Episode 14: A Faith-Filled Lens on International Adoption

Christina Gebel: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Moderate Catholic, where we discuss topics that deepen faith and inspire action. I am your host, Christina Gebel, and this is episode 14, “Taking a Faith-Filled Lens to International Adoption.”

So, welcome everyone.

Welcome back to season two. I know that we have talked about adoption already on season two, and now we’re going to take it in a slightly new direction with Shauna and Sankalp, who are here today.

Also, very good friends of mine, near and dear to my heart.

People I look up to, both as friends and as faith-filled people that try to discern their path in life.

And I’m so pleased to have them here for this conversation to talk about how they made the decision to adopt internationally. So, with that, [00:01:00] Shauna and Sankalp, would you like to introduce yourselves?

Shauna Morin: Yes. Thank you, Christina. We’re so happy to be here. My name is Shauna Morin.

Sankalp Ranji: My name is Sankalp Ranji.

Shauna Morin: We’ve been together now for almost nine years and met actually through your prior guests, the Currans. So, there’s a connection, too. My background professionally has been for a long time in higher education. That’s actually what brought me down to the research triangle in North Carolina. I was here to pursue my doctorate in higher education.

My work there led me into a nonprofit space focusing on interfaith engagement and pluralism in our democracy. And I am very recently a stay-at-home mom with our 2-year-old, almost two-and-a-half-year-old son, Kiran.

Sankalp Ranji: I moved to the U.S. about 12 years ago now, or it’s been a long time, and came here to study at UNC.

I [00:02:00] work in the tech sector. I work as a product manager, and I’m just loving every minute of the last one year, specifically that 2-year-old. Yeah.

Christina Gebel: Absolutely. Thank you both for making the time, and perhaps we’ll get right to our conversation. I know that I already said that you internationally adopted your son, but perhaps you could take us back to the beginning.

Tell us about that time in your life when you were discerning whether to adopt and what those conversations were like as a couple. Were there any elements of faith or spirituality that came up? What kind of reservations or hopes did you have?

Shauna Morin: I think, pretty soon after Sankalp and I met, we both felt pretty quickly that this relationship was going somewhere permanent. We were both a little bit older, and we had a lot of these conversations on the front end of dating. At that time, [00:03:00] I shared with Sankalp that I had actually never been too certain that I wanted to be a parent.

I have a very distinct memory, actually, of being around 12 years old and telling my dad that I wasn’t going to have kids because there was too much wrong with the world, and I didn’t want to bring a child into a world that was so broken, something along those lines.

My family will tell you, I was never really a child. I’ve been an old soul, and maybe that is reflective of that truth. But I remember very vividly my dad’s response being that we make the world better by raising good humans as parents. So that was always in my mind. Fast forward to the two of us having these conversations, and I wanted to be honest and upfront that this is something I was never really certain of.

And also that a path forward that seemed viable to me was adoption and having the opportunity to care for somebody who [00:04:00] was already in the world. So that was not my hard and fast only way, but that’s where I had historically been and was bringing sort of those leanings into our relationship.

Sankalp Ranji: Yeah. And I’m from India. As any Indian person would say or tell you, you have pretty big pressure from your family, extended family. Everyone wants you to have a child. And also, I think, I never imagined a scenario where I would not have a child of our own.

So having a family, it just was like, yeah, that is definitely a thing for me. And when I met Shauna, that was one of the first things that we discussed. Yes, I am interested in having children.

Whether it should be our own child, whether it should be an adopted child, was not a point in my head, but I knew that I wanted to have a family with Shauna. Eventually, once we got married, once we started, we obviously wanted to have a little bit of freedom in the beginning, taking her parents all the way to India and did a lot of different things.

But once the dust settled down, [00:05:00] like we did realize, oh, the clock is turning really fast and we are almost like running out of time. So, we started having discussions about having children, and that’s where, okay, do we want to have our own or adoption?

For me, personally, I’m Hindu. Not really practicing Hindu per se, throughout Hindu mythology and all, there have been plenty of examples where people have had adoption and stuff. And so it’s not really an alien thing. Once I started having the conversation with Shauna, that’s where I like, okay, this is this is it.

This is an important conversation, and I’m glad we landed on this.

Shauna Morin: To fast forward a little bit to the conversation point Sankalp is talking about, so at this point, we’re married, we’re really thinking about like our lives potentially changing and growing our family.

And by that point, I’ll echo Sankalp in saying that I really felt this is something I want to do with Sankalp. So this is an interesting learning for me. It’s one thing to have feelings about parenthood when you’re on your own, and it’s another thing when you’re part of a couple and you see how the two of you function together.

I had this growing instinct that this is something we would do well together and that I wanted to do with him. So I think that was a big part of the conversation. We talked about having a biological child versus adoption.

I think, although I wanted to be open to that, I had a lot of reservations, some practical, related to my age and what it might require of us to try to go down that path. So, the reservations I had were not inconsistent with the sort of thought process I named earlier. So I was really grateful that Sankalp was so open to that being a path we could pursue and it could be a chosen path for us. And that’s ultimately where we landed.

Christina Gebel: Thank you so much for sharing that. And as you all were doing your intros and talking about these early stages, I kept thinking about all the things that Raman and I have in common with you both, of course, Indian culture being in our interreligious or intercultural marriage.

