I Lived on Parker Avenue
Video Credits: Joie De Vivre Media and executive producer, Benjamin Clapper, present “I Lived on Parker Ave.” as its first short documentary.
The More the Merrier
This fall the StandUpGirl.com Foundation welcomed a new member to our board of directors. We want to take this opportunity to introduce our newest team member, Alan O’Kain, and his wonderful and unique family. This family is a living example of the beauty of adoption.
Alan and his wife, Victoria, have been supporters of StandUpGirl.com for about 6 years and are frequent guests at our Portland area events. Originally from California, Alan and Victoria both have a background in law. This background proved useful when, about 10 years ago, they decided to pursue adoption. They each individually had a heart for adoption, and now married, with 6 biological children between them, they had the resources to pursue that calling.
During these past 10 years they have welcomed 5 children home from China. Paul, now 15, was the first, followed by Jude, Lulu, Luke, and Harmony. The children were all a bit older, and knew no English, when they joined the family, making adjusting to a new country and culture difficult. Many arrived with only the clothes on their back, and with a variety of health challenges. Some had nearly aged out of orphanage care in China. With a loving and stable home, where they are promised “we will never leave you”, they have blossomed. And where it is has been possible in meeting the kids academic challenges, the O’Kain’s have enrolled their children in Christian schools, to help in pouring God’s love into their lives. “It’s been quite an adventure”, say Alan and Victoria, but they feel “blessed to have the opportunity to do this.”
The O’Kain’s would also like to offer some encouragement and advice for those interested in pursuing adoption. Alan says “God will give you the energy and resources to help you do it,” and Victoria advises getting a mentor who has previously adopted to help navigate a process that can be long and difficult.
Will more children be joining the O’Kain family? Victoria says it’s always a possibility.
We are so excited to have the O’Kain’s as part of the StandUpGirl.com Team. We hope you have the privilege of meeting them someday, possibly at one of our future Portland area events.
God Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep
On October 24, 2015 in the middle of the night, I was wide awake and literally compelled to go into our empty nursery and pray. That night, I sat in our third bedroom and prayed over our adoption. I prayed for our child and the birth family, and the story that God was writing. I stayed in that room for over 3 hours and filled 11 pages in my journal. This never happened again, and I didn’t think much of it until nine months later.
Nine months later, a brave woman gave birth to our baby girl. And as we pieced together our stories, I learned that Ellery was conceived on October 24th, 2015. The night I was called up to pray, was the night that all of our lives were greatly changed by one sweet baby, even if none of us knew it yet. The final chapter of our adoption journey, really started to unfold last spring.
In March, we were matched with a birth mom who was having a little boy. On April 4th, we received a phone call saying that the adoption had fallen through. And just like that, we were back at square one.
The next morning, on April 5th, our adoption agency met with a birth mom named Emilie. At this meeting, she was shown our profile book. And the very next day, she chose to meet us. Had our adoption fallen through even one day later, Emilie would not have been shown our book. Seventeen days later, we walked into our adoption agency to meet Emilie.
My heart was pounding as we walked into the little conference room. I remember seeing Emilie, and her mom and her sister for the first time. Emilie was was standing, and we hugged right away. Within minutes, I loved her and her family.
Throughout the meeting we cried, Emilie cried, and her family cried. Tears of heartache, mixed with tears of joy and relief. We talked about Emilie’s story, her dreams, her love for this baby. We talked about our life; our dreams, and our love for adoption. The hour and a half flew by.
As we sat across from Emilie, Kenny and I would look over at each other; and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. This is the reason. This is the reason for all the confusing paths and closed doors and hard choices that we had to make: Emilie and her baby were going to be a part of our lives forever.
On Saturday morning, we got the official phone call. Emilie had chosen us to be her baby’s adoptive family. We were so grateful, and really happy.
We spent the next three months getting to know Emilie. We hung out several times and we texted quite a bit. We met her whole family. They all met Parker. We shared meals together; and it seemed like we had known each other so much longer.
