In April this year, E. and I visited India for about 2 weeks. It was the first time E. was travelling to India after the adoption. I had spent the previous 6 months learning hindi language, which made a huge difference in our experience. A dear friend of mine lives in Delhi and she hosted us while we were there and we met several of my language partners, who were kind of enough to be our guides in the other places we visited. Being able to speak hindi and mingling with the locals created a rich experience for both of us. We were both very excited for our trip. Before leaving Finland, E. made ..read more

When my oldest child R. started school at 7 years of age, I was shocked to learn that most parents equipped children with a smartphone, with various levels of parental controls and restrictions. Almost all children with a smartphone had also access to WhatsApp (minimum age in EU: 16 years old). At the time I felt it was definitely too early to buy a smartphone to my child. I and her father opted for a basic phone with no internet access. We were also very clear about the purpose of the device: for her and us to be in contact when we needed – calling and texting friends was extra. To teach rest ..read more

It feels so weird to type again in this editor. A thousand times I wanted to come back to this blog, but struggled to find the motivation. Yet once in a while I would get comments “offline” about how my blog was useful to people living in Finland, especially immigrants and prospect adoptive parents. It reminded me why I started doing this. I always found joy in helping others and in particular in sharing my experience to make life easier for someone else. I benefitted from the very same many times in my life. The problem with blogging is that it often feels lonely and one-sided. I hardly get f ..read more

Finland recently launched the national campaign named #IAmAntiracist to call society – organisations and individuals – to actively participate in eradicating racism. Since I saw the campaign and got all excited about it – not that a campaign is gonna solve every problem but this is the biggest action I saw on the topic since I moved here so yay – I resolved that I wanted to share my thoughts and a testimony from our (interracial) family life. I had several ideas going on in my mind: should I share (bark) my bitter opinions on racism? How we embed antiracism in our everyday life? How racism aff ..read more

Our family has always strived to limit our environmental impact, but in the past few months we invested more time and resources into reducing it even more. We try and follow the zero waste philosophy – which, despite the misleading extreme name, aims at reducing waste as much as possible. I have written here about why this is essential and how much household waste impacts the environment in Finland specifically. In today’s post I want to list a few changes we implemented in our family life to further reduce our impact. Important disclaimer In this post I will present some products we have purc ..read more

A few months back my family and I volunteered to clean up our neighbourhood and pick up litter. My area looks tidy, yet we were all shocked to see how much litter we picked in a short time. We have started cultivating awareness about our waste and its impact on the environment. The litter picking experience has opened a whole new dialogue in our home about the impact of littering and our role in taking care of our surroundings. I made some research on how to have an active role into keeping our towns clean. This is how I found out that City of Helsinki has a successful volunteering programme c ..read more

I didn’t mean to write this post, but after receiving several puzzled messages from friends and acquaintances, I felt it would make things easier. On second thought, it may make for an useful reflection too. Yesterday I deleted my Instagram account, the last social media profile I had after I deleted all the others few months back. I warned my contacts with an Instagram story, but some contacts didn’t see it. This is why few hours after deleting my account, I started getting emails and texts from people I know who asked why I stopped following them or why I had blocked them. The same happened ..read more

I heard the term zero waste for the first time few years ago while watching a Youtube video. A family living what I now know is an extreme (and quite literal) zero waste lifestyle was showcasing how they had accumulated only a small jar of waste in over 3 years. I don’t know who branded this lifestyle “zero waste” but I feel it was a silly choice. The term itself makes it sound completely unfeasible. The name and that video years ago made me mark the whole idea as an extreme choice that would never fit me and our family. Turns out, zero waste is not about eliminating trash from our lives, but ..read more

“Where is your real mum?”, is an insensitive question several adoptees are asked and it transcends languages – English, Italian, whatever. This is one of the stereotypes the adoptive parents community is set on fighting against. Real mom implies there’s a fake one. However, occasionally I hear adoptive parents add “There’s is only one mom” or “Mom is the one who keeps you always with her” [this is especially true in Italian language and the term ‘mamma’, but I observed a similar distinction made between ‘mum’ and ‘first/biological mother’ in English too]. When I hear these claims I wonder: wha ..read more

Recently my birth country was hit by a racism scandal where two popular TV hosts made inappropriate and racist remarks (“jokes”) twice within a fortnight. The case hit international social media and one host was pressured into publicly apologising. Michelle Hunziker – that’s her name – performed a perfect fake apology: fully dressed in white and under perfect lighting like she was broadcasting from the heavens, paraphrasing a ‘sorry not sorry’ that did not mean a thing. In her statement she mentioned that as a mother she teaches her children to always apologise when they hurt others, even if u ..read more