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"Is that your adopted daughter?" I'm asked as the stranger leans over to take a peek at the creature playing at my feet.
My Who? My What? That one word is enough to send me off on a tangent. Adopted. Not the word itself, but the tone I always hear it glued to. Like it's a plague. Like it makes my child less than perfect or less than desired. And so I clarify, each and every time that no, that is my DAUGHTER, adopted or not. She need not be tagged or tatooed. The day will come that she'll feel insecure enough with she doesn't need to feel she doesn't belong.
Adopted. Taking a quick peek at dear Webster we don’t read anything about disease or being undesirable. No, quite the opposite; we can learn that it means to take up and make one’s own. Desired, sought after, dreamed of, longed for. Call it what you will, adoption is a union that binds together a family unit.
It seems that those outside adoption don’t understand that my daughter is just that, my daughter; nothing more, nothing less. How she came into my life is through adoption but it doesn’t make her who she is. I’m not scared or ashamed to admit I didn’t grow her in my belly, that it didn’t swell with pride at the thought of her. She will know that she was planned, chosen, and desired, and yes, adopted. What she will not is feel that it defines her as flawed or faulty. She will also never be told it limits her or paints her future for her.
Being adopted should not be a stigma, but I have found that it is; effortlessly tagged to a newborn baby who should have been seen as nothing more than precious and perfect when I was asked if I ever regretted it. Regret taking a life into my own that made me whole? Impossible.
When Fleur Conkling Heylinger penned the words:
Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone
But still miraculously my own
Never forget for a single minute
You didn’t grow under my heart - but in it.
my thoughts were captured instantly. My heart swells with my daughter and overflows with her even though my womb never did. It is miraculous that she is mine, that I am hers. Though I may not introduce her as my adopted daughter I will always announce to the world with pride that she is my girl, my daughter.
