Larissa's Story
By Linda L
Our adoption process came full circle when our daughter, Larissa, who was born April 15, 1981 and arrived home September 3, 1981, visited Wide Horizons in Korea this past March 2007. Thanks to the efforts of Betsey at WHFC in Massachusetts, Larissa was escorted by social workers to see the city where she was born. The highlight of her trip was to spend time with babies who were preparing to journey to the U.S. to be united with their new families. Larissa referred to those babies as lucky.
Larissa was always an excellent student and athlete who was class president, captains of both the soccer and basketball teams and a peer tutor. At the age of 11 she informed us that she was going to attend Duke University and become a doctor. Since dreams are always free, we encouraged her. We should have known that due to Larissa's strong work ethic she would not stop until she realized her dreams. She graduated from Duke Unviersity, pre-med, and worked one year as a counselor for children exiting the foster care system. Her job was to assimilate these children into housing and careers. At that time she began applying to medical schools and was admitted to several.
After completing the first two years of medical school, she was offered the opportunity to study in China for one year. She readily accepted and was able to study Asian medicine, acupuncture, herbal and holistic medicine, as well as learning to speak Chinese. Today she is in her third year of medical school in the U.S. and going through her clinical rotations, having just completed OB-GYN. Her next rotation will be in Oncology.
She is gifted, talented and loving. We have another daughter, Amanda, who was born to us not quite two years after Larissa arrived. The girls are close sisters even though they are very different. Larissa has brought joy not only to our family but to those around her. We are very grateful to WHFC, and to Vicki Peterson, who was our social worker back in 1981.