Last week, I received a lovely email from a new reader. She was sharing with me how her heart was for adoption. She had spent quite a bit of time with research for Chinese adoption, only to discover the new rules would exclude her from being able to adopt from China. She had felt drawn toward Haitian adoption in the past, and with the recent news about China, started looking more at Haitian adoption. She told me that she was happy to find my Haiti blog, because there wasn’t much available in regards to personal stories about adopting from Haiti. She is right. Haiti is not one of the common places people choose to adopt from. Because of that, there are not that many stories, or blogs about Haitian adoption. As far as I know, there isn’t a single book specifically written about adopting from Haiti.

When we adopted from Viet Nam, we set up a website about our journey. It was in the early days of Vietnamese adoption (way back in 1995), and so there wasn’t very much information available yet. In 1996, I started an online support group, Families with Children from Viet Nam that branched off into numerous, real-life support groups. I can’t even count how many emails I have received over the years telling me that because of sharing our story, others were led to adopt from Viet Nam. I had never initially set out to encourage Vietnamese adoption, but rather to share our joy by sharing our story. I feel so honored that our story helped parents and children find each other in some small way.

There are many sweet, beautiful Haitian children in desperate need of families. I want to get Haiti more noticed as a viable adoption option. Thanks to my new reader, I have realized how powerful personal adoption stories can be. I will continue to share about our own Haitian adoption journey, but I’d also like to present other Haitian adoption stories here on a regular basis. If you have adopted from Haiti and would like to share your story, please email me: adopthaitiblog@adoptionmail.com