Our Journey to Uma

Today is July 1, 2007. It was one year ago today that we were getting ready to send our completed dossier to our adoption agency so that we may adopt a child born whose gestation took place in our hearts over many years.

Unbeknownst to us at that same time, somewhere in North India, there was a woman who was very likely agonizing with a major decision. She had just given birth several months before, and for whatever her reasons, she would not be able to keep her baby.

On July 1, 2006 the woman made her decision. She wrapped her baby in a blanket and left her in a New Delhi train station, where she was picked up by the police. I do not know how long the baby laid there before she was taken in. The police took her to a local orphanage, where the caretakers there bathed her, fed her and gave her the name "Aakriti." They estimated her age to be three months from that date ,which then gave her the birthday of April 1, 2006.

This baby is the child who will be our daughter in this life time. Her name will be Uma Aakriti.

My journey to Uma began many, many years ago. As a child, my parents created a warm, happy home. Despite my father's difficult schedule in medical school and later as an intern, resident and fellow, we spent weekends together as a family. My parents would read to us at night, stories like Heidi, Oliver Twist, Annie of Green Gables, just to name a few. I remember feeling so deeply saddened at the thought that these children did not have loving parents like I did. I remember thinking, "When I grow up, I will become their mother!"

From about age seven and then my adulthood, almost every summer for over 20 years, my family and I would travel to a summer family camp. There was one family there who started as just a couple, and then year after year, there were additions to their family. The additions did not come as newborns, but as both toddlers and older children. They came from all over the world. I used to watch them playing together with the sheer joy that only children can express. There was a special joy in these children's faces. It was same joy that I knew my heart had, but perhaps took for granted -the joy of having a loving family. It touched me very deeply, even as a young child, to see these children, who once had been waiting for that special love of a family, now relishing in that love. I planted the seed in my heart that I too, would want to adopt children some day, and create a conscious family of love.

Adhipen, too, had the same dream born under different circumstances. Having been raised in India under the best of circumstances, with two loving parents and a sister, he too knew the joys of a loving family. Growing up in India, he constantly saw the large contrast of the poverty that his family did not know, with so many children either orphaned or sent out as beggars on the streets, with no chance of an education, let alone a future. He felt the pain at his own "luck" as compared to theirs. It was not guilt, rather it was sheer empathy. He knew very well, that with a twist of circumstance, he could be them. There really was no difference between them and him other than the circumstance of birth. This pain of their suffering etched very deeply in him and left him with the dream to adopt children and give them the opportunities that they otherwise would not know.

However, the largeness of the suffering that he was exposed to made him wish to do even more. While I was moved by my children's books, Adhipen felt moved on a larger scale because what he had seen was more than just in movies or books. He wept bitterly at the end of the movie, Schindler's List when Schindler received a ring to honor what he had done to help save the lives of Jews suffering in the Holocaust, and replied, "I could have saved one more life with this."

Hence, it became Adhipen's dream to also to make a change in the world so that perhaps a woman would have a different choice rather than have to give up her children or send them out to beg on the streets. It became his dream to create a larger solution to the hunger and suffering around him, not just in India, but worldwide. Hence, while we wait for our family of children to come to us, we simultaneously are working on the creation of Ariven Community and Amma's Sanctuary (you can read about this in the link section of this blog site: "Adhipen's Yoga Website"). This is my husband's larger dream, one which I am grateful and honored to be a part of.

The journey to Uma began with these sparks of desire and dreams within both of our hearts. When we met, we both agreed that as a couple, that someday, we would make our dream come to fruition.

The unfolding of action began in October 2005 and I began to research international adoption. I dreamed of her face in November 2005. There were many twists of fate that led us to the place where we were on July 1, 2006, finally getting ready to submit our dossier.

When all that we needed to do had been done, and we sent our final paperwork to the adoption agency, we sent it with the deep hope in our heart, and the faith that now that we had done the "footwork" mysterious working of a Higher force would bring our daughter home to us.

In March 2007, just a few days before Adhipen's birthday, we received the referral for the baby Aakriti. Those eyes and those lips were unmistakable! This was the baby's face of the little girl I had seen in my dream back in November of 2005. This was our daughter.

We went out to dinner with my family and brother Jason's family. We passed the picture and report around. The tiny face in the picture reached out to everyone. They all welcomed her to our family. My nephew Jaredan, age 8, asked me, "where do I sign to tell them that I want her to come?" Adhipen and I signed the referral acceptance in front of the portion of our family that lives in our proximity. The next day, we mailed in the paperwork via Federal Express. Now all we could do was to wait....that is the agonizing place we find ourselves today, July 1, 2007.

Our adoption agent says that we have received our NOC (which is the approval from the government department in India, CARA, that approves adoptions). Now we are just waiting in the backlog of the New Delhi courts. Our adoption agent is hoping (and we are praying!) that Uma Aakriti will be home by Thanksgiving, 2007. That would definitely give us so much to give thanks for!

And so I have begun this blog, to hopefully help make the wait a bit more bearable -to be able to post any inspirations, expressions of the heart and whatever love and prayers come in for us in the form of comments. In this day and age of the Internet, we are able to reach out to the world and have something there for the world, and hopefully, someday, for Uma to see.

I have spoken of the sparks of hope and desire that began so many years ago. Adopting children was something that we had planned on doing so as to give a better life to a child who already born on this earth. However, I also want to say that while we are hoping that adopting a child would be a "good deed" let it not go unsaid that the child will be also doing an even greater "good deed" for us, by gifting us the honor and blessing of coming into our lives, and having us be her parents and gifting us the joys of parenthood.

All souls must enter this life by means of birth, but not all souls are born into a home of the heart and of love. Some souls remain with the parents they are born to and find a loving home there. Some remain with those they were born to, but live with abuse and neglect and hence never do find that true home. Some souls are born from another womb, but find their true home somewhere else. Some never are able to find that home at all. Some souls are born into families that spilt, or were never together to begin with, and hence find their homes with two families rather than one. Some souls find their way to single parents only. Life has many paths for a young soul once it is born.

In my thinking, the souls that find each other as parents and children are truly the luckiest souls alive. However the children may find their way home in this life, whether through adoption, conception, or as part of a second marriage (stepchildren), both parents and children are being given perhaps life's greatest gift from the Divine: the gift of the love of family. Uma will be the beginning of our nuclear family, an extension of the love between Adhipen and me. She will truly be a gift to us, one that we will cherish for the rest of our lives, and one that we will be eternally grateful for receiving.