Three Generations of Werking Girls

Part 1:
Phyllis Werking had no way of knowing that learning how to make handmade soap in 1996 would make the overseas adoption of her second granddaughter go much more smoothly a decade later. She was merely fascinated with learning a new healthy-living craft, and once she'd mastered it, happy to teach the art of soap making to her eldest daughter, Kathy, as well.

It's easy to see where Kathy's interests in arts and crafts and healthy-living orginated; her father was a professional photographer, and she describes her mother, Phyllis, as a bit of a 'health freak,' so she wasn't surprised when her mom showed up one day with supplies in tow ready to teach her to make soap from scratch. But Kathy saw more than a hobby in all that lather; she saw a business. Soapwerks opened in Midway, Kentucky in 1997.

Kathy is the animal lover in the family, so there was plenty of room for her younger sister, Kris, in this equation. "Kris has the green thumb," Kathy says. She grows herbs, makes bath fizzies, and the herbal wraps for Soapwerks.

Today Soapwerks has an online shop on Etsy and a brick and mortar location in Midway. They offer workshops-to-go on eco-friendly products, jewelry, and painting. Phyllis is very busy making batches and batches of soap for the shop and filling wholesale orders. Kris is continuously growing calendula (pot marigold), mint, sage, basil, and lemon balm to keep up with demand, and Kathy is very busy running the store and as an active member of the Kentucky artisan community.

But that's not all keeping Kathy busy. After all, this is Kentucky, home of huge upsets in high stakes horse racing, and it turns out that getting Soapwerks off the ground was just the first leg of exciting race for Kathy. The real winners in this story are two little girls named Leah and YuLan, and I want you to meet them because once you do, you won't ever think about handmade soap the same way again. Next, we'll meet Leah. Stay tuned because she's just as eager to meet you.

Part 2:
A few years ago, Kathy Werking made a routine trip to the grocery store to buy milk and like most of us are prone to do, came home with something that was not on her list. While for most of us that would have been chocolate ice cream, Kathy came home with a Lexington newspaper that had a front page picture of an adorable little girl named Leah who needed a home.

Leah wasn't just any little girl. She was living in a Chinese orphanage called the Shaoyang Social Welfare Institute in Shaoyang, Hunan Province, China, and she wasn't the only picture on the front page. She was one of several special needs children whose papers were in the hands of U.S. agencies strapped with a limited amount of time to find adoptive parents for the children or return the papers to the Chinese government. Kathy saw Leah's little face on the front page, and in her own words told me, "I knew I was supposed to be her Mama!"

So it was time to get in the express lane. Kathy applied to adopt Leah and began fundraising through Soapwerks for Leah's adoption, and when she was approved, she flew to China with a few friends to meet little Leah and take her home.

Their introduction was a bit awkward at first. At three and half and twenty-six pounds, Leah didn't speak English and was understandably nervous about leaving the orphanage. She'd been there since she was two days old, brought to the institution by a police man who found her abandoned at the city gate wearing a little red hat.

Today, Leah is a happy, brave, and industrious Werking girl, nine years old and a far cry from the timid little girl Kathy brought home. She wears a brace on her leg to correct her club foot, speaks excellent English, appreciates the life she has and remembers where she came from.In fact, two years ago, Leah told her mother that she wanted an older sister, so Kathy began to investigate adopting another child from the same orphanage, ultimately making the decision to adopt an older girl named YuLan, another child with special needs. Leah was determined to go along, so she began to make her own products to sell at Soapwerks, lip balms in Pink Peppermint and Orangey Orange, and raised thirteen hundred dollars, enough to buy a plane ticket to accompany her mom to the orphanage. Like mother, like daughter, on their way to make a huge difference in another young girl's life. Tomorrow we will meet YuLan, Leah's big sister, and the last, (but certainly not the least) of the Werking girls.

Part 3:
While Phyllis Werking didn't accompany her daughter, Kathy, to China for either adoption, she was always one of many anxiously waiting for her daughter's and new granddaughter's safe return. Now, the second time around, she waited for news that Kathy and Leah had arrived safely in China and then that Kathy, Leah and YuLan were soon on their way back. It's not hard to understand why those waiting back in the States were anxious. As I learned from both Kathy and her mother, these orphanages are not the happiest of places. Due to China's 'one child' policy, their societal preference for boys over girls, and the inability of many families to care for a special needs child, most orphanages are filled with girls, a high proportion of them with special needs. YuLan was at the Shaoyang Social Welfare Institute for precisely those reasons.

Although Leah and YuLan came from the same orphanage, their experiences were much different. YuLan was eight years old when Kathy adopted her, but she'd only been at the orphanage since she was five. Born deaf in one ear due to a deformity and assumed to be completely deaf because of poor pediatric care that was corrected when she got to the States, YuLan's biological parents left her in the care of her grandmother when she was born and at age five when her grandmother died, YuLan was returned to them. They in turn left her at a bus station. So while Leah knows the story of being abandoned at the gate to the city, YuLan remembers being left the bus station. As you can imagine, it was much more difficult for her to leave the orphanage and her country to start a new life once again with people she didn't even know.

But fast forward two years later, meet YuLan today, and you'd have a hard time reconciling the old and the new. As of a week ago, she asked her mother to turn down the radio in the car because her new Baha implant has restored her hearing. According to her grandmother, Phyllis, YuLan was thrilled to complete the final procedure to install the implant because now she and Leah have undergone the same number of surgical procedures. "They have their own brand of sibling rivalry," Phyllis says. "YuLan still wants glasses because Leah has glasses, and we keep telling her she doesn't need them!"

One thing they don't compete for, though, is love and attention. They are well-known in their town of Midway and spoiled rotten (I'm told) by Kathy's sister, Kris, and her husband, and because these girls either know or remember where they came from, they make a concerted effort to pay it forward and send it back. Leah and YuLan make and sell lip balm, bracelets, and Peppermint Patty soaps to raise money for YuLan's best friend that she left back in the orphanage in Shaoyang. Her name is Yuan Yuan; she's nine years old and she requires extensive medical care. They send the proceeds to Yuan Yuan every month.

Kathy's adoption of YuLan was finalized three weeks before the Chinese government decided to no longer allow single parent adoption. She, just like her two little girls, consider themselves lucky to have each other, and while any soap maker will freely admit that they put a lot of love and lather into their products, the Werking girls at Soapwerks want you to know that inside every bar they pack up and ship, there's always a genuine dose of hope with that soap.

If you'd like to support Leah and YuLan, please visit Soapwerks and check out their fundraising section. I'm told that they get very, very excited any time they make a sale.