It has been six years since I joined Cathwel Service as a full-time translator with the International Adoption Program. Despite years of experience as a translator, I was still a rookie in the realm of social welfare services, and I will never forget the first psychological shock I received from my work at Cathwel. Nevertheless, working with Cathwel Service has been very rewarding as you can always sense infinite hope, selfless love, and numerous moving moments here.

The children pursuing international adoption through Cathwel Service are mostly children with special needs who have not been matched with an adoptive family domestically, older children, or children with specific family history. Every one of them has a heart-wrenching background. I still remember the surge of resentment and pity in me as I read the first child study involving a child abuse victim I translated here. Unlike most news reports on child abuse in Taiwan, which stop short of delving into the aftermath of the incident, the child study I translated revealed the consequences the child was enduring – cerebral palsy, developmental delay, hearing and visual impairment resulting from a traumatic brain injury. I couldn’t help wondering if this one-year- old child, whose medical chart, if printed out, is longer than that of a healthy adult, would have a chance to find an adoptive family.     

In addition to children with physical and mental disabilities, it is also challenging to find adoptive families for older children, whose chances of being adopted grow dimmer as the days go by. Whenever I saw the look of expectation in an older child’s eyes or heard an older child express the wish of “being adopted” or “having my own family and parents,” my sense of mission grew stronger. Therefore, while giving the priority to new waiting children, I am also anxious to get the translation of other children’s reports done as soon as possible. With a huge backlog of untranslated reports and limited translation resources, however, I often found myself struggling to prioritize them. It really made me feel guilty to translate one child’s report first, while having to put off the other child’s paper further. Fortunately, with some new blood in the translation force, the mountain of untranslated reports has been reduced significantly over the past few months.   

Cathwel Service has hosted a roots-finding trip in every summer for many years in a row before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. When young people aged 18 and older, who were adopted from Cathwel, came from various countries to gather here for the two-week activity, the scene looked like an ordinary youth summer camp, except that most of them were expected to have a reunion with their respective birth families. A reunion with the birth family is obviously an important matter to the adoptees, their adoptive parents, and their birth families. The paths of the concerned parties crossed because of an adoption many years ago and now they are brought together by a reunion. It’s a special and unforgettable experience to translate an adoptive parent’s letter to the adoptee’s birth family or birth mother, a birth mother’s letter to the adoptee or adoptive parents, and an adoptee’s letter to the birth mother during the roots-finding season, for they have so many things to tell each other, and their messages to each other have never failed to touch my heart.    

Every social worker at Cathwel Service is working hard to find a forever family for every child waiting to be adopted, but sometimes there is nothing left to do but wait. I am always thrilled and moved to learn that a prospective adoptive family is considering adopting a waiting child or has even decided to a adopt an older child or a child with physical and mental disability or congenital disease. As the Covid-19 pandemic caused shutdowns in many cities around the world and affected people’s lives, I was worried that some prospective adopters would change their minds or postpone their adoption plans. To my relief, it turns out that families willing to adopt internationally have remained committed. 

Meanwhile, many adoptive parents had to postpone their trips to Taiwan because of the government’s strict border control regulations for warding off the raging pandemic. It is therefore gratifying to see that as soon as the regulations are eased conditionally, many adoptive families have embarked on a trip to Taiwan regardless of the risk of infection and endured a 14-day quarantine period plus 7-day self-health management to take their adopted children home. Love prevails!    

One of the perks of working with Cathwel Service is the opportunity to browse the pictures of the adopted children sent from their adoptive parents from time to time. Looking at the naïve and broad smiles of the children in the pictures of their daily lives, I always heard myself exclaiming: “Wow, he/she looks like a completely different child now! I can barely recognize him/her!” It really made my day to see in the pictures that the child had started a new life under the adoptive parents’ love and care and I couldn’t help saying in my heart: “This is wonderful! I am so glad that I no longer need to translate and update your reports. I wish you safe and grow up healthy!” 

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