This afternoon, we filled out paperwork in anticipation of our US Consulate appointments with the help of our intrepid agency guide, Shiyan. As we went through the forms and talked about the adoption experiences our families have had thus far, Shiyan asked if we were aware that a 13 year old girl who was adopted from China as a young child committed suicide recently by shooting herself. Shiyan related that there were murmurings that the girl had experienced bullying because of her ethnicity.
No one in our group had been aware of the story prior to Shiyan mentioning it. Our internet connection has been spotty even with the VPN, but I scoured the mainstream media websites this evening and found no mention of the suicide. Finally, a detailed Google search revealed a few reports about the young Ohio lady and her family.
The articles provide few details. The photos that accompany the reports appear to be selfies, and the young lady was beautiful. In the photos, she looks like a happy teenager. Of course, the teenage years tend to be mercurial under the best of circumstances, so it is hard to know what was going on beneath the surface of this child's life. It seems that she faced some cruel comments from classmates in the past and her parents now believe she was recently being bullied as well. The school and her classmates report no knowledge of any problems. For whatever reason, it seems that she shot herself in the head and was found in her bedroom.
No note. No clues. No nothing for her grieving friends and family.
It's heartbreaking.
There are always more questions than answers when a child dies, and I find myself thinking more and more that it is a cruel world indeed where children have access to loaded guns and even think to harm themselves or others. There are so many questions, but one question I now contemplate is this one:
Could this be my Pearl in ten years?
Oh, how I hope not. I don't want this for any child or any family. But how does a parent prevent something like this from happening? Is it even within our power as parents to prevent such tragedies?
I look at my Pearl, who has officially been my daughter for only six days but who has been a child on this Earth for just over three years, and I wonder how much of her life can I impact? If wrapping her in five layers of clothes and a swath of bubble wrap could cushion her from injury when life causes her to fall down, I would swaddle her in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, while I can love her and guide her and respect her, she has her own personality, her own genetics, and her own take on her story.
Is it possible to teach resilience, or is it some innate quality? Why do some kids laugh off teasing and taunting while others internalize such things? How much is too much for each child?
Ideally, Pearl would be raised in a loving home by her biological family, comfortably embraced by the culture of her birth. That would at least give her the foundation, the "fitting in", that adolescents universally seem to crave.
That won't happen and Pearl had no voice in that decision, just as she didn't choose to be selected for international adoption. Today, it didn't seem to bother Pearl at all that her Mama looks nothing like her. She happily held my hand and toddled around Shamian Island while crowds of Chinese people openly pointed and stared, or worse, asked her in Mandarin why she doesn't look like me. Pearl didn't seem fazed at all tonight when two Chinese men gawked as she planted big wet kisses on my face while we waited for our dinner at a local restaurant. Today, Pearl accepts that I am her mother and she beams when I hug her close and call her my "bao bei", or "treasured baby". How will she feel when she is thirteen years old and people point and stare or make rude comments? Will she still know that she is a precious jewel, or will she allow other people to define her worth?
I don't want Pearl to grow up wanting to be white, which is what Shiyan said many adopted Chinese children in the US wish for. I am certainly no expert on China or Chinese culture, but I have seen much on this trip to indicate that this is a nation rich in heritage, tradition, and vibrancy. There are 1.3 billion Chinese people living in China. 1.3 BILLION. This is a nation that is growing, evolving, and creating. Small people who lead small lives in small places will want to make my Pearl feel worthless and insignificant (and I will want to beat the crap out of anyone who tries to do it), but she is part of something HUGE. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?
Like any halfway decent parent, I want Pearl (and Bean) to take the best of me, the best of my husband, the best of their environments, and the very best of themselves and propel those qualities into the future. Of course, I will be perfectly happy if my children jettison some of my less admirable qualities (sarcasm, anyone?). Dr. Phil isn't my sole source of inspiring life quotes, but I will paraphrase him now when I say that I want my kids to live their best lives.
I just read a blog post written by an adopted girl who wrote that she doesn't know whether she is Chinese or American. How unbearably sad. When did "American" become something so narrow and unattainable? Are the two really mutually exclusive? And how can I, and the world, help to prepare transracial adoptees like Pearl for the cognitive dissonance associated with simultaneously being and not being so many things?
So many questions and never enough answers.
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