Wish You Happy Forever Read Free Page B

childhood were spent in their embrace. And in time, the books inspired me to write my stories down.
    I learned to look forward to a blank piece of paper. I could dream life just the way I wanted it. I was in control.
    That was the best part of making movies—the part that kept me going despite the hurdles and uncertainties of Hollywood—dreaming a story and somehow making it real. Even if the films I made never mattered that much to me in the end, even if they didn’t particularly give my life meaning, there was plenty to love about the process. I loved being challenged to use every skill I could muster from my meager bag of tricks.
    And filmmaking had given me a few new skills. Perseverance for sure. But also how to pitch my story to anyone who’d listen in hopes of raising funds and followers. How to imagine characters, then cast them. How to imagine places, then scout them. How to visualize the way a scene should play, then guide my actors through the world I’d concocted.
    I’d learned how to make something from nothing. Those babies in China had nothing. It seemed like a perfect fit.
    THE NAME CAME to me in an instant. I would call my organization Half the Sky—named for the old Chinese saying, “Women hold up half the sky.” Just what I dreamed for Maya’s little orphaned sisters: I would help them hold up the sky.
    I began to imagine the story, how it would play. I saw loving homes right inside orphanage walls— real homes designed to help young children heal and learn and trust. Places where, like our Maya, each child could know that her life matters to someone. We would find and train local women to look after foundlings as if they were their very own.
    I imagined an infant program where babies could form bonds from the start. A preschool program for little girls who had no parents to go home to at the end of the day. The programs themselves would need to feel safe like family, full of love and comfort.
    While I had no doubt that a world without orphanages would be a better world, I understood that China’s orphans were wards of the state. Somehow we’d have to do all this inside existing institutions. That meant we would have to find a way to become partners with the Chinese government.
    So I needed a pitch, a way to sell the story to China. Maya’s sudden awakening made sense—I knew it did—but I’d need the science to convince others, especially government officials.
    I found my science on the Internet; the words, stark and cold, came down to this:
    The months immediately after birth are critical for orderly brain maturation. During this “sensitive period,” the number of synapses—the connections that allow learning to happen—increase twenty-fold. An astounding 75 percent of human cognitive and emotional growth potential—the development of intelligence, personality, and emotional and social behavior—is finalized by age seven. Holding and touching a young child stimulates that child’s brain to release essential growth hormones. Without stimulation from or experience with the world, normal development cannot occur. Conversely, “noxious” experiences can cause harm to the developing brain.
    There it was. Our little miracle writ plain. Science says that our daughter’s transformation wasn’t a fluke but rather the result of stimulation of critical hormones and elimination of noxious experiences. And there was urgency, a time window during which children must be reached. So what more did I need to know?
    Well. About creating a nonprofit organization. About how to pay for one. About early childhood education. About China.
    Okay, I scored a perfect zero. I got down to work.
    CASTING WITH A wide net, I returned to the Internet, where I found adoptive parents who were preschool teachers and doctors and child psychologists. I questioned everyone. I queried adoption agencies and Chinese language professors