.

Blogs regarding Endometriosis:

http://emlwy.blogspot.com/p/endometriosis-library.html 

vintagelib.blogspot.com.au
http://happyhealthyendo.com/
http://foodie4healing.blogspot.com/p/the-endo-diet.html

http://myendodiaries.blogspot.com/ 

http://www.millionwomenmarch2014.org (The march will be in Washington, DC on March 13, 2014 at the national mall.) 

If you have any stories regarding endometriosis, feel free to share with me!

Fighting like a girl,
Brooke