Love Means Showing Up
It has been my experience that really important conversations with my children often happen in the car. In our family, the car is one of the few places that I might be alone with just one child. It’s also a private and protected space. This doesn’t mean that I’m ever fully prepared for these interactions.
Strangers regularly point to my twin daughters and ask me, “Where are they from?” An airport shuttle driver asked my husband Bryan a few years ago, “Did you get them from Haiti?” My husband responded, “No” and kept moving. I was a little embarrassed. Bryan answered the question, I suppose, but he wasn’t exactly
I should have paid closer attention to the online invitation. We are part of an adoption playgroup for transracial families and they were hosting a pool party. It’s a really nice group of people, but we don’t have a lot of overlap in our lives with the other families except for the fact that we’ve
The first time we visited a black church, we stood out as a family. It was a small church and we were the only white people there that day. The woman welcoming everyone that morning said that she was glad to see the members and their families. Then she said that it seemed like there
People I barely know will sometimes share with me that they are considering adopting. This has happened with a woman handling our mortgage, the pest control guy and an assistant shampooing out my hair dye. I’m game to talk about this pretty much any time. I explain the tug I felt on my heart. I
I was naive about a lot of things when we adopted the twins. For example, I didn’t think their hair would be that big of a deal. People warned us that “ black hair is a whole thing.” I have thick, coarse hair and figured it wouldn’t be that different. I figured we’d just buy
Our twin girls are nothing alike. Elizabeth only notices things that are sparkly, shiny, or animal-print. Katie watches everyone like a hawk and does not miss any details. She can read a room like nobody’s business and usually has a list of follow-up questions. Raising a child like Katie can be both enlightening and exhausting,