But there’s also, Shauna, you and I have talked a lot about feelings going into parenthood. And I personally have had feelings where I wasn’t always sure. I was also an old soul growing up, but my reservations stemmed from probably really a lot of bad babysitting experiences. So, I didn’t have younger siblings, but when I went to babysit, I remember having a lot of anxiety about that.

And just also being older and getting married, slightly older than maybe other peers and wanting to have that time where you are child-free at the beginning of your marriage and you can be married and go on the trips and be unencumbered in those ways. So yeah, there’s so much there that I resonate with in my own personal journey, and I’m grateful for the both of you in sharing that.

Moving along to the choice to adopt internationally, I’d like to hear about how you intentionally chose international adoption as opposed to other routes that people come to adoption.

Shauna Morin: I think I was the first person to propose adopting from India, and retrospectively I don’t know if this ended up mattering as much as I thought it might. Sankalp’s whole family, extended family, nuclear family, they’re all in India. My thinking was we live here in the US; by default, my family will be very involved in this child’s life in the process of us bringing this child home.

And I thought that if we went through the process in India, that would facilitate Sankalp’s [00:09:00] family also getting to be intimately part of the process because it would require us to go there. And that would actually be our first meeting point someday. Also, there will be a lot of cultural connections, and we might talk about this more when we explain the process to you, but there’s a lot of focus, rightfully so, on when you adopt internationally, how you’re going to help that child understand the culture of origin.

And so those connections are baked into our family. So, in some ways, it’s almost like it’s not a strictly international adoption for us. It will be for Kiran, right? He lives here; he was born somewhere else. And so surely it is an international adoption. But we’ve talked with folks who have gone through this process when no one in the couple is from the adopting country.

And for them, it’s very different; like, you swoop in, you swoop out, you’re probably only in that country a few times. There’s a lot [00:10:00] more work that needs to be done to fulfill that role of cultural stewardship for your child. And this felt more possible and feasible for us. We were familiar with traveling there. We knew we had a home base, and we knew we would be able to provide some supports pretty readily even though it was a quote unquote international adoption.

Sankalp Ranji: Shauna has answered that question very nicely, as nicely as she could, but there’s no other way to acknowledge the fact that within the Indian culture, adoption is still not a very acceptable thing.

As we were going through the process, we learned that, yes, domestic adoption in India has increased significantly, and that actually has led to a sharp decline in international adoption from India, which is great. That means that children are getting a loving home.

And so that’s awesome all over. No doubt about that. But in the end, the fact remains that my family [00:11:00] and my parents’ acceptance was a lot easier to have that because Kiran is from India.

Shauna Morin: I want to give due credit to all of our family members who have been remarkably supportive of this, even in moments when I think there was maybe a lack of understanding or a desire to understand.

I recall coming to understand some reservations on Sankalp’s parents’ part to be mostly about worry for us. Are you choosing a harder path unnecessarily, which I think is actually quite generous and parental concern. So yes, in the early days, there was some anxiety around how this will be received that this is something we want to do? And will there ultimately be comfort around bringing a child into the fold that has an unknown background that is not related to us by blood? This child is beloved by every person he has touched. But I think there the concern was as much for us as anything, and was this going to be a really hard journey for us?

Christina Gebel: Yeah. And I actually really appreciate you all speaking frankly about this because I think a lot of times when we hear stories about adoption, some of the thoughts that just naturally enter into it purely from our human nature don’t always get said. But even if all things being equal, or all things being similar, what little I know about adoption on the surface level is that a lot of families, even if they are from the same culture, country, even religion, whatever it is, there are some parts of it that perhaps the previous generation grew up thinking their children were going to have their biological children, so a lot of people, I don’t know if the right word is expectations, but they have ideas in their head of how their lives and the generations after them are going to go, and I think with anything, being able to speak frankly, it’s very honest and authentic.

And I want to go back to the part that you said, Shauna, about international adoption and I even want to go farther back and say that when people our age were being adopted internationally, I gather, looked different than it does now, and we learned a lot of things about that. And so can you walk us through what adopting internationally was like for you, knowing that it’s a country specific experience, but also maybe some things that surprised you about the process for better, for worse.

Shauna Morin: I’ve blacked it out. Like mothers who give birth, talk about how they don’t remember the pain. I don’t remember the pain of all of the years of paperwork.

Christina Gebel: As somebody who deals with mothers giving birth, I can tell you amnesia can be a great God-given gift.

Sankalp Ranji: First of all, yes, you’re right. International adoption is very country specific. What we went through with India is not going to be an experience for someone going to any other country. But some of the commonalities between all the adoption, most countries, they all are now part of something called the Hague Convention.

Where there have been very specific rules, procedures, and processes set up for how this international option will take place. Gone are the days where you could just show up at an orphanage and say, “Hey, we are here to adopt a child,” and someone would bring children for and you to pick from a lineup.

So there’s no other way to describe that process, but that is what the process was up until very recently. Not sure when exactly this changed, but now you have to work through an adoption agency here in the US who will have a particular program for the particular country you are trying to adopt from.

For us, for India, they took us through the process of, “Hey, this is all the paperwork you need; this is what the process is going to be. This is how long the process is going to take for us.”

They said it could take anywhere from three to four years. A lot of that depends on how fast you do your paperwork. There are a lot of background checks, a lot of filling out the same form or the same information multiple times, and you feel, “Haven’t I already—didn’t we already answer this last year?”

