Kidsave’s FlatSasha Project

I learned about this organization LINK>Kidsave and their FlatSasha Project today, thanks to an article in The Guardian LINK>Ukrainian children orphaned by war ‘need a tremendous amount of help’.

Last February 24th marked one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since the war began, Kidsave Ukraine has been working tirelessly to rescue those in danger, get them to safety and provide them with urgent humanitarian aid. When the harsh winter set in, the most vulnerable members of society – Ukrainian orphans – were having to navigate these frightening and unstable times without families to support and comfort them.

Flat Sasha represents a 12-year-old orphan displaced from their home in Mykolaiv due to the war, like so many other children in the country. Flat Sasha can be printed out, colored in and decorated. Once you’ve created your Flat Sasha, we encourage you to hang them up in your school, office, home, car, or bring them along with you on a brand new adventure. LINK>Download FlatSasha. There is both a male and a female version.

Kidsave will be training volunteers and staff on trauma therapy as part of their own efforts to rebuild Ukraine. Donations to the organization will aid the construction of a center in Ukraine aimed at providing mentorship, therapy and other emotional support services to children trying to grow up within a conflict experience.

The organization had already been working in Ukraine for six years – BEFORE the invasion by Russian forces on February 24 2022 made a bad situation worse. It has been estimated that there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war started there – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization. Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans. Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, has said his teams have documented more than 14,000 instances of Ukrainian children being forced into adoption in Russia since the invasion. Ukraine has made it a clear priority to keep any of its children who are in need of adoption in the country as opposed to sending them abroad.

Challenge The Now

When we realize that adoption is born from a separation between a mother and child, we will see that it is traumatizing to all the people involved. Adoption Trauma serves as a term that explains how there are multiple losses, how the process itself is traumatic, and the impact on the mental wellbeing of the person being adopted, those who are choosing to adopt, and those who are separated. You can download an Adoption Trauma Factsheet at this site – https://www.transformadoption.com/. Share the factsheet, help raise awareness, educate your community, and support your loved ones.

When a person is adopted their life path is irrevocably altered. It is unnatural and traumatizing for them. The task is to learn how to manage this trauma so the adoptee may find their true identity. Corrupt adoption practices include fabricating adoption documents, coercive recruitment campaigns and systemic oppression of the truth. It is time to challenge the now and help adopted people learn their true identities so they may find their true purpose in life.

It is time to uncover the truth about yourself as impacted by adoption, learn where your origins began, and reveal your adoption story. In my case, both of my parents were adopted. They died knowing next to nothing about all of these aspects of their identity. I have been able to uncover a lot of it for myself, my sister and our own children. Creating a sense of our true identities now. An adoptee who is able to do this feels safer within their own self. Each of us educates ourselves as much as our personal interest and needs dictate. We seek to build a larger awareness of the truths of this practice that profits massively the adoption industry.

People who are adopted domestically in the United States have been advocating to get their original birth certificates, which have historically been sealed and amended. Efforts are being made state by state to overturn previous laws during a time adoptions were conducted in secrecy. It is vital to one’s health to have connections with one’s families of origin and also to know one’s familial medical history.

It is up to all of us to transform adoption. Now is the time we can re-define who adoptees are individually and collectively. They should not be second class citizens. They deserve their full basic human rights.

We are all pioneers in this effort seeking to transform adoption practices together.

Being Charitable

What are you actually saying to your adopted child as an adoptive parent about what your motives were ? There are cases – I suppose – like true orphans. However, among the thoughts about reforming adoption in general, instead of buying a baby to raise as your own, is the radical idea of helping the mother in danger of losing her child. Her crime may simply be lacking the financial means to raise that child.

Clearly, if you can plunk out tens of thousands of dollars to obtain another woman’s baby, you could go very far in your ability to charitably help keep a baby and mother together. Sadly that is not the kind of thinking that motivates most adoptive couples. Most are self-absorbed, only thinking about what it is they desire, and rarely considering the emotional price and mental anguish someone else (and often more than one someone else – the original mother, the adoptee, any subsequent siblings) will have to bear for you to fulfill your personal desire.

You will be held accountable for every decision you make regarding adoption.

Don’t you think your adoptees will have enough sense to realize that in 9 out of 10 cases you could have helped their parents keep them vs adopting them ? Do you think you’ll never be asked this question or held accountable ? In cases where infertility was the reason for adopting (as most cases actually are), don’t you think these children will have enough sense to realize they were your second choice ?

It is still a rather new perspective and some adoptive parents have been able to own the facts and own their culpability in the messed up institution of adoption. What is done is done but things could be done better going into the future and that is why the idea of raising awareness and talking about ways that would be more life and family affirming is happening now.

If you do want to understand adoption trauma, then here it is – I have seen this for myself in an adoption triad group with thousands of members (all 3 sides of the adoption equation) – there really are a lot of very angry adoptees. Ask yourself, why is that, if adoption is such a perfect answer to everyone’s problems ?

For adoptees unfortunate enough to have been the victim of a shady adoption, the truth will probably come out in this modern day and time (much of that kind of story did not come out during Georgia Tann’s illicit 3 decades long scandal from the 1920s up until 1950). There will be damage that you (as an adoptee) may or may not ever be able to repair. The damage is deep – and comes out in bits and pieces – and in ways that are not always obviously related to the adoption directly.