When birth country travel includes the adoptive family, a team of supportive adoption specialists, and other adoptees (and their families), the ingredients are in place for a powerful experience filled with life changing messages. THE MESSAGES IN PICTURES Traveling with other adoptees and their families has given me a community where I feel like I belong in a way no other community ever has. Everyone just gets it.
Journey to Acceptance
Lia, 16, a China Ties participant, reflects on what led her from heartache to healing. Summer, 2001. An elderly couple hobbles up to a promising gate guarding a quiet orphanage with a baby swaddled in a soccer blanket. A girl, who wouldn’t carry on the family name or have the responsibility of taking care of her parents in their senior … Read More
Community in its Most Authentic Version
Community in adoptive family travel-it is a huge part of a Ties travel experience. Maybe even THE biggest part. There is really no way to overstate the importance of adoptees and their families traveling with other adoptees and their families on this particular journey. It’s not just that we all have this big life experience-international adoption-in common. It’s that when … Read More
Dual Identity: Blending In & Standing Out
Identity is a complicated topic. When traveling in their birth country, many kids are anxious to walk a few steps ahead or a few steps behind whoever they are traveling with to see what it feels like to blend in, to be “like everyone else.” For most, it is the first time in their lives where they have had the … Read More