Diana's Story:

Well, we're just shy of a year home for Garlise! Time for another Boni family update – the good, the bad, and the just plain goofy…

I am writing this very long letter for a purpose. My son will never thank me for it. In fact, someday, when he learns how I have broadcast our family's private struggles and joys to the world, I expect he will be furious. But I feel compelled to share our experiences. So much of the information available was written about children from Eastern Europe, and often by professionals rather than mothers, who are on the front lines every day. It is my hope that learning what older child adoption has been likefor our family will help others to decide that they can handle the challenges and adopt a child who might otherwise wait in vain, perhaps forever. It is also my hope that those families who are not fully braced for the struggles of older child adoption might spare themselves and their children from the unbelievable heartbreak of disruption. Please do feel free to share and forward thisletter to anyone it might benefit. If even one older child is adopted, or even one family chooses a child from Haiti, I will not have shared our private lives for nothing.

Adopting a teenager from a known severely abusive background has its challenges. Mike has been struggling with feeling burned out as Garlise has progressed. I too find myself feeling frustrated some days when I just wish it was all easier…

In February of 2005, we received a picture taken of our three waiting children in Haiti at the airport with their birth parents and their youngest biological brother, who was leaving for his new home in Canada. In the background next to our gorgeous, healthy, glowing oldest daughter was an emaciated child with one eye swollen shut. His hair and skin bore the distinct reddish tinge of protein deprivation and malnutrition. When we brought our three home in April of that year to join our lone birth daughter, we learned that the boy in the picture was their brother. Although he was two years older than Myrlande, our oldest, he had not spent the last year in the orphanage and he was considerably smaller.

Over time the reality of their brother's life came out as our children learned to speak English. Mike and I used to be foster parents, and this was as bad as any story we had ever heard from a child in foster care removed from an abusive home. And as Garlise was in Haiti, we knew that there was no Social Services coming to save him. Mike and I struggled with our consciences about what to do. We were already in dire financial straits from having adopted three children at once. We knew exactly what the risks were of bringing such a child into our home. Relying on the facts and common sense, we wisely decided that we had done all that we could do for the moment.

Our six-year-old daughter did not suffer from the handicap of logic and common sense. She was able to see things more clearly. I will never forget the exact moment she spelled things out for me so that even an adult could understand. It was July of 2005. We were in the kitchen, where I was cleaning and she was sweeping.

"Mommy," she said to me in her newly acquired English, "Garlise is your son too. You have to go to Haiti. You have to get him and bring him here."

Truly God speaks though the mouths of babes. We knew that this 12 year old boy had known brutal physical abuse from his birth father, a step-mother who openly hated and rejected him, and birth mother who was not strong enough to protect him and then abandoned him. We had never met this child and knew nothing about how he had survived as a person except that his birth siblings loved him. We began gathering our dossier again. My parents, who also understand that the smart thing to do is not always the right thing to do, showed amazing generosity and decided to pay for the entire adoption, saving our family from potential financial disaster as we did what was morally necessary.

I had the blessing of getting to know our son well during our adoption wait. In fact, as our adoption took 18 months to complete (BRESMA's 2nd longest to date) I got to know him far better than I ever wanted to, over there. I work full time in adoption, mostly serving BRESMA orphanage. I was able to visit many times. I ended up spending Garlise's last month at BRESMA there with him. I do believe that the closeness that we developed during that time has been a great help during his transition. I had always told him that when his passport came through I would come down and wait with him. While I was in Haiti last January, it came through and I stayed. Garlise has had a lot of adults lie to him and deliberately trick him in his life. I was given a chance to NOT abandon him, as so many had before.

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