Breaking the Cycle

One of the biggest drives I have for the culture of Springtime House in Romania is their drive to break the cycle of abandonment in Romania. It might seem obvious to you, but let me describe this abandonment cycle to you in a hypothetical story. I found the majority of these common elements in Karleen Dewey’s book, “A Place of the Mourning Doves” as well as some of the biographies of the children in the care homes Springtime House supports.

Let’s start with a young mother who has just given birth to yet another child. As the nurse leaves the room with the little girl to take to the nursery, the woman begins to think to herself the same thoughts that have been cycling through her mind for almost 9 months now. She can’t afford to feed herself and her already existing children living on the streets. She has no support system of family or friends to help feed, clothe, and shelter this newborn in need of so much more than just the bare minimum. She was abandoned herself by so many men claiming to want to give all they could to her, yet taking all that she was in the end. She was empty and couldn't give any more of herself to anyone, not even a tiny child. While no one was looking, she walks out of her room, down the stairs, and out the door, hoping that someone there would be able to give the love and comfort to her child that she lacked.

So then the child is swaddled tightly and taken into the nursery section of the hospital, as the staff keeps a small bit of hope that the mother might return for it. Until then, they are charged by the state to care for the child. While understaffed, overworked, and underpaid workers give watered down formula to the infant, time passes with no sign of the mother’s return for her daughter. She is kept tightly wrapped, unable to move too much, and unstimulated by the few nurses rushing to meet immediate health needs of other infants in the nursery, most abandoned themselves. Time marches on as her daily meal goes from watery milk becomes watery oatmeal and the only stimulus provided continues to be the tired nurses rushing back and forth to the numerous cribs around her.

By her second birth day, the state transfers her into an institutional orphanage. Here her undeveloped mind stretches to comprehend the laws of survival: only the toughest will survive. She is stolen from, beaten, and without a friend among her peers. The orphanage is just as understaffed as the nursery was so that those who are supposed to protect and care for her are again stretched thin to keep the peace among the pack of primitive children struggling for their own stake in their world. The story can go deeper into her abuses and struggles, but in due time, the little girl is an 18-year-old, supposedly ready to become a fully-functional citizen of Romania.  In reality, she has only a change of clothes, about $20, and the basic survival skills she had learned in the orphanage with an already limited brain capacity from her lack of early development. She is unprepared to take on post-education. She has no trade skills to hold a decent job. If she’s lucky, she may be able to find a safe home to stay in while she picks up the pieces of her childhood to prepare for the next step.

Statistically, within 2 weeks, she will be involved in human trafficking. With her wounded heart, it may only take a warm offer of a good job with no experience needed and a place to live to coax her into the system. Hoping to douse her fiery anger and mend her broken heart, she finds that those she trusted have yet again led her down a road of deception. Within a few months, she becomes pregnant under the conditions of the so called job she had acquired. Her masters can coerce her to abort the child or threaten to throw her out on the streets, leaving her abandoned again, if she kept it. Feeling the straining thoughts her mother once had, the cycle is completed and brought into the next generation. She has her baby and abandons it in the hospital in the same manner her own mother did years before. Hopelessness over takes her as she walks back onto the streets, eager to return to her captors in a gross case of Stockholm syndrome. 

Dewey’s book gives a historical account on what happened to encourage this cycle to begin and other details explaining individuals within the orphanage system that are trying to improve the system no matter how small of an impact it will have. Nonetheless, it’s Springtime House’s mission to rescue these orphans from this disabling mindset of hopelessness by taking them out of a world that teaches them selfishness and rather teach them how to love others. They have interaction, encouragement, and a community that edifies their existence, going above and beyond meeting their basic needs. I wanted to share this to make others aware of the dangerous and generation immobilizing pattern, and also as a personal service to remind myself for why I want to go back to Romania this summer. I have spent over a year now reading about these children, hoping and praying that they do not see themselves as a statistic, but as a loved and priceless individual in God’s plan.