Wish You Happy Forever: What China’s Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains

In the summer of 1998, Jenny Bowen looked out her kitchen window onto her garden, and her life changed forever. Her three-year-old daughter Maya, whom she and her husband had adopted months earlier from an orphanage in China, had transformed from a vacant-eyed, sickly little girl into a joyous being thriving in an environment where she knew she was loved. Watching her daughter play, Bowen was overcome with the desire to help the orphaned children she couldn’t bring home. That’s when Half the Sky Foundation was born.

Wish You Happy Forever tells the story of China’s momentous progress in its treatment of orphaned and abandoned children. When Bowen began Half the Sky in 1998 determined to bring a caring adult into the life of every orphaned child, it seemed impossible that China would allow a foreigner to work inside government orphanages. Today, the Chinese government not only trusts but partners with Half the Sky to transform its entire child welfare system from the inside.

Bowen’s beautifully written memoir, Wish You Happy Forever, teaches us that saving a child’s life can transcend language and cultural barriers, and that a determined dreamer with a loving presence speaks at the greatest volume.