Over the months, Emilie has become more than our child’s birth mom. She is our friend and an extension of our family. And because this is her story too; we wanted you to hear her own words.
Before you hear those words, please know this: Adoption is laden with layers of joy, and grief and beauty. And sometimes all at once.
When Emilie hand wrote us a card, to share that her baby was a girl, we were so excited. But there was also an ache in my heart. Em was going to sacrifice this sweet bond that a mom and her baby girl share; and she was gifting that to me.
As I held onto Emilie in the hospital while she labored and as we all saw Ellery for the first time, there was joy and awe for this beautiful little life, but there was also heaviness because we knew what was coming.
As Emilie held Ellery inthe hospital, kissed her head, and handed her to me one last time, I could hardly breathe. This moment was sacred and we all knew it. As I looked around the room, tears flowed down the cheeks of Kenny, Emilie, her parents, her sister, and her brother. Ellery is deeply loved. And that is what I will always know, Emilie loves Ellery, so much. Her chosen loss, her entrusting Ellery to Kenny and me, is drenched in brave, genuine love.
Every day when I look at Ellery, this sweet, amazing gift, I am reminded of Emilie. Ellery’s life is beautiful. She is a picture of God’s faithfulness and perfect work. I still can’t believe that we were chosen to be her parents.
U.S. Olympic Gymnast Simone Biles
U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is stunning the world with the complexity of her routines and her signature sky-high moves. Some experts predict that the young Texas athlete could bring home as many as five gold medals from the Olympic games in Rio, Brazil.
But just as inspiring as her hard work and amazing talent is her life story.
The Independent Journal reports Biles was born in Ohio to drug-addicted parents, and her father quickly abandoned the family. The first few years of her life were a yo-yo between her mother’s house and foster homes, according to Texas Monthly. When Biles was six, her grandparents adopted her and her younger sister, and they moved to Texas, the report states.
Now, the 19-year-old gymnast calls her grandparents, Ron and Nellie, mom and dad. A perfectionist, Biles trains continuously and often is hard on herself when she makes a mistake, according to the report. On Sunday, the only day she doesn’t practice, she goes to church with her family, according to the report.
“She’s always been headstrong,” Nellie, a retired nurse, told the news outlet. “When she makes up her mind, it’s, like, oh my gosh—the whole world could be upset and she’d still do it. My other kids would listen. Her, no. She makes her mind up and that’s it.
When Biles expressed an eager interest in gymnastics, her parents enrolled her in classes. According to the report:
A year after enrolling, Biles was in the middle of a class when Aimee Boorman, a former competitive gymnast and one of the coaches at Bannon’s, walked by and took notice. Impressed by the tiny girl’s explosive power and “air sense”—a gymnast’s catlike ability to stay oriented while flying through the air—Boorman soon became Biles’s personal coach, a position she has held to this day.
Biles also struggles with stress and a drive for perfection. She has a counselor who helps her work through the issues, according to the report. Her parents said it took her days after she won the World Artistic Gymnastics Championship to realize that she won the title of best gymnast in the world. Those around her say her confidence has grown since then, and she has become more at ease in her performances.
The young athlete has attracted the public spotlight because of her amazing abilities, but her adoption and her struggles are even more inspiring because they demonstrate how every person can overcome adversity to achieve greatness.
Written by: MICAIAH BILGER AUG 9, 2016
photo by: By Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil
More posts on Simone Biles
Olympic champion turned the spotlight on someone else!
A Heart of Gold – Jessica Long
Jessica Tatiana Long was born in Siberia with fibular hemimelia, missing most of the bones in her lower legs and feet. Her parents, Natalia and Oleg, were scared, impoverished, unmarried teenagers. The doctors who delivered Jessica told her young parents that they would not be able to care for such a severely disabled child back home in their village. So Natalia and Oleg reluctantly decided to place their baby girl in a Russian orphanage, though they felt certain that no one would want to adopt a crippled child.