Like, how, or even last month? The answer hasn’t changed, but you still have to go through all that stuff. So, one thing I learned was patience, but we acknowledge that this bureaucracy is needed. This has come out of multiple years of experience of people abusing the adoption process.

Every time we got that sense of frustration, we reminded ourselves, “No, they are doing this so that every child who gets adopted goes to a genuine person, a genuine family. This is all worth it.” So just to highlight a few things for the India program alone, when you start the process, they say it’s going to take you three to four years. They give you a very high-level description of what each step is going to look like, but they don’t go into details of what that individual step is going to look like. That individual step could be made up of 20 more steps, which at the end of the process we were very glad they did not show us all the 600 steps that needed to be taken. Because it is scary. It’s like a sine wave curve. There are a lot of highs and a lot of lows because we have a bunch of paperwork that needs to be finished by a particular date.

You’re doing a lot of stuff, and then you submit everything, and then there’s radio silence for three months. Nothing happens, nothing moves. You’ll keep trying to check in with them. They said, “We have sent your paperwork forward, but we just have to sit and wait.” And then suddenly there’ll be a flurry of events like, “Oh, we heard back from them. Now you need to finish the next 10 steps within the next three weeks.” I’m like, you could have told us that you needed to do this in three weeks so that we could have mentally prepared. Again, you just have to be prepared for that start-and-stop kind of experience.

It is a costly process, although there are a lot of ways you can get support for it. Check with your employer, you can apply for certain grants, and then obviously there are some really significant tax credits that you get after the adoption process is complete. But you need to have a good amount of financial resources just to even prove that you are a good family to actually adopt, where you can support this child.

They said three to four years. We started ours in 2022. Roughly 2022 is when we were like, okay, we are finally putting in our thing. And we got matched in 2024. We went and we finally went to India to pick Karen up in February 2025. So just a shade over three years is what it took us.

Shauna Morin: I think one other nuance that we came to understand as time went on was we knew we wanted to adopt from India specifically, which meant we needed to work with a domestic agency that works with India. But a lot of the home study, which is the clearances Sankalp was describing, you have home visits, there is a lot of work that has to be done locally, which means we were actually working with two different adoption agencies that were communicating with each other to support our case. And this posed its own additional complexity, right? Because sometimes you’re wondering who do I talk to about this issue or that question?

You’re primarily working with, in our case, the North Carolina-based agency in the beginning, but then that all shifts when the match process gets underway. In our case, the agency was based in Minnesota, and that adds another layer to all the different people involved.

Sankalp Ranji: And the last thing I wanted to add was for anyone thinking about adopting from India, or this might be true for other countries as well, every state in India has its own process to do the same thing, which is slightly different from another state within India.

So, a lot depends on how experienced is the adoption agency that you’re working with here in the US is. How much do they know about a particular state’s processes? So just again, be patient. It might look scary, certainly, but there are people to help you out with that. At the end of the day, we realized that when we met a lot of these people in India, the orphanage, they all wanted this thing to happen. No one is against you.

Christina Gebel: Yeah. Thank you for that. And Raman and I have sat with you both and had numerous [00:20:00] conversations about the actual process as you went through it. And even just hearing today the abridged version, I still learned some things that I didn’t know. And it goes into the depth and the complexity that you all highlighted.

And I think about filling out a government form here and getting it sent back because you didn’t dot your I or cross your T. Imagine multiple agencies being involved, multiple legal things being involved, the hyperlocal piece of the agency here, or the province in India. Wow, like this is really incredible.

And I think unless you have someone in your life who’s going through international adoption or is kind enough to talk about it, you don’t really appreciate just how much is there.

And before we get to your match, the very adorable son that you have, [00:21:00] and your emotions and feelings around seeing him for the first time, and all those good things, is there anything else you want to say about the process that was a discernment moment for you, or maybe even just a milestone moment for you?

Shauna Morin: Part of the challenge and benefit of the rigor is you really have to document financial stability, mental stability, physical fitness, family support, all of these things, and it can feel really burdensome in the moment.

But actually, there are two particular points in that process that I’m so grateful for. One was there was a set of documents we needed to complete that asked about medical and therapeutic and other sorts of resources like that available to us. Like we had to demonstrate that we were aware of where we would go if we [00:22:00] had needs that we needed to address for the child we adopted.

And that exercise just really brought home to me that we are so blessed to live someplace where we have ready access to basically any service that we might need to meet the unique needs of an adopted child. So, I think that sort of built a sense of security and gratitude.

And then relatedly, there are a lot of narrative questions you need to answer around, as I mentioned, family support, your community, and so on and so forth. And reflecting on that, as well, as daunting as this felt in certain moments, I just thought if we’re not equipped to do this, who is? Like we have friends who themselves have adopted, we have family members who have been adopted. We have parents and siblings who are excited to be part of this child-rearing with us. We have a faith community, multiple faith communities, where we can draw [00:23:00] strength from. And so I was really appreciative of those steps in the process, because rightfully these adoption agencies they want you to go into this with your eyes open, and there can be a lot of really challenging things that you are facing, whether those are medical or behavioral or attachment-oriented. And so when you are confronted with all of that in rapid fire, it can feel like, “Can we do this? Are we really going to be able to do this?”

But I was appreciative that they set us up to build confidence through the process.

