We receive a lot of email, and sadly, some of them read like this one did recently:

A friend of mine just gave me a newspaper article from The Washington Post about adopted children who return to visit their homeland. It referenced The Ties Program, so I looked online and found your contact information. We have an 18 year old daughter that we adopted from the Philippines when she was 4. She often talks about wanting to visit the Philippines to see where she is from, but I have sort of discouraged it because I had no idea where to even begin to try and put such a trip together.  When I read the article today, it seemed like this might be the missing piece!

OMG, in The Ties Program offices, we can’t decide what is more upsetting—the fact that adoptive parents sometimes discourage their kids from exploring their identity for lack of resources, or that after nearly two decades of providing adoptive family homeland journeys, there are still well intentioned people, who don’t know we exist.

Let’s never assume that our friends along this journey know their resources for helping their kids. Let’s all commit to being that “friend” who provides the missing piece to adoptive families we know. Let’s act by way of sharing news, lest one more child becomes an adult before being given the opportunity to complete the sentence “I am…”