1. I think adoption is the best thing that ever happened to me. A couple that is childless and has worked very hard at having a child, then goes through the grueling process of adoption, then suddenly finds a child or baby on the doorstep, provides the most loving environment any child can enter.
Faith Daniels, journalist
Faith Daniels joined CBS news at the age of 28 in 1985—their youngest news anchor ever. She was conceived as the result of a rape and her mother chose to make an adoption plan. Faith recalls, “I walked into a very loving environment where everything was put on hold when they had kids. Even though my mother worked, we came first. The family was blue-collar all the way. Mom worked; dad worked. They didn’t have a lot of money, just lots of love.”
2. The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
Leo Tolstoy, author, essayist, and playwright
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time. Both of his parents died before he was ten, and he was raised by his grandmother, who died, and then his aunt, who also died, and finally by another aunt. He was a pacifist and humanitarian, moved and galvanized by the storms and shelters of his youth.
3. Adoption requires many acts of faith: the birth mother’s, that her offspring will find a better life elsewhere; the adoptive parent’s, that he will be able to provide it; the adopted child’s, that the tension between what is and what might have been will be a force of creation, not destruction.
Meghan Krogh, storyteller and writing coach
So many birth mothers and adoptive parents wade into the unknown when they begin to make an adoption plan. Like any act of faith, a little effort and the right perspective will let you walk on water.
4. As a mother, my children have always come first. And even though I’ve always been a working woman, I have always tried to have them with me as often as I could…I tried to make things silly and funny, so we always had a good time.
Julie Andrews, actress and author of Home, A Memoir of My Early Years and The Very Fairy Princess
Julie Andrews is best known as the ideal, sunlit instant mother in movies like The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, but few know that the actress and author adopted two Vietnamese orphan girls with her husband, Blake, in 1974. Many working moms know the unique delectation of involving your children in your work when it is necessary so that you can be together and continue to provide for your family. Children are curiously inspired by watching their parents glean satisfaction from their contributions to the world, and they will remember it as they themselves become adults.
5. My kid knows I’m her real mother. Not biological, but real. It doesn’t get any realer than this.
Tama Janowitz, American novelist
Tama Janowitz adopted her daughter Willow from China when Willow was just nine months old. In “The Real Thing,” her opinion piece for the New York Times, she talks about raising her child in New York City, where few people blinked twice at the sight of an interracial family. “Everyone feels that they are doing the best possible job as a parent,” she says, “but there is so little that is clean-cut in child-rearing.”
6. The purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whatever is around to be loved.
Kurt Vonnegut, author and playwright
No one knows more about the joy of loving those around who need it than Vonnegut, who adopted his sister’s three children after she died of cancer shortly after losing her husband in a car crash. The author of Slaughterhouse Five later adopted another daughter with his wife, completing his family of nine.
7. It is important to remember that we adopt not because we are rescuers. No. We adopt because we are rescued.
David Platt, author
This pastor and best-selling author of Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream adopted children from Kazakhstan and Nepal, and his church has provided homes for 160 children without families. He reminds us that we adopt to pay our love and fortune forward.
8. Little souls find their way to you, whether from your womb or someone else’s.
Sheryl Crow, singer/songwriter
Sheryl Crow adopted Wyatt, now eleven, in 2007, and Levi, now six, in 2010. “I don’t want to spend any nights away from home,” she said. “When you have kids, your priorities definitely change. I really felt consistency is the most important thing.”
Are you and your partner ready to start the adoption process? Visit Adoption.org or call 1-800-ADOPT-98 to begin your adoption journey. We have 130+ years of adoption experience and would love to help you.
