Adoption Quotes

If the system were designed to protect adoptees, why do so many have to fight for their rights?

DaShanne Stokes

Adoptee rights are everyone's rights, and they deserve to be protected.

DaShanne Stokes

If you are going to start, don't quit. But if you are going to quit, don't even start!

Hannah Sulfridge

There's nothing more important in this world than caring for a child.

Seth Adam Smith

You were tossed away like a pair of beautiful, brand new shoes that did not quite fit.

Donna K. Childree

If you should choose to look at those files, you will have to live with the consequences of your choices while, at the same time, being mindful that these choices will not only effect you, but will also infect, sorry, I intended to say effect, our entire family.

Donna K. Childree

Adoption is grief in reverse.

Jody Cantrell Dyer

This is overdue. Quite a bit, I'm afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I'm sure she'll be happy there.

I love them both as though I birthed them both, but also as though I adopted them both.

Natalie Brenner

I took my menial life for granted until it became clear, why my early years resulted in a lack of adoption.- J.D. Stroube (Rival: Prelude to the Mirage Chronicles.)

I firmly believe that I have received the same child I was meant to receive, whether I gave birth or adopted. The same soul, the same entity, was meant to be mine, from the beginning of time.

Debra Shiveley Welch

And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much.

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story - of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you - and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something IS missing. That isn't of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.

Jeanette Winterson

The word, 'issues,' is perhaps a misnomer, a gross understatement, or a pale and withered description for very real psychological illnesses and emotional losses. Nevertheless, "post-adoption issues" is a catch-all phrase, and at least it avoid pathologizing adoptees.

Adoption is a lifelong journey. It means different things to me at different times. Sometimes it is just a part of who I am. Other times it is something I am actively going through.

Kelly DiBenedetto

Justification has so dominated the landscape of Christian thought that adoption has been marginalized. We don't hear much about our adoption at all. We hear a lot about forgiveness, but very little about the staggering reality of our inclusion in Jesus' relationship with his Father in the Spirit.

C. Baxter Kruger

Pull approaches differ significantly from push approaches in terms of how they organize and manage resources. Push approaches are typified by "programs" - tightly scripted specifications of activities designed to be invoked by known parties in pre-determined contexts. Of course, we don't mean that all push approaches are software programs - we are using this as a broader metaphor to describe one way of organizing activities and resources. Think of thick process manuals in most enterprises or standardized curricula in most primary and secondary educational institutions, not to mention the programming of network television, and you will see that institutions heavily rely on programs of many types to deliver resources in pre-determined contexts.Pull approaches, in contrast, tend to be implemented on "platforms" designed to flexibly accommodate diverse providers and consumers of resources. These platforms are much more open-ended and designed to evolve based on the learning and changing needs of the participants. Once again, we do not mean to use platforms in the literal sense of a tangible foundation, but in a broader, metaphorical sense to describe frameworks for orchestrating a set of resources that can be configured quickly and easily to serve a broad range of needs. Think of Expedia's travel service or the emergency ward of a hospital and you will see the contrast with the hard-wired push programs.

Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood.

She felt a lump form in her throat, and she swallowed hard. She wouldn't have this-the swollen ankles and pink cheeks and the feel of that glorious, curving belly under the palm of her hand-but she could still be a mother. That was the important thing.

I'm glad you were both here," I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives.

I never wanted to find my birth parents - if one set of parents felt like a misfortune, two sets would be self-destructive...I had no idea that you could like your parents or that they could love you enough to let you be yourself.

Jeanette Winterson

Every November on National Adoption Day, courts set aside time to finalize adoptions from foster care that might otherwise be delayed for months, and communities celebrate adoption with retreats, proclamations, and other events. National Adoption Day was started in 2000 and has grown each year. In 2004, courts and community organizations finalized the adoptions of more than 3,400 children from foster care as part of 200 National Adoption Day events in 37 states.

Natalie Nichols Gillespie

You need to call on your best and strongest self.

However motherhood comes to you, it's a miracle.

