Small beads, big lesson

We had our last adoption class this weekend. It was a really eye opening series of classes and we are really grateful for all that we learned. We are also grateful that we are done with them and can check one more thing off our list :)

There was one exercise that we did today that struck me as really interesting. It was really simple and I admit, as it was in the last hour of the 8 hour class, I wasn't really taking it seriously at first. 

We were given bags of beads and each of the colors represented skin colors of different ethnicities. We were then told to add beads to our cup with the color that represented the different people in our life. They listed everyone from parents to neighbors to our pastor to our mayor. It really resonated with me how boring our little cup was (see that lonely little red bead? that's our baby).  It was unsettling that our child is going to look around and see very few people in our circle that even remotely look like him or her or look like our family. It was also surprising that it took a bunch of beads to make me realize this about our life.

So, while we didn't meet anyone that lives in our area at any of these classes, we are really hoping that we can find other interracial families to have as a support and community. I have no idea how we go about finding such a group (any ideas?), but I think its worth the effort for our future child.

What would your cup look like?