I wasn’t there: the tragedy of adoption
My middle daughter, Nina, asked why we didn’t have any of her baby pictures. We adopted Nina shortly before her 4th birthday from Ukraine. When we met with the adoption officials (the SDA) there was a baby picture in her files and they gave us the only baby...
Five reasons we chose to adopt a child with special needs
When we made the choice to adopt a child with special needs from Ukraine, there were two questions we began to hear often. Why are you adopting internationally? Why are you adopting a child with cerebral palsy? Here is why: 1. When our youngest daughter was born with...
Her life was inconvenient
When my daughter was born, it was inconvenient. Her life, in turn, seemed inconvenient too. She was abandoned at birth by her biological mother, and that was inconvenient. She was born at only 27 weeks old, and that was inconvenient. She had a stroke, and that was...
A cry in the night
Today, you get to meet sixteen year old me. Yes, this is a piece I wrote many years ago, after watching a news report about the Children of the Street (a term used to refer to homeless children). In Mexico, this is a real problem. That news special shook me. And at...
Coming home
Sweat drenched my back under a heavy winter coat; a weighty and over-sized backpack hung on my back, a child was strapped on my front, and I tightly gripped a large suitcase. Amidst morning breath and a hint of coffee, a crowd of Ukrainians yelled furiously around me...
Ellen Stumbo writes and speaks about finding beauty in brokenness with gritty honesty and openness. She's passionate about sharing the real – sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly – aspects of faith, parenting, special needs, and adoption. Ellen’s writing has appeared on Focus on the Family, LifeWay, MomSense, Not Alone, Mamapedia and the Huffington Post.