Destiny is not always preordained. Life is about making choices. Our lives are the sum of all the choices we make, the bridges we cross, and the ones we burn. Our souls cast long shadows over many people, even after we are gone. Fate, luck, and providence are the consequence of our freedom of choice, not the determinants. When justice is served by following our principles, making good decisions brings us inner peace.

You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.

I'm ready for the day when Mom loves me too much to keep me, and for every other person who will someday see that I'm not worth holding on to.

I don't understand this--when people love you so much they are willing to get rid of you. I think if I loved someone that much I'd want to stay with them. It doesn't make sense that love would make a mother leave, and I wonder when this mother will love me that much too. I get the idea that love might be something to both desire and fear, and maybe if we don't love each other too much I won't have to go away again. I wonder why love works for everyone else, but it doesn't work for me.

Having a blood family means suddenly revising a definition of family that I have, over many years, learned to accept. How can I hold both concepts in my mind or find room for both families in my heart?

...I am about eight years old when I first become aware of being other--foreign, outside, separate. Because this lesson comes from my own family, it resonates deeper and truer than playground taunts ever have.

It's illegal to deny people their records due to race or gender. Adoptees deserve the same rights and protections.

DaShanne Stokes

I wish to be buried in Ireland, the country of my adoption a country which I loved, which I have dutifully served, and for which I believe I have sacrificed my life.

Thomas Drummond

If every Christian family in the United States would simply commit to pray and ask God if HE wants to use them to bless a child without a family, well, we'd change the world. If we can get the church to think about adoption not in terms of the desires of adults but in terms of the needs of children, I think we'd see on a much grander scale how God sets the lonely in families.

What would it be like to feel so attached, so intrinsically bonded, so protective of one’s own best connection with time and the ages, of generations past and future, of another human life, of their time?

Adoption isn't just a childhood experience, it's a life-long experience.

DaShanne Stokes

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

Happiness is a conscious choice we make for ourselves. It has to come from within.

The wrinkled pages of the Bible crackled as Mom leafed back to the beginning of Matthew. I had always felt I was conceived from the powers of the universe. Maybe I was chosen to fulfill a divine mission.

Diamond Mike Watson

Adoptees deserve open records because deception and partial truths do not set us free.

DaShanne Stokes

That so many thousands of children around the world are available for adoption is a sign of our impoverished humanity. That so many persons around the world open their hearts and homes each year to embrace a few of these children is a lasting testimony to humanity's enduring nobility.

Deborah A. Beasley

Adoption is a beautiful, burdensome blessing.

Jody Cantrell Dyer

Adoption is a wonderful way of becoming a family. If being a biological parent is any better or more rewarding than being an adoptive parent, I really don't think I could stand it!

Kathleen Silber

Since we have had this baby with us, I have never again wondering why I never got pregnant. There is no doubt in my mind that God, in His wonderful way, was saving us to be the parents of this wonderful little boy.

Kathleen Silber

The adoptee benefits because his collective parents are permitted to grow secure in their particular roles in his life. His adoptive parents are not unwittingly encouraged to compete to possess him. Nor are his birth parents punished and banished from a place in his life.

Kathleen Silber

While our life remains more chaotic than not, we continue to land on our blistered feet, drag each other out of the quicksand, beg for forgiveness as we wander out of the doghouse, and dig for the humor beneath our grief. So our family, four-pawed members included, continues to bound forward celebrating our canine connection and sharing hope with all who need healing.

Donnie Kanter Winokur

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

I believe one of the most sacrificial acts of love adoptive parents can do is to give up their preconceptions and agendas about what their child's views "should" be and be open to hear the conflicting emotions and thoughts their child often experiences.

