It's a girl blog giveaway

Thanks for all the positive feedback about my new theme of pursuing life to the full. I've been excited about it all week! One idea I'm growing is to have revolving themes for my entries, and today's post straddles two themes quite nicely. It's all about doing our bit to make the world a happier, more just place and also about creating beauty. I love when those two guys merge.

This post also features my second blog giveaway. It's been awhile, and I think this giveaway is awesome on many levels. Here's the backstory...

A few weeks ago I attended my friend Rebekah's baby shower for her soon-to-arrive daughter Josie. Rebekah married into a family with an apparently recessive female gene (four boys with five sons collectively) and, when she got pregnant for the third time, held her breath at the hope of maybe, possibly having a little girl. You can read the story about Josie here, but all this to say that so much love and effort was poured into this shower for an eagerly anticipated baby girl.

When I went to Josie's shower I was reading an emotional roller coaster of a book called Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother. This book is written by a Chinese woman now living in London and addresses the phenomenon of international adoption of baby girls from China to the Western world. This book delicately addresses the question many people have at least wondered, "How could any mother give up her child?" The answer: very painfully.

It's easy to condemn a culture that seems to belittle women and devalue baby girls, but what I love about this book is how it gets under the skin of women forced to give up their babies for adoption (or forced abortion or infanticide), out of cultural, familial, political and financial pressure,  and carry that scar of motherhood denied the rest of their lives. After reading this book I got the sense that it's not just baby girls who are born at a disadvantage in China, but women of all ages have had to put up with unbearable burdens for generations. This book, understandably, broke my heart.

International adoption is a very complex issue, and I won't pretend to know all or even much about it. I don't think anybody should go into adoption with a savior complex or without the willingness to acknowledge the difficulties that arise when a child is plucked from her culture.

But, I also feel strongly that being willing to adopt, domestically and internationally, can be a beautiful, life-giving journey.

My friends Jessi and Andrew are taking the first steps of that long, expensive journey at the moment. They are two of the most good-hearted, loving people I know. Currently they are in the process of looking to adopt a special needs child from China. They don't want their adoption process to stop there though, bringing a child over and then forgetting about the surrounding issues. Jessi says in a recent blog post:

We also long to do more to help change the reason so many kids need adopting in the first place. Acknowledging with solemn and grateful hearts that our child coming home from China creates a deeper response in us to our child's birth country, to our child's first family if not literally then by helping others like them who could not, for various reasons, keep their own child. The heartbreaking truth is that adoption begins with loss. But all is not lost. Hope springs from rocky places, love can grow from unexpected sources.

Financially, this is going to take a small miracle, but Jess is doing her bit to raise money by selling her vintage-inspired jewelry on-line.

Jessi's jewelry is gorgeous, and in order to raise awareness for international adoption, she's giving away a product from her Wild Poppy Shoppe to one of my blog readers. Here's a sneak peek...

For a chance to win, please visit Wild Poppy Shoppe and leave a comment below telling me your favorite item from the shop. For an extra chance at winning, you can tweet, facebook or blog about the giveaway, and come back and comment with the link. If you twitter, please tag it with @alishasanvicens

The lucky winner will be chosen at random next Wednesday, Sept 29 at 10am PST so check back then! Good luck.

Again, this post merely scratches the surface on the topic of adoption, but I think it's something worth thinking about, and definitely worth supporting. Please think of Wild Poppy Shoppe next time you're in the market for jewelry for yourself or a friend.


{baby shower photos from jenny, thanks!}