FEELING LIKE I AM IN LABOR
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| Best-Selling Author & Child Activist Peter Thomas Senese |
As a father, activist, author, and in my role as the Founding Director of the I CARE Foundation, I have been involved in providing assistance to a significant number of international child abduction reunifications that have occurred around the world.
in the wake of three more illegally detained children under the rules of the Hague Convention coming home - literally they're on an airplane crossing the Atlantic Ocean as I type - I have this feeling once again that no doubt is similiar to when a mom goes into labor because outside of dialating and a few other physical issues - I have all the emotional symptoms!
You see, when a child is taken, there is a good chance that they may be gone forever. Statistically, children of international parental child abduction do not come home. In fact, only about 10% of these children are do.
So in the rare case that a child is safely reunited with their targeted parent, there is a very deep and emotional celebration of life.
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| Chasing The Cyclone By Peter Thomas Senese |
For any parent who has found themselves Chasing The Cyclone of abduction, the anxiety and concern are so overwhelming. You see, for many, the process of recovery has been emotionally draining, financially devastating, and filled with legal misstep after mistep since all to often the laws that they count on to protect them and their children are not upheld or implemented.
So when a child or children of abduction are coming ordered to return back to their country of original jurisdiction, the extraoridnary happiness you would expect a parent to feel is tempered with guarded concern that the other parent will either attempt to file new legal papers in court allowing them to continue to remain in the country they are presently in, or, that they will depart from the country as ordered - but attempt to disappear in another country, including perhaps a naiton that is not a member of any international legal convention such as the Hague Convention.
And disappearing . . . its not as hard to do for a taking parent should they have enough resources and advanced planning: something most of these parents have previously demonstrated they have capability of doing.
Thus it is important to make sure that chidlren who are ordered to be returned by the international courts do not disappear again. I and others have been down that road before. And it is terrible - and demonstrative or the narcism and sociopathic behavior of child abductors.
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| The I CARE Foundation |
But today is a good day because these children are coming home. And they are in route. And there is a wonderful parent in Philadelphia anxiously waiting to hold his children.
Knowing the children are on the airplane and in route provides a sense of great comfort. However, the days building up to their departure are filled with stress and concern. The worry of more legal proceedings or disappearnace are real. You guard best you can against disappearance. You try not to get too exicted because you have been let down before on numerous occassions ... but you're excited because you love your children.
And you wait ... you wait for your child or children to safely arrrive home.
Today is a good day. Three children are on their way home.
In my own way, I hope that the children and their parents find peace, acceptance, and happiness. May the storms be over for all of them, and let the rays of sunshine shine on each of their faces.
One final note: I am so proud of my friend for all he has done to protect his children's rights to have hm and his family in their life. After hundreds of thousands of dollars, years of litigation, and an emotional roller-coaster steeper and with more twists, turns, loops than any other roller-coaster, he never gave up on them. His children should be so proud of their father, for he in an incredible man who loves them greatly.
