Meet Our “Melting Pot” Family

Posted by Ellenore Angelidis to Melting Pot Family 2 years, 6 months ago | 6 Comments | Post a reply

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When considering how to introduce myself to the Adoptive Families community as a new blogger, I found it more challenging than I expected. As I thought about why that was, I realized that I introduce myself very differently depending on a number of factors.

At school, I am either mom to Dimitri (13), Damian (9), or Leyla (2). If you dig a little deeper, I am a biological mother to the oldest two (both boys share a birthday—day and month, but not year—now that’s planning) and an adoptive mother to the youngest, our daughter. At my husband's job, I am Ellenore, Mrs. Angelidis, or "Coach's wife," depending on who's doing the talking. In a past career life, I was a fellow attorney to my former co-workers. To my current colleagues, I am a businessperson. I can also introduce myself as a daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, artist, gardener, and cook.

I was born in the United States and embrace being American, but I also consider myself Dutch (my parents' culture), Greek (my husband's), and Ethiopian (my adopted daughter's) (you can see all of these cultures represented in the image of flags accompanying my blog). Digging deeper, the definitions here also become more complex. While my mother was born in the Netherlands, my father is also Dutch, but didn't move to the Netherlands until he was an adult. He was born and raised in Indonesia, with the exception of the four years he spent in Australia while his father was in a Japanese concentration camp. I heard the phrase "Greek by marriage" early on in my married life, and now having shared my life for more than 20 years with my husband, who spent the first quarter century of his life in Greece, I've earned the title. When we adopted our lovely daughter from Ethiopia, I proudly embraced her heritage as mine, too. These are fragments of who each of these people, so important to me, are. Fragments I hope to elaborate on in future posts as you follow along with me.

I also think of myself as I would like to be. I want to be a writer who can provide inspiration and give a gift to my daughter. I want to be an advocate for a better, more humane world through how I live, how I raise my three children, and how I spend my time, money, and talent. I want to be someone who shares valuable experiences and lessons with others. These desires led to my first foray into the blogosphere through my two blogs ethiopian ties and balancing motherhood and career. So what can you expect to find from my new blog on AdoptiveFamiliesCircle?

I know that most AdoptiveFamiliesCircle members have probably never met in real life. However, whether you've already adopted or are in the process of adoption, we're each connected in a special way—through our pictures, tips, personal stories, and videos, we reach out to each other and touch lives. While my family waited for our adoption referral, looking at photos of happy families brought together by adoption gave me a peek into our hopeful future. Time and again, I have come back to this site to share pictures and read uplifting (as well as heartbreaking) stories. Since adopting—an amazing experience that opened my mind and heart, at times expectedly, others unexpectedly—I think about things more deeply, and I'm looking forward to sharing these thoughts with you.

So, now I introduce myself as encompassing everything described above and as a work in progress. Hello, my name is Ellenore Angelidis and I am honored to share our "melting pot family" journey with you and look forward to learning about yours.

Stay Connected on AdoptiveFamiliesCircle:

• Ethiopia Adoption Group
• Ethiopia Adoption Photo Album
• International Adoption Group
• Transracial Adoptive Families Group

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