In her latest post, “Behind the Normalcy, Every Family Has a Story—International Adoption Makes Ours More Visible” Stacy Clark shares a lesson her family—and another’s learned during a camping trip.

We forget sometimes that as a family we look different, and sometimes I’m a little taken back when someone points it out, just because I haven’t thought about it for a while. Our son does attract for us a lot of attention, almost all of it positive. As you point out, it’s an opportunity to get to know people with whom you might not otherwise have met.

We stand out as a white family in the poor part of Bolivia but now that we have two beautiful Bolivian girls people smile and most make comments about how lucky the girls are (as compared to what they may have lived) - we are the blessed ones.  We don’t mind standing out in a crowd (it does surprise us at times cos we forget we are different) and trust our girls won’t either when they realise they are different either here or back in our country in years to come.