Writing at xoJane, Chantal Rich says that she didn't mind living in rural Tennessee, until strangers started to comment on her adopted children.
"So, how much did she cost?"
The person asking me this, about my daughter, was an older woman and a complete stranger to me.
As I pulled my daughter closer to me, the same daughter that my husband and I had just adopted along with her brother, I thought about how to answer. We were in a hospital waiting to get blood drawn — it wasn't the place for a lecture or fight. I thought that dealing with questions like that was not what I had been looking forward to or even anticipating when my husband and I decided to pursue a transracial adoption. And truthfully, I wondered what was taking my husband so long to park the car and come in with our son.
When my husband and I first decided to adopt, we signed on for a domestic adoption for a child of any race. Incidentally, at that adoption agency, "minority" was lumped in with "special needs" -– so wrong. We were waiting so long for a match that we had managed to save up enough money for international adoption …
Read Chantal Rich's entire piece at xoJane.
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