Pact Camp: an introduction

** Edited July 2011 - make sure to check our family's growth and progress with Pact via my Pact Camp 2011 post.

This is part of a series of posts about our expereinces at a camp for families formed through transracial adoption.
Intro is Pact Camp: An Introduction.
Part 1 is The Information
Part 2 is Challenges on Planet Barnacle
Part 3 is First Glimpses Out of the Race and Adoption Fog

Pact Camp

At the end of June, the kids and I headed off to Pact Camp. Pact, according to them, “… is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve children of color in need of adoption or who are growing up in adoptive families.” Pact Camp is, not surprisingly, a camp - a week long summer camp that focuses on the issues involved in transracial adoption. Parents have the opportunity to hear speakers on a variety of adoption, race and parenting topics. Children get the chance to spend time with other transracially adopted kids and their siblings, as well as interact with counselors who specialize in adoption and race.

In the past few years, as I trolled the Internet looking for information and advice to assuage my waves of fear about our family’s ability to help Rosie create a strong and loving self definition, I have come repeatedly across Pact. I don’t know what has been more reassuring to me, the answers they seem to help families find or the really hard questions they seem to be constantly asking.

In desperate need of face-to-face conversations with real live peope, I packed up the kids, our sleeping bags and three huge duffels of other random things that the kids *had* to have, and flew us down to San Jose. I’ve worked now for months to try and create the perfect posts that will succinctly capture the most important moments and take-aways from our time there. But the task is overwhelming. The sheer volume of information, plus the waves of feelings as I deeply begin to grasp the far reaching effects of race and adoption on my childern and our society as a whole are beyond my feeble powers of summerization.

Bear with me as I try to express myself. Here we go.