Louise's Speech

Good Morning. What a wonderful opportunity we have been given today, to acknowledge and honor adoption and family.

My name is Louise and I am the parent of six beautiful children. Three of our children were born to my husband and I, and three came home to us through adoption.

This journey we call parenting is truly an adventure -- with the ensuing exciting and sometimes frightening experiences. There is both the joy of the new vista - a child taking those first steps with their little feet or the first steps toward tentative attachment. There are the frustrations of losing our sense of direction and not having a map anywhere in the immediate vicinity -- our children's adolescent years are an adventure in and of themselves.

Today we are here to celebrate. While adoption is a celebration we must also understand that with adoption comes loss and pain. It teaches us to grow and to cry. It allows us to experience joy in ways we might never have dreamed and to know the meaning of grace.

I have watched as my beautiful brown eyed daughter laughs with her blond and fair skinned sisters, each finishing sentences for the other, each communicating in that way only siblings know how. They are sisters of the heart. I have seen my sons walk with one another, poking and annoying as only brothers know - they are surely brothers. I have listened as each of them have debated family vacation plans - they are family. All are my children.

As a family we have journeyed and have encountered racism and prejudice --subtle and not so subtle. We have also been blessed with the enormous generosity of our community, a community that includes the helping professions of social work, education and church, our village of an extended family of friends and relatives.

Adoption is a celebration. It is not a beginning, nor even a culmination. It is a continuance of relationship, growing and changing, of which we are all a part. As my eldest daughter expresses it, "it is an ongoing circle of hopes and dreams". If I may, I will finish with a short excerpt from a reading by Kahlil Gibran.

"Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. "You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow."

San Jose, California, USA. June 23rd of the year 2000.