Adoption: Bound by love.

Bound by love.

I know that adoption will not heal all a child's wounds of being abandoned, it certainly didn't heal all of mine.  Speaking from experience, it didn't heal my sorrow of not being able to conceive either.  Adoption brought me face-to-face with a women, my adoptive mom, who wanted to love a child.  In my case, she put her arms around me and my older brother.  Bound by love is my depiction of adoption and how wanting to love and wanting to be loved allowed us to bond together.  It is how I also see my relationship with my own daughters.  I can't take away their sorrow and their desire to see their birth mother and to know her.  I can stand together with them, and with love, help them through their years of confusion and pain.  I came across this quote that seemed to say it perfectly:

It has been said that adoption is more like a marriage than a birth: two (or more) individuals, each with their own unique mix of needs, patterns, and genetic history, coming together with love, hope, and commitment for a joint future. You become a family not because you share the same genes, but because you share love for each other.  Joan McNamara, Adoptive parent