Sankalp Ranji: My example is that of the psychological evaluation that we had to do. So as part of this process, I think India requires it. I don’t know if any other country does it or not, but the adoptive couple has to go through a psychological evaluation individually, and what they’re trying to discern or identify is, “How are we as an individual?” Why it was remarkable for me was like, a lot of people never actually go and have this kind of conversation with anyone, with a therapist, right?

You don’t have those kind of conversations, especially in today’s day and age where everything is moving so fast. Everyone is so busy. You don’t get time to sit and reflect over the simplest things that you should be focusing on in your life.

Like just your own health. How do you deal with things? How do you deal with your spouse? How was your childhood? How do you think you were brought up as a child? Do you have any thoughts about it? And all those are like, okay, how many people actually think about those things?

So that particular moment during that interview, I was able to stop and reflect over my life in that one hour, and that definitely gave me an opportunity to just be thankful for a lot of the things that have happened in my life.

And also be grateful for everything that is happening.

Christina Gebel: Yeah. One thought that came to me while you were talking was, not every parent gets asked those questions before they become a parent. And Raman and I, coming from different faith traditions, have talked a lot about Pre-Cana because in our relationship that’s really when the differing faith backgrounds came to practicality.

And I remember they took Raman and I apart and asked us each separate questions like, “Is this person mentally stable? Do they have an addiction issue?” And like for me as a Catholic, it was like I didn’t know what was going to be asked. And then debriefing that with him, hey, but in retrospect, I was like, “Wow, I think the Church in that particular process is trying to do some due diligence that...”

Some of these things are brought to the fore, and some people might say maybe it wasn’t fair that you were asked all those questions, ‘cause not everybody gets asked those questions before they become parents. And then on the other hand, it’s, wow, [00:26:00] how intentionally and carefully people have thought about this, and they want so badly to make a good family come out of it, and the intentionality. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Sankalp Ranji: Going back to before our marriage also, we were asked the same questions. But at that point in time, we discussed, in our debrief we agreed that a lot of those things we had already discussed ourselves.

So it was like, oh yeah, they didn’t come as a complete surprise. But in this particular case, because we were also discerning or answering some of these questions from the perspective of this third individual who was going to be a part of our lives, it was a lot more, “Are you ready to take that responsibility? Have you thought about A, B, C, D and all those things?” And I completely agree, if only every young couple just goes through this adoption, just the paperwork or the questionnaire that is asked for the adoption process, it’ll set them up for success because the kind of [00:27:00] questions that get asked and the number of times those questions get asked, makes you really think about those things intentionally. And it’s not a simple yes or no kind of a thing.

Shauna Morin: Yeah, I agree. I think both individually and together, I did a lot of reflecting independently. Sankalp mentioned these questions about your childhood. It includes those family relationships early on, but also how you were disciplined and then questions currently about how that might inform the way you think about parenting now.

So, there is an element that’s individual. And also we are doing this together now. So, there were also conversations about what are each of us taking from our respective family of origin experiences and bringing to the table now, and what might we want to do differently? For both of us, that was really meaningful. And as Sankalp said, you get asked these things at multiple points on the journey, too. So, they’re [00:28:00] forefront in your mind for quite a while before you actually come together as a new family.

Sankalp Ranji: It reminded me of how those detective shows say you keep asking the same question ten different times and if your story doesn’t change, that means you’re telling the truth.

So if our response doesn’t change from one form to the other, we know that yes, this is what we truly believe. We are not just writing it or saying it just for the sake of getting this completed.

Christina Gebel: I love it. I love it.

Okay, so we’ve gotten through the inquiries, the processes. Tell me a little bit about the moment that you found out that Kiran is Kiran, and that Kiran is going to be in your life.

Whether you saw it on paper or you saw an image, from an emotional standpoint, from a parenting standpoint, what was that like?

Sankalp Ranji: Shauna will describe our emotional state of mind. I’ll just [00:29:00] use this opportunity to talk about another piece of the process. Even getting the first glimpse of Kiran and knowing about his existence to the time when we actually brought him home, that span was almost seven months, and those were some of the most excruciating seven months in our lives, actually.

Because, yeah, we know he’s there. We don’t know what he’s doing, and all that stuff. But the first time we heard about him or saw his picture was in June of 2024.

Shauna Morin: I think it’s relevant to mention one more process piece that actually is very critical for people to understand. And that is not all countries, but some countries, international adoption is exclusively or primarily for special needs children. That’s their language. So, children have some sort of medical or other need.

And so, there’s a pretty rigorous process you need to go through to say, these are the needs I’m comfortable with. [00:30:00] And it’s critical because you need to be brutally honest with yourself about what you can handle because it’s obviously utterly unfair to say, I think I could handle this, or I want to be able to handle this, and therefore I’ll say yes to a potential match with a child who has a particular medical need.

So, we had gone through that whole process, really reflecting on consulting a pediatrician, and you are immersed in a laundry list of very intimidating conditions, challenges, et cetera. I really expected myself when the match came along to have a lot of anxiety about what I didn’t know, whether I felt confident in saying yes to the match.

They give you time to reflect on the materials that they send you. They want you to be really honest. And that in itself, the idea of quote unquote rejecting a match, there is that sort of discomfort of we have to feel really solid about this.