Sherrie Eldridge

According to H.G. Wells, you either adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. It is not necessary to change, after all survival is not mandatoryThis generation might seem arrogant to the older generation due to some reasons. The older generation believes an older person or someone of higher authority is always right and being sceptical is an insult, lolOur generation is full of people who are so skeptical, they wanna know why this is this and that is that, they don't just hear and believe, they hear, hear from other sides, look at it critically and express their opinions based on their conviction.This generation is full of people who are somewhat confident cos they study, they observe and due to these, they are equipped with better information and like you know, knowledge is power. You know right from wrong, you know truth from lies.When you are with those in authority and have this knowledge, an ignorant person of higher authority would be scared of you, feel threatened and might resort to maltreating and frustrating you, defaming your character etcThe older generation and the younger generation are usually having misunderstanding because the older generation are being deceived by pride, the younger generation due to their advanced education do not wanna give merit to whom it isn't due. While the older generation postulates that respect is not earned but compulsory for them to be accorded, the younger generation believes respect must be earned. lolThe older generation rules by fiction but the younger generation lives by facts. The older generation uses age to oppress, the younger generation uses their knowledge to defend.The older generation believes they can never be wrong, the younger generation wants fair hearing, demands for it, if denied, they take it by force due to the confidence they've built around themselves.The older generation is unfair to the younger generation, there was once a time they were listened to without doubts and opposition, this is the time for the younger generation to be listened to due to advancement in education and exposure.The younger generation, due to their quest for higher knowledge through research, etc, they have realized the consequences of being ignorant and with their power of conviction, they are not letting the older generation have their autocratic ways affect them.To the younger generation, one should be able to prove whatever he says, no more latent heresies and this is what the older generation don't wanna hear of.The older generation wants to continue enslaving the younger generation but the younger generation is more equipped than the older generation and as such, not letting that happen.Technology advances every day, the younger generation are ever ready to adapt to the changes but the older generation is not ready for that, they wanna remain stagnant and still have the say of the day.Like George Bernard Shaw once said, the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man

OMOSOHWOFA CASEY

She wasn't tracking down her father to learn more about him. She was tracking him down to learn more about herself.

The children we bring into the world are small replicas of ourselves and our husbands; the pride and joy of grandfathers and grandmothers. We dream of being mothers, and for most of us that dreams are realised naturally. For this is the Miracle of Life.

Azelene Williams

Some adventures should never be repeated.

I don't know anyone who remembers meeting their parents when they were a baby so i'm just like everybody else. -Zoey (100% Real)

You are real! Everyone has to be different or the world would be really boring. If we all looked the same, then no one could tell us apart. -Janelle

Predestination therefore, as it regards the thing itself, is the Decree of the good pleasure of God in Christ, by which He resolved within Himself from all eternity, to justify, adopt, and endow with everlasting life, to the praise of His own glorious grace, believers on whom He had decreed to bestow faith.

A role model is a person whose roles can be modelled. If the roles you conceive and give birth to today cannot be adopted by anyone in your absence, you are no good model.

Israelmore Ayivor

I must acknowledge that though his adoption embodies graciousness, it is also a reminder this world is not as it should be. Brokenness permeates our world. Sure, beauty is born from ashes, but the ashes don't just magically disappear. Suffering and all that is wrong in this world still exists. This side of heaven, tragedy remains and the moments of her son becoming ours is a representation of joy and suffering deeply intertwined. Our son, the living proof and blessing that love is what makes a family, reminds us that adoption is born out of undeniable loss. Irrevocable loss of wholeness, of what was meant to be.To only acknowledge the beauty without giving voice to the tragedy, is to detract from adoption. In diminishing the tragedy of adoption, I decrease my son's story, along with others a part of the adoption circle. I would be choosing to ignore a massive portion of who he is.

Natalie Brenner

The life of an adoptee is like an ancient voyager who searches for the unknown. The stars guided their destiny. They had their sights on the wonders that lay ahead of them. An adoptee travels in the opposite direction.

Diamond Mike Watson

Our society encourages women to place a very high value on maternity as an essential part of female identity, both a high moral calling and the deepest source of satisfaction on earth. It's not easy to redefine motherhood as handing your baby over to a stranger.

He was taking a leap here, negotiating with a crackhead, under the table, in a dark cantina. The courage etched on his face came from loving Aidia so much he’d close his eyes and walk through fire to see her safe.

Laura Anderson Kurk

I really want to believe that when our Quiet Waters kids wake up in the middle of the night, scared, they’ll remember being in their bunks with John and Kate and Whit and me right there protecting them,” he said. “I hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there’ll be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.

Laura Anderson Kurk

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