My daughter, Robin, came to us when she was six years old. We were her tenth family. This year for a school project she created a piece for a website called, “This I Believe”. This is her story, completely unedited.
THIS I BELIEVE
By Robin Riley
Ninilchik Middle School, 7th grade
There are kids in the world that don’t have parents. That don’t have a mother that tucks them in at night and a father who teaches them how to cut their food. I have both of those things now but I didn’t always. I once upon a time felt I didn’t belong and I never would. I blamed myself for my parents mistakes (the parents I never really knew). I would think that they didn’t want me or that if I was a better child they wouldn’t have given me up.
You see people sometimes do things without thinking of the consequences for others like my birth mother when she was pregnant with me and she did things like drink and use drugs, which affected me. At age 9 I could barely read and the teachers told my caring new parents that I would probably never be able to read but little did they know in the years to come I would spend hours reading and when I would finish a book I would find another and then another. I think my new family showed me something and that was if someone tells you that you can’t do something go out of your way to prove them wrong.
My new family gave me strength to know that it’s not my fault for my birth parents mistakes. At this point in my life I actually thank them for giving me up because my life is so much better with my new family.
I believe in adoption because I know what it’s like to have your hopes and faith in people stomped on and crushed. But to take a child in is to restore that hope and faith in them. It is like opening up their eyes to make them see color for the first time—to show them the real meaning of the word love and to make them realize that there are so many things in life that they can conquer. When you take in a child, you become their foundation. This…I believe.