And also, this is a human life [00:31:00] that we are being invited to consider as a child. So, I was excited and ready for us to move forward in the adoption process. And also, I had a sense of what my reaction would be when we were sent a match, and I thought it would be one of anxiety and reservation or nervousness at the very least.

And in fact, it was quite the opposite, which you asked at the outset. And I know this conversation is really framed in, “How is this related to our faith?” This is really the moment when I felt like God is in this, because first of all, we had been sort of connected with the match specialist, the person who basically talks with us, reads our file, and then gets into this portal of all the potential children up for adoption in India. And she decides this is the fit that I think is right for you. So, we had met with her. She had told us it was three to six, three to

Sankalp Ranji: …six months.

Shauna Morin: Three to six months that we might have to wait before we got a match.

[00:32:00] And then she sent us an email within a month with a potential match. And so, it was very unexpected, and I remember seeing her name in my inbox and seeing the attachments. The first attachment was named Kiran. And I was confused because Kiran is Sankalp’s mother’s name.

And before opening the attachments, I was thinking, “What is this about, and why is this document named after my mother-in-law, right?” So, it felt like a sign. I don’t know if that’s the right language, but I just was so overwhelmed. And the photo named Kiran was just this joyful baby, right?

Like this beautiful, joyful, smiling baby. And we were both still working at home at this point. I go running over to where Sankalp is working, assuming he’s already opened this email. And I’m like, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” He has no idea what I’m talking about.

So yeah, but it just immediately felt like, yes, like this happened and it’s the right one, right? [00:33:00] So that was unexpected for me.

Sankalp Ranji: Yeah. And I was equally shocked. I was like, “Oh, the name and how my mom has the same name.” So, the thought that went to both hearts, at the heads at the same time, was like, “Yes, this is meant to be.”

There was obviously, as Shauna mentioned, all the things that we were worried about, like, “Hey, will we be able to handle any special needs that he has or not, and everything?” So yes, there were a few medical things that we needed to take care of, all that. But all that was going to come later. At that particular

moment, one thought that I got was like, as I say, like God only provides you something that you can actually handle, or gives you something that you can handle. You still have a doubt. You’re still not sure whether that is true or not, whether you are ready to do that or not.

I remember saying that to myself, “Yeah, we can do this now. We have a name, we have a face, we have this lovely face.” He’s happy; he’s already happy. We just want to preserve that. If he’s already happy, then it’s far easier to keep him happy.

Our job is half done.

Shauna Morin: Yeah.

Christina Gebel: Incredible. And he is such a happy kid and just a bright soul. And I remember seeing the picture when you first got it, and I just remember this kid is adorable. He’s so cute. So, he’s a charmer from the get-go, he is really cute. And if we were doing all this on video, maybe we could have his image in the background or something.

But anywho, I want to talk about when you were making preparations to go to India and not having children on Earth, I don’t know firsthand, but have heard that being on a plane ride with a child—again, maybe this is my babysitting dramas—like all I could think about was, “Oh my gosh, they’re going to have this plane ride back!”

It’s like all these things. That’s where my mind immediately went, but your mind must have been in a thousand places. What was it like in the months leading up to planning to go to India, and what was it like going?

Sankalp Ranji: So, the preparation to go to India was actually pretty straightforward because I’m from India. I was managing that interaction.

So, nothing was alien to me. Nothing was unknown to me. I just wanted to make sure we got all the right dates and stuff. Again, that’s part of the process where you have to work with the orphanage to identify what is date you need to be there, how long you need to be there.

For India only, you have to get to the embassy in Delhi. So, you have to travel from wherever you are, wherever the child is. Everyone has to travel to Delhi to get the final stamping done for their visa, for travel, and all that stuff. So yeah, it’s a logistics of traveling within India.

They are a little complicated but not impossible to handle.

Shauna Morin: Yeah, we talked about how long this process takes, and there were moments along the way where it felt like it would never be over, and then we got the match, and as Sankalp said, it was really difficult to have this time go by where we knew who he was and were sent very few updates.

Understandably, these orphanages are very busy, and we want their primary focus to be on caretaking. And also, you’re like, send me more pictures. What’s going on? So, despite all of that—the eagerness and the standstills—we found out on Christmas Eve that we were cleared to travel, and I had a meltdown, like, “I’m not ready. It’s too fast.”

I was so overwhelmed at the prospect that in a month from that date, we were going to change our lives forever and travel halfway around the world, a family of two, and come back a family of three. So, there was that.

And I think what I just mentioned was really mind-boggling to me. I know in some ways we had much more time than a couple having a biological child to acclimate to this idea, right? We were in this for three years; we’re thinking about this change, we’re making these conscientious choices. And yet, I’ve come to realize that because the processes start and stop, hurry up and wait, that I would have a period of months where I would mentally go through what it is that we’re doing. What am I signing up for? How is our life going to change? And then we’d get to the wait part, and our lives would just go back to how they always were.

And I’d have to just do it all over again. So that happened at least three times—this sort of quote-unquote pregnancy and awaiting, but then no change. And so now here we were at the moment where it was going to change. And I just remember getting on the flight, being on the flight to go there, and feeling, “I cannot process that we are flying here,” the two people that we know, the life that we know, and quite literally, we went to the orphanage the morning after we landed in India. So, it was like, “Yeah, that’s it.”

