For Nadia’s Son

Hello Grandson (I’ll not say your name in an effort to protect your identity.)

  It’s Grandma.  Your real Grandma.  Your mommy’s mom…Nadia Kersh’s mom. Your real mom disappeared over 10 years ago when you were one years old. Her name was Nadia Kersh and your last name used to be Kersh too, just like ours.  I want you to know your mommy loved you very much and she didn’t mean to leave you.  She would never, never leave you.  She loved you too much.  I have many pictures of you that mommy sent me and you can see in those pictures the love in her eyes she had for you and how proud she was of you.  I know in my heart she was overwhelmed with grief knowing her plan had failed to keep you safe.  Her loss would’ve been mind blowing knowing on the day she disappeared you were cast into a system that gave you no voice.

  You had no say about what happened to you as you were placed in custody with someone later arrested for drug trafficking and then again with someone who wasn’t family and then again to a place unfamiliar to you.  She would’ve been devastated to know no one contacted us to let us know you were left at the daycare on the day she disappeared.  You were shuffled around in the crazy world of drugs, lies and deception.  And Grandma and Grandpa have been powerless to stop it.  I can’t for one moment begin to understand what it has been like for you all these years and maybe how you’ve wondered where you came from and how you ended up where you are. 

  I believe if your mommy saw you today she would be so proud of you having dealt with all the craziness life has given you.  I want you to know she’s with you in spirit no matter what has happened to her.  She’s there watching you go to school, she’s with you when you’re down, she’s there trying to comfort you so that you’d know she loves you no matter what.  I want you to know she didn’t leave you on purpose.  She had plans to come home to us in Virginia and to bring you home with her.  She said she had no friends in Alabama and wanted to come home.  You need to know that. 

Grandpa and I were in the military at the time.  We had just moved back to the US from Guam and were unpacking our things in anticipation of you and mommy coming home when we were told she went missing.  We were told that three days after mommy disappeared and by that time you were already given away by the state of Alabama. We spent years and did all we could to make things right but it wasn’t enough.  Alabama DHR coupled with people who wished to control you/keep you intentionally sabotaged our visits with you and ultimately blocked our efforts to bring you home.  

Your mommy was brought up in Russia and was taught how to love by her Russian family in ways very different from what most people in our society know as positive and stable.  She was exposed to very terrible and very dark things in her early years.  Things she thought were normal.  And so after she was adopted by Grandma and Grandpa, she continued to act according to the ways she learned in Russia.  She didn’t know that what she was doing was very risky and dangerous.  She had no way to conceptualize and thereby understand the risks she was taking.  As she grew up she tried to change and form more healthy relationships but found it difficult when she surrounded herself with people who controlled or tried to control her. Your mom cherished her independence and wanted to make us proud but, in the end, her tangled life became too much to bear and she reached out to us asking to come home.  That was the plan.  In three weeks you and mommy would’ve been home with us but she was made to disappear instead.

I tell you this so that hopefully you understand you were never abandoned by your mom. She loved you with all her heart and would do anything for you.  I want you to know Grandma, Grandpa, your Uncle John (mommy’s brother), Tante Charlie (mommy’s sister), we all think about you and wonder how you are.  You have many cousins, aunts and uncles…the whole Kersh family from Texas and my side of the family from Connecticut.  You’ve been kept from us all these years.  I want you to know Grandpa and I fought hard for you and gave all we had to give to try to bring you home.  But the Alabama system was riddled with corruption and no matter what we did, we couldn’t change the outcome of you being given away.  I had hoped over time the people who have you would soften and allow us to be part of your life but that hasn’t happened.  They know we’re here.  They know we love you.  Maybe one day you’ll read this and know that all this time we still think about you and hold you close to our hearts.  I want you to know you are loved and we haven’t forgotten you.

In His love,

Grandma

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