However, when Jessica was 13 months old, American couple Steve and Beth Long came to Jessica’s orphanage and adopted her and another little boy with a cleft palette. As soon as they brought her home to Baltimore, the Longs started seeking treatment for Jessica’s condition. When Jessica was just 18 months old, both of her legs were amputated below the knee, and she was fitted with her first prosthetic legs.
But Jessica and her family didn’t let a little thing like two amputated legs slow her down. She quickly learned to walk and enjoyed a happy, active childhood. “I am one of six children and my parents made sure we all remained active,” Jessica told the Siberian Times. “I have been involved in many sports including gymnastics, basketball, cheerleading, ice skating, biking, running, and rock climbing. However, I always loved swimming the most. I learned how to swim in my grandparents’ pool where my sisters and I would spend hours pretending we were mermaids.”
Apparently, Jessica’s version of a mermaid likes to swim really fast. Whenshe was just 12 years old, Jessica became the youngest competitor on the US team in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, where she won her first three gold medals. Jessica went on to win a total of twelve gold medals in three Paralympic games, and she is the current world-record holder in 13 Paralympic events. Her other awards include the 2006 U.S Olympic Committee’s Paralympian of the Year, and, at the age of 15, the 2007 AAU Sullivan Award, given to the nation’s top amateur athlete. She was the first Paralympian to receive this honor, beating out such high-profile athletes as speed skater Apolo Ohno and fellow swimmer Michael Phelps, and is still the only athlete with a disability to win the award in its 82-year history.
As her fame grew, Jessica became more curious about her humble beginnings. “I love Russia, and part of me will always be a Siberian girl,” she told Bob Schaller for USA Swimming. “Eventually, I would like to go back and see the orphanage I was adopted from. Want to hear something funny? Always when I was growing up, I thought I was a Russian Princess – Anastasia was my movie.”
Finally, after a flurry of international attention for winning five gold medals in the 2012 London Paralympic Games, a Russian reporter tracked down Jessica’s biological parents in the tiny village of Tem deep in the taiga. Natalia and Oleg were now married and had three more children – a daughter, Anastasia, and twins, Dasha and Igor. They knew that their daughter had been adopted by an American couple, but they were overwhelmed at the news that she was now a world champion Paralympic swimmer.
Within a day of arriving home in Baltimore after the London games, Jessica watched a video of her biological mother, father and sister on a Rossiya- 1 talk show. The video helped confirm something she had known intuitively since her childhood.
“I never once felt adopted in my family – never once,” she said. “I just knew that I had another family that looked like me. So, when I first saw the TV show and I first saw my biological mom, it was really cool. Because I just – I look like her.”
In December of 2013, Jessica journeyed to the village of Tem in the Irkutsk region of Siberia to meet her biological parents. She couldn’t speak more than a few phrases in Russian, but she told the Daily Mail that seeing where she came from was a life-changing experience. The 21-year-old posted a picture of her biological family on Twitter with the caption: “Meet my Russian family. I love them more than words can say. My heart is so full.”
Jessica continues to swim and excel and inspire millions all over the world. She recently brought home five gold medals from the 2014 Pan Pacific Para-Swimming Championships, which wrapped up on Sunday, August 10, and she is currently training for the 2016 Paralympic games in Rio.
“I believe God has a plan for everyone,” Jessica writes on her website, JessicaLong.org. “I believe God had a plan for me to be adopted from Russia, to come to the United States and become a Paralympic swimmer. Part of His plan is for me to inspire people, whether they have a disability or not.”
Photo by: Agência Brasil Fotografias
Infinite Possibilities
Simply put, I am the son of a very brave woman. Anita, my birth mother, was just 16 when she discovered my existence. She knew there was nothing easy about being a pregnant unmarried teenager, but she never could have predicted all of the trials and obstacles she would have to conquer over the next nine months. When my birth father discovered that Anita was pregnant, he decided that he did not want to be a part of any of this. He chose to leave her to face these challenges alone.
