By choice, we have become a family, first in our hearts, and finally in breath and being. Great expectations are good; great experiences are better.
However motherhood comes to you, it's a miracle.
Somehow destiny comes into play. These children end up with you and you end up with them. It's something quite magical.
Every child deserves a home and love. Period.
People ask me. 'What about gay adoptions? Interracial? Single Parent?' I say. "Hey fine, as long as it works for the child and the family is responsible." My big stand is this: Every child deserves a home and love. Period.
Time and experience have taught me a priceless lesson: Any child you take for your own becomes your own if you give of yourself to that child. I have born two children and had seven others by adoption, and they are all my children, equally beloved and precious.
We look at adoption as a very sacred exchange. It is not done lightly on either side. I would dedicate my life for this child.
Losing the future is the best thing that ever happened to me.
In an open adoption agreement, you agree to a minimum number of visits - a floor, not a ceiling. It's enforceable.
Knots Landing is the best thing that ever happened to me.
The process of open adoption is not discussed in the way it should be. Everyone I know who has adopted domestically has at least one tragic story. It was important to me to be able to describe those situations.
Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.
I want to say that, in general, when it works, open adoption is great.
I will say in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.
I've never been keen on open adoption. It doesn't seem to solve the main problem with adoption, which is that somebody feels she was abandoned by someone else.
I'm a big proponent of open adoption, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you." Not just the parents who are raising you on a day-to-day basis, but also to have contact with your birth mother and hopefully your birth father. So that you can be like, "Oh, they love me too, and they love me so much that they knew they couldn't take care of me but they're still in my life to some extent."
I think open adoption is a great idea, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you."
or simply:
