::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