The Beginning.

It's hard to say exactly when I knew that my children would come to me through adoption. Sometimes I joke it's because the first Cabbage Patch Kid I was given as a child was black, but most of the time I tell people that there are a handful of things I've known to be true in my life, and that my children would not be biological is one of these things. *

Long before getting married Eric and I discussed having children- being my best friend, he already knew my feelings about adoption, and he was surprisingly (to me) agreeable and felt no need to have biological children.

Approaching thirty we decided that it was time. I knew virtually nothing about how to actually go about adopting, only that I wanted to do it. I picked up a couple of books and started searching the internet for Houston adoption agencies. The more I read, the more I didn't find what we were looking for. I'm a high school teacher at an inner city school and I know a lot about cycles of abuse and poverty from my students. That's when I checked out the DePelchin site. DePelchin serves students at my school in the teen parent program and our health clinic.

So, long story shorter. . .We ended up at an orientation meeting at DePelchin. When DeNita said, "If you're here for us to find you a child, you're in the wrong place. We're not about finding children for families. We're about finding families for children," we knew we were in the right place.

And that's where this journey began.

*I've also known that I'd be a special education teacher and that I'd marry my best friend.