Safety and Loss

(Warning: Spoilers in this post)

Yesterday we took the family to see Kung Fu Panda.We loved the first movie and looked forward to Jack Black and his crazy panda humor. I am kicking myself for living in a naive place and not reading the plot of the movie. I learned my lesson and will do that every.single.time I take my tender trauma healing child to a movie.

The movie had a strong adoption theme. And while it was done well in my opinion, I did not see it coming and had not prepared my now-verbal and very aware four year old. When they mentioned the word adoption in the beginning she looked at me with questionable eyes. She sat through the film pretty well and was on mine or her Dad's lap the whole time. But I knew the bomb would drop.

Here's my summary of the movie :

{Po comes face to face with a symbol that flashed him back to the night Po was a baby, and ended up with his father, Mr Ping. Po questions his father about this event and his adoptive father tells him how he came to find Po in the radish's that were delivered to him each day. His father tells him that he knows Po's story may not have a happy beginning but that Po can go on to make a beautiful life and that Po is making a difference as the Dragon Warrior. Po senses that there is more to the story and goes on to search out the truth.

When Po comes face to face with the peacock, Lord Shen, later in the movie, the peacock refuses to tell Po what happened when Po was a baby, Po knows that Lord Shen was there the night Po's parents left him. Po freezes and is then injured. He ends up at the soothsayer's home where he comes to remember the events around the time when he went to his adoptive home. It turns out the Peacock wanted all pandas killed because of a vision and so Po's mother left him in a safe place to be found and then Po ended up at the the Mr Ping's restaurant. The soothsayer says to Po "Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but look how it turned out. Your past does not define you. It is what you decide to be that does."

Po then goes on to defeat the evil Shen (Peacock) with the help of the Furious Five. Po then returns to the Mr Ping's restaurant and tells his him that he (Mr Ping) is his father. They embrace and then it flashed to a scene where there are several panda's and one gets a sense that his son is still alive }

Again I feel that the movie references to adoption were done very well. We all know that is not always the case. I just wish I had prepared us all for the topic.

When we came home it all let loose and we spent the evening processing and recovering. We talked about adoption and how in Yellow's case it was just like Po in that she needed to be safe, so she came to live with us. But it still sucks and it's still hard and her heart is still broken. I am thankful that we get opportunities like this to talk about her life and to process the pain. But as another adoptive mom said, "Sometimes I just want to walk in the theater and watch a movie with my kids and not have it be work."