Time to commend adoptive parents for their act of love

MY HEART went out to her. She stood lighting a candle for her son, who passed away in an accident recently, and she trembled while sobbing in front of his picture.

She looked lost and devastated; and the deep love she had for her son was so evident I couldn’t help but sob with her.

There is no greater pain in the world than for a parent who loses a child. She was so proud of him.

He was about to become a doctor but, on his way to university, tragedy struck and he was gone forever. Her deep loss and agony permeated from every part of her.

But then a greater pain emerged. As she went back to her seat, everyone was reminded that she was a “special” case. The child that was no more was not “hers”.

She had not given birth to him and was his stepmother. I felt a deep rage inside me. Was that necessary? Did it matter that she had not given birth to him?

As I sat there and looked at her, and then at my son, I suddenly realised what a bunch of superficial scandal-seeking people and hypocrites we have become.

Really! As a community, do we know what we stand for, the difference between love and hate, and what we need to build a community instead of breaking it? I am sick of it.

Countless times, I have had to endure the same experience with my husband and son. We are constantly reminded our son is not his.

My worst by far is during those reminders from these superficial people after I had my daughter – it’s so nice I gave my husband his “own” child.

What? I gave my husband two children. Yes, one may not have his genes but has every bit of his characteristics and soul. He’s been my son’s father for so many more years than he has been my daughter’s father. The love he has for them is the same – unconditional. They are equal in his eyes, and in his heart, and nothing hurts him more than people reminding him that “our” son is not his.

It further infuriates me when my son is constantly reminded by peers, outsiders and, yes, sometimes our very own family that his sister is a “half-sister”.

Recently, during another one of those experiences, my son excitedly introduced his 3-year-old sister to a friend. The friend’s response was: “But she’s not your real sister, she is your half-sister; and your father is not your real father, but your stepfather. You are not his blood.”

What does that even mean? How in the world is his sister not his real sister when they were both formed in my womb, took all my blood and came out of my body?

All that’s different is the one chromosome they got was from different people. And how can his father, after being in his life for 10 years and loving him like a father should love a son, with all of him, not be his real father?

To my son, the concept of “half-sister” or “stepdad” is foreign to him because, in all aspects, she is his sister and his father is his father, period; not half anything and not step anything.

At that last encounter recently, I confronted this obviously negatively conditioned child’s mother.

Her response: “Don’t forget who you are. You have two children from two different men and that’s the truth. Don’t forget that your children are not blood and my son just told the truth.”

Forget? How can I forget? I was there when they were conceived. I know exactly who I made them with, but I also know exactly who I raised them with.

I raised them in a solid home with both a mother and father and we raised them to love each other as siblings, and as a family, unconditionally.

Yet these are the same people who will put up posts saying: “Family is not about blood. It’s about the people in your life who want you in theirs, the ones who accept you for who you are. They are the ones who would do anything to see you smile and love you no matter what.”

Or “family is anyone who loves you unconditionally”.

They are the same people who try to be politically correct by saying “we are all equal”, “all our blood is red”, “we were all created as God’s children”.

We fight for equality, against prejudices and to be treated as one. We praise adoption and commend those adoptive parents for their noble act of love.

We don’t refer to their children as not their own, but then we cause division and segregation within a family, between siblings and parents by attaching labels like “half ” and “step” to them.

How does that make any sense?

For me, the real heroes are the ones who can accept another person’s biological child and step up to the plate someone else left on the table.

A parent is not defined as the person who makes a child but rather a person, who extends their heart and time to help a child through anything.

Blood doesn’t make you a parent. Being a parent comes from the heart. Any fool can make a baby. It takes a special person to raise a child. They are not average people.

They chose to love these children even though they didn’t have to and for that they deserve respect and the greatest honour of being recognised for who they really are. The real parent.

Children don’t have to come through you to be yours. They can come to you and be everything you ever dreamed off. Love is unconditional.

It’s not a step. It’s an act and when it is given wholeheartedly there is nothing more real. No half-measures.

You choose life!