Kevin,
Your are so right about Thanksgiving Day should be celebrated all over the world. A day to count our blessings and to be grateful for them. A day to share a meal with family and friends without the stress of presents, could not be better. Today, the American families staying at La Casa Grande will celebrate Thanksgiving with a big dinner. Each of them brought things from the US for the occasion. There will be four turkeys and lots of goodies. They were so kind as to invite me and my family. I am so looking forward to that celebration, because one of the perks of doing adoptions is to meet the people who open their hearts and their homes to the Guatemalan children. Sometimes, the demands of work deprive me of such privilege, but even if we don’t meet personally, they know and I know that we have a bond, because together we changed the life of a child.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you all!

Susana Luarca

Kevin (and family and the entire Guatadopt community),

My husband and I are spending Thanksgiving in Guatemala with our son Luis. (The trip a generous gift from his Abuela). We feel thankful to be spending our favorite holiday from our homeland in our child's homeland. We got word that we were out of PGN half way through our stay here and now are even more thankful! We also spent this morning at the hogar where our son has been so well loved and cared for. We miss our family back home and the turkey and cranberry sauce but we feel as though spending our morning with the nannies who have cared for him since he was a newborn was a nice balance because who more than them are our friends and family here in Guatemala? We have spoken all morning of how thankful we are for the people of Guatemala who have treated us with such kindness during our stay. We are thankful,too for Guatadopt as it has been so helpful to us in the past year. We extend to all in the Guatemalan adoption community prayers of hope and peace, on this our first Thanksgiving as a familia. Kind regards, Heather, Michael and Luis

Dear Kevin, Kelly, and Susana,

You two (Kevin and Susana) are making me cry over here! But these are thankful, happy tears.

I remember when Kevin and Sheila got out of PGN, I remember how joyous Kevin sounded in his email, and I remember that Susana helped them and many other families, then and now.

Susana also brought my beautiful daughter and I together shortly after that, and I have never been happier! Susana is currently working on helping me to bring my youngest daughter home, and I have complete faith in her that she will make it happen.

Kevin and Kelly, I am so thankful for this site and for all the information and support that it provides me and so many others. Kevin, your friendship means so much to me, even though most of it has been through email, you have provided support for me during both of my adoptions, and I appreciate you and am so thankful today and always for our friendship.

Susana, you helped me to reach my lifelong dream of being a mom. There are not words great enough to thank you for that. If there were, I would say them right here! I am forever and always grateful and will always treasure our long distance friendship. I am truly thankful that you are in Guatemala and that the birthmothers and children in Guatemala have you fighting for them. I am also thankful for the many adoptive families that you have helped, are helping, and will help in the future. Susana, you are so right, any time we can gather family and friends to enjoy each other without presents is a wonderful occassion!

To the US Families at La Casa Grande today, some of you are also my treasured friends, whome I hope that I will meet in person one day. Enjoy your dinner, enjoy your precious little ones, treasure every moment of your families being together, enjoy being with Susana and her family, and enjoy the wonderful staff at La Casa Grande. Give the two little ones a great big hug for me!
Peace and Love to all of you,
Lizzie

To Everyone and especially Susana Thank you for everything that you do.
I hope you have a blessed and
Happy Thanksgiving!

Kevin, I hope you,Sheila and the kids have a beautiful day.
My Thanksgiving was blessed yesterday when the agency emailed to tell me that the 2nd DNA was at the lab so PINK should be coming real soon!!!!!!

I have a lot to be thankful for.

Marjorie

Marjorie,

From one Wisconsonite to another, congratulations! I am thrilled for you and this wonderful news!

Dear Veronica,
I realize that you most likely will never read this, but today and every day I wish to thank you for the most precious gift you have given me by trusting me with the honor and privilege of loving and raising your daughter. You will always be in my thoughts and prayers, and my daughter will always know about you. I hold the hope that we will meet one day so that I may thank you in person, and so that you and our daughter will see each other again!
Love,
Lizzie

Keven,

There are members of the "adoption community" for whom it is not a day to rejoice, because adoption is not 'win-win' for everyone.

Children who are adopted often gain material advantages through adoption, but they also lose their family.

For mothers who have lost chidlren -- also a part of the adoption community -- adoption is a lose-lose.

Sorry to put a dent in your celebrating, but I hope you will remember that for every win and every joy in adoption there is a tragedy, a loss, and grief.

