Open letter to an adoption agency

Good morning Adoption Agency,

I imagine you are inundated with emails and phone calls from those of us in the Korea program who are anxiously awaiting news on the Emigration Permit front. It is my understanding (from a flurry of activity on Facebook/forums) that the much anticipated "February 1st" business day has come and gone with no EP submissions taking place.

In the wake of this unofficial "news" many waiting families, including my own, are teetering on the edge of despair. We pinned our hopes on February 1, 2012. We prayed and cursed and crossed our fingers that TODAY our phones would ring. We clutched pictures of our waiting children and glanced anxiously at the tiny winter coat folded on our dresser.

The phones didn't ring.

And so we are making statements like "I don't know if we'll ever take custody of YH". We are greedily looking one another over, trying to speculate who will be in the first batch ("I've been waiting since December 2010", "My child is turning 5!", "My son needs surgery"). I've been waiting longer, my child is more deserving, my PAIN is MORE.

We are scared and angry.

I know that you cannot control the information flow from Korea. I know that you cannot control the processing of EPs.

But I also know that you CAN do something very important:

You can make it a priority to send a daily email to the waiting families that says simply "We know you are anxious.There is no news yet." One email sent to an address book/group. You could copy and paste that same message every day for a whole week and it would make us all feel SO MUCH BETTER.

Because as it currently stands, we feel like we are shouting into a void. I don't *want* to send you  pleading, frustrated emails any more than you want to receive them.

Would you please consider this request?

Many thanks,

Nora (whose son in Korea needs surgery and who is too distraught over this situation to actually mail the birthday care package that *should* be there waiting for him on February 4 but won't be)