There’s no sort of easing in. That was wild. That was really wild. And what is also wild—and this varies wildly from agency to agency and country to country—but the orphanage that we were working with, their process was, You come, you meet us for 30 minutes, we introduce you to your child, and you leave with the child.

So that also feels abrupt for us, but also, I was at that point maybe shifting into my mother mind of, “Is this okay for him? Can we come and go for a few days so he gets used to who we are, and then the transition is a little easier?” And I think practically speaking, that’s just difficult for a lot of places to manage.

So yeah, it was ripping off a Band-Aid or whatever the metaphor is; there was no easing into anything.

Sankalp Ranji: He was only 15 months old when we went to the orphanage to pick him up, and I’m so glad that he is so adjusting and so adaptable.

He’s, yeah, adaptable, and he’s just so comfortable in people’s presence that he’s not scared of people. So, I think we got really lucky with that part. There were no problems. First day at the hotel, second day, third day, I was like, I was holding my breath, okay, at some point in time this dam is going to break and he’s going to suddenly realize that he’s not going back to that orphanage, not going to see the same people again and again, but that never happened, and he just very smoothly transitioned to us, and every day we remember saying a little prayer and thanking God, “Oh, this day, this day went really well. This day went really well.”

However, the first time we got on the plane with him was from Bombay to Delhi. And that was the day where he really lost it for the first time, which [00:40:00] is understandable. I think, as any new parent or any grandparent will tell you, having some sort of a schedule is critical for kids. And if their schedule is not followed, if they’re not comfortable doing the same thing, then that is when they get, again, that’s exactly what happened.

You have to get on a flight. You have to get on a flight. And he doesn’t like to sleep when you are holding him; he wants to sleep in his own bed. So how do you do that when you are on a flight?

That was the day when Shauna was crying because I’m pretty sure she felt like she was an inept mother, but it was both of us, number one, but we did get a lot of support from some of the other passengers. There was one lady specifically who came during the flight because he wouldn’t stop crying for 45 straight minutes. And she came in; she tried her best to soothe him. And she basically took him from my hands as if a grandmother was like, “Just, you stop doing whatever you’re doing, let me handle it.”

Shauna Morin: And I’ve heard those stories from other adoptive [00:41:00] parents of people on the plane just being so lovely and helpful and understanding, and I think that was also part of the weight of this moment. We hadn’t yet had a really hard moment like this with him. And then when you do, an entire plane full of people are witnessing it.

And in my mind, I’m thinking they’re wondering, like, why can’t we calm down our own child without them knowing, of course? He doesn’t know us, right? Like he’s just, he’s trying to figure out where he is and what’s going on.

Two sort of related but tangential things I just want to share. One is, I think, some mentioned, and we were very fortunate that Kiran was so adaptable to us taking care of him right out of the gate.

And also, it was interesting because it felt like he was just connecting with us right away and immediately, “I’ll go where you go” thing. But there was actually a clear sort of shift about three weeks in, I’d say, when we were with Sankalp’s family. And then there were a lot more people around. Because we didn’t have a comparison point, I don’t think we could have realized this earlier, but we started to recognize…

And maybe this is the case for a lot of kids who grow up in group care that he recognized us out of the gate as, “You’re now feeding me. You’re now clothing me. You’re doing the things that I need,” which is different than attaching to you. And that attachment process is evolutionary, of course, and goes on for a long time.

But it began, I think, in its early stages in Chandigarh when we were with my in-laws. And we could see this shift of, “Oh, now he’s actually understanding us as distinct from other adults who are also caring for him.” And that was really moving and powerful.

And also just, again, blew my mind, the complexity of his experience as this small child on some biological level, having to figure out who’s taking care of me, but also who’s loving me and who is going to be around day in and day out.

And there are just these continuous moments of revelation and humility of, there’s so much I don’t know. There’s so much in this child already before he even came into our lives. And so, I wanted to share that.

And then you asked about the plane ride. So that was the first, that was the maiden voyage, but it was a short plane ride. So after that experience, we were like, what is this going to be like when we come home? And actually, another benefit of us being able to have family there and stay longer, I think that because that attachment started to take root and he got to adjust to us in country, it paid dividends. Again, gratitude because this is not possible for people who are having to stay in a hotel or what have you.

We were very lucky that he was pretty chill on that long road home and did very well and slept a lot and was glad that we were there in [00:44:00] proximity. So that was all great.

But something I remember, especially on the second leg from Paris to Raleigh, I started to have these very, I don’t know, I was really wrestling with some feelings about taking him out of India and that that was his home.

And even though we hope and pray, and I think know, this is for the good, I just felt tremendous guilt and sadness on his behalf. That place that was his home is now, we’re literally on the other side of the world, and his life is going to be very different in this environment.

So yeah, I didn’t expect those feelings either. And I just remember looking out the window on the tarmac after we had landed and feeling, oh my God, like we have plucked you out of India and brought you here, and we better live up to, better live up to this. We better do right by you. Yeah.

Christina Gebel: Wow.

There’s just, there’s so many things that I’m just brimming with as you both are [00:45:00] talking, and so many beautiful moments, too, and so many, like introspective moments that you’ve talked about so beautifully in your vulnerability, and so many things, too, of just becoming a parent, and those moments that stick in your head, that one memory of him picking you out of all the people, knowing that you are his people, is just such a cool thing.