Mirah,

Points well taken. I am not one to ignore the pain of the biological mothers or the feelings of loss my children will likely experience when they are older. Though I don't believe I could ever consider my children victims.

But I think that your point is to a large degree what I wrote about, albeit in less specific terms, about thinking about those less fortunate. In so many ways all the things we Americans have to be thankful for are achieved by someone else's pain. Whether it be our family's creation, the cheap prices we get on goods, the destruction to Mother Earth we cause with our consumer lifestyles, or the impact of our foreign policy.

I have written many times that I long for the day that there are no adoptions from Guatemala -not because of laws preventing them but because the need no longer exists. It is a crime and travesty that any woman should feel that she needs to relinquish because her child would likely starve in her care. But that is the sad reality in this world.

Peace,

Kevin
Guatadopt.com

Dear Mirah:
I clicked on your link and went to your web page and then researched some more information. I am very sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing your story. Although I would much rather hear all the positives about adoption, the truth is that the negative sides are very real also. Hopefully the better people (including myself) are educated, the better able we'll be to come up with more ways to keep families together, to protect the children, and to make sure that when adoption is necessary, it is done in an honest and ethical way to protect all members of the adoption triad. I hope it gives you some peace of mind to know that you have changed at least one persons outlook (mine) with your post and I hope you have a good holiday season. Anj

Good grief, Mirah! Adoption is not a lose-lose for birth mothers. Don't forget that somewhere in her sadness is a birth mom's glimmer of hope for her child who has gained another family. Adoptive children GAIN a family, and they have 2 families who love them: the one that adopts them, and the one that loves them enough to give them a chance.

Hello Kevin,

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. In response to Mira Riben’s posting, I do not believe for a moment that she is, as she claims, “sorry to put a dent in your celebrating”. On the contrary, her comments appear to be intended to make you (and by extension, all of us adoptive parents) feel guilty on a holiday meant to give us pause to give thanks for all that we’ve been given.

I am father to three: a “bio” son, and two adopted daughters – a brown-eyed, black-hair toddler from Guatemala, and a blue-eyed, blonde-hair “grown up” from the Midwest, who’s going to make me a grandfather to a baby girl in early spring. I have been blessed with all three of my children.

Is there crime and corruption in the world of international adoption? I believe that there is, and that every bit of it must be rooted out.

I take strong exception to Ms. Riben’s blanket statement that “children who are adopted often gain material advantages through adoption, but they also lose their family.” It is true that my two adopted daughters have lost their family, at least as family is defined by Ms. Riben. But having already successfully raised two children to adulthood, I can guarantee all that being “family” is not predicated on having a biological relationship. Yes, my youngest daughter now lives in a middle-class North American household, rather than in a dirt floor shack in rural Guatemala. But at the same time, she has a large, extended, multicultural family that loves her deeply. And as she sat on my lap last weekend and I showed her family pictures from here and from Guatemala, I told her of how we are a family of immigrants. How our family first arrived in North America 372 years ago, and how she arrived here 14 months ago.

As we ate our Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, for the umpteenth time I found myself watching this, my youngest child, bedazzled by her charm, her intelligence, and her joy at having a family that loves her beyond all measure.

Yes, as Ms. Riben points out, “for every win and every joy in adoption there is a tragedy, a loss, and grief.” She is free to feel any sort of guilt over the reality of adoption that she chooses. On Thanksgiving Day, and every day, I choose to celebrate our family’s joy.

Gregg

Susana, Kevin, and Kelly,
Thanks to all of you for your tireless efforts on behalf of all the children in Guatemala who are without permanent families. This web site has been such a great source of info for so many of us adoptive parents and our families.

Susana, I cannot also thank you enough for your work at La Primavera, and for helping us complete our last two adoptions. You are daily in our prayers, as we hope for adoptions to remain a viable option in Guatemala.

Lizzie and Marjorie--I pray for your little ones will soon be in your arms!!! The wait has been too long, and I admire your perseverence!!!!

In grateful thanksgiving,
Judy (& family)

Amen for being thankful for every situation. Through every hard situation God has a blessing waiting for everyone; we just have to wait on it and trust in him. It isn't always the blessing we hope or thought it would be, but it is there the same in his time and in his plan.
My family is extremly thankful this year because we found out the night before thanksgiving we are going to Guatemla this Thursday to pick up our sweet daughter! How amazing this is! God has blessed our family with our first child, his child and we pray for the loss her birth mom is experiencing and pray for the life our little girl will have in our home.
God bless everyone.