National Adoption Awareness Day

Growing up the word adoption was something that was written on 2 birth certificates in my home and something that I just knew I wasn't supposed to ask questions about. Strange huh? My cousin Stephen is the one who finally pieced the pieces together for me and then when my parents, thought I was old enough, they told me the whole story. It made no difference to me at all and that is the truth. I didn't flinch. I had a brother whom I loved and a sister whom I loved a mother whom I loved and a father whom I thought hung the moon and the stars each night only for me. Still feel this way about them all. My brother and I are closer than we have ever been, my sister and I are friendlier than we have ever been but that is cos they are older than I am and for the longest time I was just the annoying little sister.

Adoption meant family. Now as an adult it still means that to me and a whole lot more. It means being able to have a family not just belonging to one. There is a huge difference in those 2 statements and without adoption I would not have been able to have a family of my own. To hear someone refer to me as their mummy sends chills down my spine. It brings tears to my eyes and makes the hairs on my arms stand up. I have a brood of my own and this came to because of that word on a birth certificate that puzzled me for so long. It came to be the way part of my family came to be. The way my brother in laws family came to be, the same way my cousins wife's family came to be.

We celebrate adoption and all that is means. We form and join groups just for people like us and we have the nerve to exclude families that haven't adopted. We are proud to use words like birth mother and biological parents but most of all we celebrate adoption for what it has given to us, the love of a family, nuclear and extended.