On a feels level, on a heart level, on a spiritual level, like that is a really, that’s a really cool thing. And so y’all left India and Paris, respectively. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like in the early months to what it was like now over a year later?

Sankalp Ranji: I’ll start off by saying the early months were very exciting [00:46:00] because we had our family come and visit us. Everyone wanted to meet him as early as possible. They were very respectful about the fact that, hey, we don’t want to burden you with our presence as well because you are in this moment right now where you’re trying to establish this attachment, this bonding with this child who doesn’t know anything right now.

He’s completely in a new environment, new people, new home, everything. But all that lasted for about 10 days. And then they were like, we are coming on the 11th day. And we were excited to have them all because we wanted him, Kiran, to meet all his extended family as early as possible.

From that point onward, that first moment onward, there was this constant rotation of people coming in and out and meeting, which felt really amazing for the first two or three months. But then I think by the time the sixth month arrived, when my parents were here from India, they stayed with us for almost three months.

I think both of us were like, okay, no, this is great. He knows is dada, dadi, who the other grandparents are, which set of grandparents stays where, lives where, and all that. He knows everything. But we do need to establish a new norm or a new baseline for us, for ourselves, for our family.

We were still afraid of this. We had had this help for so many months. It almost felt like, hence, we are able to cope with all the responsibilities seven months into this adoption. We still have not taken care of him and ourselves and our jobs and everything else that we need to do to live.

Oh, we haven’t done that on our own. So it was, I think, inducing some anxiety in ourselves. Okay, when will we be able to do things on our own? Which actually started just this January.

Shauna Morin: I’d say yes, there was some anxiety there and also some excitement. I’ve come to the conclusion since this year has passed that for the rest of my life, I will not have a straightforward, emotional reaction to anything. There have been just layers of emotion to everything we’ve experienced. And I think this is a great example of that. I’ve joked with people, we basically had roommates for a year, right?

We lived with Kiran for a month in India with our in-laws, and then we had a series of relatives of mine coming and going here. But then my mom stayed with us for a few months, and then Sankalp’s parents came for several months and so on and so forth. So the benefits of that for us and for Kiran are just innumerable.

The moments that occurred because we were living all together—I don’t think we would’ve had those moments otherwise. And all of these people are ingrained in his mind now. And also, it meant we were a little delayed in finding our rhythm and our identity as his parents.

Quite frankly, there were moments when I’d be in the room and observe, okay, there are four adults here and one kid. We don’t all need to be attending to him. So, I’ll just step back, even though I’m the mom, right? I’ll just step back because I want that for him. But then I start to feel disconnected or unsure of what is my way of navigating this situation because I’m not engaging it right now.

So, the opportunity that we’ve had in the last few months has been challenging because of less bandwidth, like it’s just the two of us, so there’s always a handoff or a shuffle. But also, it has felt really internally solidifying that this is our family unit and this is how we operate together.

So that’s been a blessing. Yeah.

Christina Gebel: That’s so well said. And working with a lot of families who go through childbirth and are in that postpartum period, I think having the community that supports you and is so eager, like you said, so eager to start this new chapter with you.

I think so many parents have this moment of, okay, so what is our unique identity as a family unit in this plethora of love and support? And you spoke so beautifully about that transition, and I think that can’t be overstated enough, honestly.

Shauna Morin: I think, Christina, one other thing Sankalp and I both have felt really hesitant to share some of these particular experiences that we’re talking about right now because they have felt so atypical to what we were told to expect.

And we don’t want to convey, oh yeah. Like they tell you that there’s this concept of “cocooning” that’s really highly recommended when you bring a child home, especially international adoption, because they’re typically a little older and more cognizant of what’s going on.

And so that attachment process can be really challenging. And so, this idea of cocooning is do not let a lot of other people into the space right away, build your unit. And so, we tried to communicate to everybody that this might be necessary, right? And we were prepared to do it. And then Kiran was Kiran, and I think it was partly he was on the younger end for an international adoption, but also it’s his nature.

So quickly we realized that’s not really necessary for us. But I wanna say tremendous respect and awe for people who need to do it a different way. It’s for the good of their child. Can’t imagine how difficult it is to have those eager people in the wings and say, you need to wait.

But also, I think it could probably be very lonely because you can’t have that sort of tight community around you right away in the same way that we did. So, I just wanna put out there that this homecoming can look very different than what experience we had.

Christina Gebel: I’m really glad you said that.

All of this is like in the beginning we talked about country specific. All of this is family specific and child specific. And I appreciate you both naming the diversity of ways that this can happen. And I think people listening who are discerning this choice are really going to be appreciative of that.

And just hearing your experience, and there are pieces that are going to really resonate, and there are pieces that are going to be very different.

We’re getting close to our final questions here, and one of the final questions is related to that. What would you tell somebody who’s discerning this piece specifically international adoption and building a family with international adoption?

Shauna Morin: I think the theme of patience has been named already.

I would reiterate what I just shared in terms of the larger lesson being for all of the preparation, your experience will be unique, and so [00:53:00] being prepared to be unprepared, which is really hard for everybody. And as someone who really likes to be prepared, it was especially hard for me to just be open to things evolving and be willing to be flexible, right? To say, yeah. We were told we should do this sort of close family unit, and we shouldn’t invite too many people in too soon. To just hold to that because we were told that, and to not use our intuition and read the situation and come to agreement that maybe that’s not even best for us. So being willing to be reflective and adapt.

