For local adoptee, her adoption was true blessing

November is National Adoption Month. According to www.childwelfare.gov, the website of the Children’s Bureau of the Office of the Administration of Children and Families, National Adoption Month is an initiative that seeks to increase national awareness of adoption issues, bring attention to the need for adoptive families for teens in the U.S. foster care system and emphasize the value of youth engagement.

As part of that initiative, stories will run this month covering each aspect of the adoption triad: the adoptee, the adoptive parents and the birth parents. This week an adoptee story comes from the perspective of Emily Plank Baddorf, whose hometown is Orrville.

Baddorf believes she was born somewhere near Goa, India — the exact place is unknown.

“I was brought to an orphanage by my mother and grandmother,” she said. “We know that by bringing me, they stayed two days because my mother simply couldn’t leave me. We know nothing about my father. My adoptive parents learned shortly before their wedding that they wouldn’t be able to have children. They began the adoption process immediately after and received me in December of 1988.”

Baddorf was 11 months old. Five years later her adoptive parents adopted again from India. Her adoptive brother Justin is from the same orphanage and was adopted when he was 7 months old.

Baddorf’s adoption falls within the definition of a transracial adoption, meaning she is Asian and her parents are Caucasian, and her adoption also is a transnational/international adoption because she is from India.

When asked if being a different race and ethnicity from her adoptive parents ever made her feel different or uncomfortable, Baddorf said there were two times when she felt different.

“The first was when I was little and a group of young boys in an Orrville park began harassing my mom and telling her to take her ‘n-word’ back home,” she said. “My mom was horrified, but I was too little to remember this.

“The second event happened when I was 6 and in gymnastics. We were lining up for the balance beam, and out of nowhere, a girl in my class suddenly looked at me and announced loudly: ‘I think we should all go first and she should go last because we’re white and she’s not.’”

Fortunately, these were isolated incidents.

Baddorf said she has never had a desire to go to India or to meet her birth parents. For her, the knowledge her birth mother stayed at the orphanage for two days was a critical fact.

“Having the knowledge that my mother was heartbroken that she had to give me up gives me a huge sense of knowing that I was wanted. She simply could not take care of me,” she said. “I’ve never felt abandoned from being adopted, nor do I hold any resentment or hurt toward my birth parents.”

Baddorf does acknowledge the birth of her son Canaan was a game-changer for her. Realizing her son is the first blood family member she has ever had stopped her in her tracks.

“My baby is the first and only person I will ever know who shares part of me,” she said. “Once I realized that, it made me fall in love with him even harder. I feel very blessed to have been adopted. While there have been moments when things were challenging, I would absolutely not change the Lord’s plan to have me be adopted.”