How I Learned to Cope with Death. It's Easier than you Think.
I first learned to cope with death as I walked away from a Russian orphanage with my new daughter, shrieking in my arms. Of all the places I could have been when the door…
Category
Adoption
Bad Behavior in our Adopted Children; Is There a Trigger?
There almost always seems to be a trigger when my wife and I see bad behavior in our adopted children. When two of them get milk, they turn disobedient obstinate argumentative feral. Feral…
Challenge Limits Instead of Limiting Challenges
We challenge limits instead of limiting challenges in our family. Rippling biceps; six pack abs; toned calves and thighs… yep; that’s how my family members look. On the inside. Oh, we're not…
Orphans: I'm Tired of Hearing it.
Western society was shocked in the mid 1990s when we heard that there were 132 million orphans in the world. As good hearted people took this number at face value, many rushed…
Empathy is Probably not What you Think it is.
I had always understood empathy to be trying to imagine myself in someone else’s shoes, and then trying to understand how it would feel. I got it half right. Empathy was the greatest…
Russian Orphans: The Moisieva Koshkina Family
The Moiseyeva/Koshkina family lived in half of this duplex in Fralovka, Russia. This is where Maria Anatolievna Moiseyeva and Vitaly Anatolievich Moiseyev were born. Recently we changed things in this document to…
Survivor Syndrome and Children Adopted From Orphanages
Survivor Syndrome has been rough on my daughter. Sarah had been home from Russia for five years when we met with her friends, in Spain. Those three girls were part of the…
Orphan Advocacy: One Less Orphan to Worry About
Orphan advocacy takes up a large part of my life, now. Consequently, I was unexpectedly shaken by a notification of the death of someone I never met. She wasn’t a mover or a shaker.…
Inconsistency and Reactive Attachment Disorder: Vacations
Inconsistency and Reactive Attachment Disorder make vacation the Devil! The whole reason that our children have Reactive Attachment Disorder is tied to the fact that there was so little consistency in their…
Overstimulation and Reactive Attachment Disorder: Vacations
Overstimulation and Reactive Attachment Disorder make vacation the Devil! My daughters who have Reactive Attachment Disorder have stared death in the face. I won’t bother to detail all of the types of…
Hypervigilance and Reactive Attachment Disorder: Vacations
Hypervigilance and Reactive Attachment Disorder make vacations the Devil! To this day I can’t make a sudden move near any of my children who have Reactive Attachment Disorder without them throwing up…
Vacations and Reactive Attachment Disorder
Vacations and Reactive Attachment Disorder... the Devil! It hadn’t been a week since my older daughters and I returned home from California when I got the Facebook message. One of the awesome parents…