But the thing that comes to mind for me the most is just you will have moments of fear. You will have moments of, what am I doing? Was this the right choice? And you’re in it, right? Like you’re neck deep in it and it feels I can’t get out now.

But those feelings are okay. Those are normal. This is, this is a life- [00:54:00] altering and lifelong decision and change that you’re making. And of course that will come with moments of insecurity, moments of uncertainty. I think for me, looking for those signs again, that like God is with us, this was the match God intended for us, and we have been gifted with this privilege of caring for this human being. Like returning to that truth has been helpful.

Sankalp Ranji: And this is like what Shauna said. God has chosen this all, God has given this gift to us. I’m not a very religious man. I’m probably more like a spiritual person, but I do believe in the concept of destiny.

I think this was destined to happen. And if there is a God, then they have taken this decision for our lives and for his life and, all we can do is just do our best to do our thing.

Shauna Morin: Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:00] And this might feel a little out of left field, but I think both of us find ourselves often thinking about his birth parents, that there is a mother and a father out there connected to him in a way that we are not, and we are stewarding this life that began with someone else. I think that feels like an incredible responsibility and, of course, a blessing, but I feel the weight of that quite a lot.

Someday Kiran will ask us these questions, and we will talk through those difficult conversations with him and share what we know and own what we don’t know.

But even before that comes along, you have to believe God is in this, because to make sense of it all otherwise just feels impossible.

Christina Gebel: So well said. You’ve talked a lot about faith and spirituality along the way, and the theme [00:56:00] of this season is radical family. Radical means really to get to the root of something, to get to the root of faith or spirituality, or even just your core beliefs and values.

That’s what radical means in its Latin roots. So, I want to ask both of you: Is international adoption a radical choice for a family?

Sankalp Ranji: Absolutely. It is a radical choice because, first of all, it is a leap of faith, right? Some people might say that, “Hey, you are doing God’s work by taking care of a child who is in need of help.”

But what we have also realized is that we feel blessed that this child came into our lives, came into the life of everyone around us, and is bringing so much joy to everyone around us. He has given joy to so many people already that his output is [00:57:00] far surpassing whatever he might be getting in return.

If God is not in that, then I don’t know where he or she is.

Shauna Morin: Over the holidays, it was our first Christmas with Kiran. We usually watch It’s a Wonderful Life together, which we did again this year. And I got to thinking about Kiran as our Clarence.

Clarence is the guardian angel of Jimmy Stewart’s character who helps him see rightly all the blessings in his life. And he has just been that for us. I think to Sankalp’s point about, I see the joy that he’s bringing to all of these people who matter to us and also he’s helping us bring that back into focus.

Like we are so blessed with this community. So, I think it has had a radical impact. I think him being in our life has had a radical impact. It has extended beyond our direct friends and family to actually people who heard through our friends and family that we were doing this and were moved to such an extent that they reached out to us or sent gifts or [00:58:00] prayers or, just so incredibly humbling to know that this network exists, this network of love around him. So I think that is really radical. Yeah.

Christina Gebel: How has this deepened your love for each other?

Sankalp Ranji: Oh, in innumerable ways. Going back to the concept of patience, we have to dive back or go back to that concept of patience again and again as we are navigating this thing together. I think for me personally, it has reinforced the conversation that we had when we met each other for the first time and realized individually that this is the person I want to have a family with.

That particular thought has been reinforced over the last one year. Yes, these are all the reasons why this felt right seven years ago, and I’m glad that it has worked out that way.

Shauna Morin: Yeah, I think there’s something really special about seeing somebody you already know, love, and [00:59:00] respect, love a child, parent a child—

that deepens your own love for that person. Kiran is in many ways the center of our lives now, and we’re both individually and together devoting a lot of our love and attention to him. But it has not diminished the relationship between the two of us. It has not put that in the backseat, so to speak.

I think it has just brought that into focus, too. Yeah, to second what Sankalp said, I think it’s reinforcing the instincts I had that, yes, I think Sankalp will be a wonderful father and that we would complement each other on this adventure of a lifetime. But you still are unexpectedly confronted with the many ways in which that is true, and those moments are gold.

Sankalp Ranji: Yeah, I’ve bought her more flowers in the last one year than I did in the previous six.

Christina Gebel: Oh my gosh. Gold and flowers. I can’t think of a better image [01:00:00] to leave us with. So, Shauna and Sankalp, I will just say that it is apparent to me how much you love each other, and as somebody who knows you personally, how much you have loved each other even more as you’ve grown into these roles as parents, how much you love your son, how much you love God, and how much you love your community, who has been so profoundly and graciously impacted by the choice that you’ve made to grow your family.

And I just want to thank you. And I really do feel in my heart of hearts, someone’s going to hear this out there and that spark of emotion or maybe a sign or a feeling, hearts are going to move in directions that we can’t even begin to know.

I just want to thank you [01:01:00] for sharing so authentically, honestly, and vulnerably because there are so many people that are going to resonate with this, and be helped by your story on their own journey. So, thank you.

Shauna Morin: Thanks for giving us the opportunity. This was a real gift to us; you’re in it from a year, really just taking it a day at a time, and I think it was really good for both of us to be able to look back, remember some of the moments, and be grateful for those and how they’ve helped us to grow and shaped us to the point we are at now.