On Thursday October 24, 2013, JFS and JFS Adoption Choices had the honor to host a special film screening of the documentary ‘Somewhere Between’, at the Tempurpedic IMAX Theatre at Jordan’s Furniture in Natick. One of the nights attendees, Jenna Lifshatz, wrote a wonderful piece on her reaction to the documentary film.

 

     This is a fabulous documentary that honestly shows the struggles that four adopted teenaged girls have growing up in the USA with their Caucasian families and of looking for their Chinese birth parents.

     Being adopted, not from China but from Russia,I feel the same curiosity. We all deeply want to know who our families are, who we look like, and why we were given up and put in an orphanage. We think about it every day. It’s hard to accept sometimes. When I was younger, I remember having school assignments to bring in pictures of me growing up that included a birth picture of myself, which I did not have. I remember being really sad about that because all my friends had their photos and I just had to skip out on that part of the project. Even now, when I go to my friends’ houses, I love to pick out the similarities between my friends and their parents. It still bothers me I can’t do that with mine.

     Most kids adopted from China will never find their birth families. The one girl documented in the movie that did find her family seemed so happy. Her birth parents were so relieved to know she is okay. They keep in touch and now she has two families that love her, one here and one there. I think I will be able to find mine when the time is right. I always hope that I can and that our meeting will go well. This movie was hard for me to watch, honestly. It hit very close to home. At the same time, it was comforting to know that the girls in the movie felt just like me.  

-Jenna Lifshatz

 

'Somewhere Between' Film Director Linda Goldstein Knowlon with Jenna Lifshatz

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