After a great deal of prayer and thought, Anita knew that adoption was the right choice. While she was preparing for adoption and experiencing all of the changes and challenges of pregnancy, she was also determined to continue her education. Unfortunately, the Illinois schools in that era refused to accept pregnant teenagers. Anita’s grandparents told her about a program in Mesa, Arizona that would foster pregnant teens while they got ready to place their children in adopted homes, and there was a school close by that would accept my eager, strong, and increasingly pregnant birth mother. In a great leap of faith, Anita chose to move across the country to an unfamiliar place in order to achieve her goals of continuing school and preparing to place me for adoption.
My parents, Dave and Pam, had moved to Arizona from Chicago to start a business and, more importantly, a family. However, Pam was unable to have kids. For almost six years they agonized through the full range of tests and fertility treatments, but nothing worked. Finally, one day, my mother traveled to Patronato San Xavieran Church, an old Hispanic church in Tucson, Arizona. She prayed for the blessing of a child for hours and lit a prayer candle before she left. Nine months later, to the day, Anita gave birth to me, my parents’ first child.
When Anita gave me life, she also gave life to my mother. I can’t imagine my mom, Pam, without kids – she is just one of those people who was born to be a mother. After me, Dave and Pam adopted my sister Rachel, and then later their niece and nephew, Danny and Nina. We were a crazy, mixed-up, and very close family.
I always knew I was adopted, which is good because my sister Rachel and I are both Hispanic and our parents are both very white (we have a lot of jokes about that). I was always encouraged to ask questions and even contact my birth mother if I wanted. As a kid, though, I honestly wasn’t very curious about her. I loved my parents and my family and was happy with my life. I knew that my birth mother loved me and that she couldn’t take care of me because she was too young. At one point I wanted to know about any medical conditions that she might have passed on to me, but lucky for me I was in the clear.
Throughout my childhood Anita came to visit me a few times and had photos sent back and forth informing her I was doing well and or how life had been for my parents, but nothing that I was old enough to really remember. This changed at my high school graduation, when I met her for what felt like the first time. She had contacted me via Facebook and asked if she could come to see me graduate, and I said sure, of course you can. It was weird, though – the moment I saw her, I knew exactly who she was. I had never seen anyone who looked so much like me, or I guess, who I looked so much like.
Anita was married by then, and brought her husband, Dan, to meet me as well. We all went out to dinner and had a very nice (and only slightly awkward) time together. Anita and Dan have three beautiful daughters now, and I plan to fly out for one of their high school graduations in a couple months to spend some time with them. For some reason my little half-sisters are all very curious about their big brother.
My birth mother not only gave me life, she gave me a world of infinite possibilities. My adopted family gave me the support and opportunities to become anything I wanted, which lead to me becoming a nationally ranked motocross racer, graduating with a Master’s Degree in Organic Chemistry, and entering the field of nanotechnology. I have a whole life in front of me to make the world a better place, and it’s all because of my birth mother’s brave decisions and unparalleled strength. Thank you, Anita. Thank you for making, in my opinion, the hardest choice there is and for placing me with a family that I love with all my heart and who love me back even more.
Simply put, I am the son of a very brave woman. Anita, my birth mother, was just 16 when she discovered my existence. She knew there was nothing easy about being a pregnant unmarried teenager, but she never could have predicted all of the trials and obstacles she would have to conquer over the next nine months. When my birth father discovered thatAnita was pregnant, he decided that he did not want to be a part of any of this. He chose to leave her to face these challenges alone.
After a great deal of prayer and thought, Anita knew that adoption was the right choice. While she was preparing for adoption and experiencing all of the changes and challenges of pregnancy, she was also determined to continue her education. Unfortunately, the Illinois schools in that era refused to accept pregnant teenagers. Anita’s grandparents told her about a program in Mesa, Arizona that would foster pregnant teens while they got ready to place their children in adopted homes, and there was a school close by that would accept my eager, strong, and increasingly pregnant birth mother. In a great leap of faith, Anita chose to move across the country to an unfamiliar place in order to achieve her goals of continuing school and preparing to place me for adoption.