Happily Ever After?
Samuel has lived through more trauma in his first year of life than any child should experience in a lifetime. I think we sometimes take this for granted, assuming that because he's young, he hasn't been affected. Unfortunately, that's just not true. It's not true for any of them. These children feel the brunt from the moment they are abandoned, sometimes way before. Samuel was born with a visible special need, one that stigmatized him in China. His birth mother immediately decided she couldn't handle it. So he was left in the grass for someone to find. He was admitted to an institution where no one knew his story, his background, his name. When he cries, his mom isn't there to soothe him. If someone hears his cry, a nanny, a stranger, someone may or may not care enough to respond. He lives in a place with hundreds of other babies. Even if the workers there do care, it's simply impossible to meet even his basic needs. Statistics (ones that I'...