Withholding Judgment

My mind just hasn’t been into writing these last few months. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to form words into coherent sentences. This is a rather odd feeling for me…generally words are tripping out in attempt to free up some space in my brain for other useless pursuits.

So, just as I was thinking it was time to write again, I am faced with e-mail after e-mail about the Dutch diplomat who has relinquished his seven year old Korean adopted daughter in Hong Kong. My mailbox is full of newsgroup articles from the last two months, but I’ve decided not to go backwards too far. However, the last dozen or so e-mails are all about this sad story and I find myself trying to reconcile all of the different feelings that it caused.

My initial reaction matches most of the other reactions that I’ve seen. I was shocked, angry and (strangely enough) hurt. Whenever I hear things like this, it always makes me wonder about my own life. What if that had been me? How would I have felt? I inwardly ranted at the parents that had so little belief in family.

On one of the groups that I belong to, there is an adoptee who was part of a disrupted adoption. She believes that it was a good thing. She was able to find a home where she belonged and she has been happy there. It made me think.

This is a beautiful holiday season right now. It’s a time to really look at ourselves and believe in other people. While I am not ready to absolve these people of all wrongs, I have made myself step back a little and remember that we don’t know all of the facts. We have what the media has reported to us and, while I am a great supporter of media, they are not always an unbiased source. Within the articles, I heard quite a few phrases that made me stop and reflect. Many of the papers are reporting the little girl as happy. If I was seven and suddenly my parents weren’t there, I don’t think happy would be a word to describe how I felt. It is, however, a sign of attachment disorder…a sign that the little girl might have no attachment to her family.

It’s all guess work on my part. I don’t know if they are the monsters that some have made them out to be or if they are just as much victims as the little girl. My point is that we be careful before we crucify someone for circumstances that we don’t know. For now, I’m doing my best to withhold judgment. After all, I have to remember that if fate had chosen to push me in another direction…I could be this adoptee or the parent trying to make tough decisions.