Hi, and Welcome!! :)

Welcome to P's blog!!  We are SUPER excited about beginning this journey to bring her home.  I poured over this blog for hours, trying to brainstorm a theme and title (bless you sweet friend who was stuck chatting with me online and helping to pick my brain!), and fell in love with the butterfly analogy.  I envisioned P as a fragile butterfly just emerging from her cocoon which is the facility or facilities she's been living in for the past 4+ years.... finally getting the chance to stretch her brand new wings... and taking off to FLY and begin a whole new beautiful life on this earth.

While brainstorming, I resorted to the ever-so-resourceful Mr. Google many times, and when I searched for "butterfly analogy" I found this amazing blog with the most absolutely perfect post!!

{an excerpt from The Butterfly and the Special Child copied with permission from The Special Parent}

...Robin describes how the emerging butterfly beats its wings against the cocoon repeatedly to escape. She relates how if the butterfly were to be cut free of the cocoon and not win its freedom through the struggle it doesn’t gain the necessary strength to survive.

I have always thought of my daughter as a butterfly as well. My original theory sprang from the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly and the entire struggle they go through to get to that point and emerge this beautiful and graceful creature. I do believe that Robin’s butterfly analogy still applies to all our children.

Each one in their own way may have a struggle, a cocoon from which they will escape. Beating their wings they slowly emerge having overcome one adversity or another. No matter how many cocoons your youngster must fight their way through it will make them stronger.

Let your child break through the cocoon. Be there to cheer them on, but let them be the ones to break through. To cut your butterfly loose from it’s cocoon would not allow it to win it’s freedom and would not give it the strength it needs to live it’s life. As the parent of a special child, sometimes it’s harder I think to watch the struggle. You feel like you need to help cut open the cocoon. You need to facilitate, but the breakthrough must be their own, hard won maybe, but their own.

Without question we are all blessed with some amazing butterflies.

So while I wholeheartedly agree with this comparison to all children with special needs, I see another analogy to orphans surviving in an institution and finding their freedom.  I pray each night that P has the strength to carry on in her orphanage and knows in her heart that her family is coming.  We love you, little butterfly.