From the Archives | When the Orphan Crisis Has a Name

The little girl who led us into the adoption world

Hello and welcome to Notes from the Town Hermit. My name is Tiffany; I wish to create a safe space for those like me—who don’t feel quite at home in this world.

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Dear Inklings,

This essay is from the archives that I’ve unlocked for all subscribers today and reposted like this. If you enjoy this publication and find value in these posts, become a paid member to read more like this.

This was originally posted in 2018 on a now-defunct blog, but the concept of putting a name to a statistic has been floating around in various circles recently, so I wanted to share this again. Many of you know that two of my three children are adopted; you may not know who opened our hearts to adoption. You may not know that all our children are named after her.

With Love,

This essay was first published in May 2018.

There are 153 million orphans in the world.

I have heard this number numerous times in the past. It showed up sometimes on my social media feeds, often followed by some heartfelt plea for more workers in the field. It was preached from the pulpit, demanding recognition, shouting with urgency. “Think of it: 153 million children without families. Think.”

And yet the numbers never gripped me. It was a foreign problem, one that did not affect me and so did not insist upon my attention. As Stalin famously said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” So I closed my heart to it, dismissing it as a problem meant for someone else. After all, what could I do in the face of such overwhelming numbers?

Then, in one day, it changed. It changed the day we walked into a small foster orphanage in China. On that day, we saw the number, and the number became a person, and I realised: she is one of the 153 million orphans.

The conviction started to weave itself into the fabric of my life, until it settled into the very marrow of my being and pulsed to the beat of a chant that had been playing all the while in the background noise of my life. And I realised: one is enough.

She will never remember us from that one day, when she brought over some Legos and stole our hearts. She will never know how much she means to us and how we love her. She will never know how she stirred our hearts to action and set us on this path to adoption and orphan care.

But for the rest of our lives, we will remember her and fight for her the only way we can: on our knees, appealing to the Father.

Her name is 秋月. Her name is Eliana.

153 million orphans. 153 million orphans. Is her. Her. Her.

May is Foster Care Awareness Month. Each week, I’ll be sharing some aspect of my experience with foster care and adoption, with a focus on our oldest child, Ren, as it’s his birthday and death anniversary month.¹

The first step to engaging with an issue is by making a connection with one. One person. One name. One story.

I also want to feature The Archibald Project. This organisation focuses on storytelling through writing and visual arts. In the face of overwhelming statistics, they introduce you to individuals and put faces to case numbers while educating on their lived reality. They provide educational resources because the first step is to learn. Not everyone should adopt or foster, but everyone can do something.

1. I intentionally choose not share much about our middle child, who is our very first child and also adopted. This is because we take great care to guard his privacy; when he’s old enough, we want him to have the freedom to share however much of his own story he wishes.

Everything I share about Ren is what he’d made public himself during his lifetime and/or can be inferred from his public writing.