I can’t remember when I first decided I wanted to adopt children once I was an adult. It seems like the idea has always been there. It just feels right. The idea of accepting another into your heart and home is beautiful to me. The bond between adoptive parent and adopted child seems almost as if it would be stronger than biological parent and child. To know that you do not belong genetically to that person and yet they love you just as much as if you shared DNA, to me seems like an even stronger love.

Other sixteen-year-olds don’t exactly understand the beauty of the concept, though. Most of the time, the reaction I get when I reveal I want to adopt someday is a scrunched up nose and a, “Why?” Once I was asked if I was adopted myself. I’m not. I’m from the average 2 parent, 3 kid, 2 dog family. But I have experienced the value of belonging to others who don’t share my blood.

Another time I was asked why I would want to adopt if I was perfectly capable of having kids myself. That person missed the point entirely. It’s not about the ability to have kids at all. It’s about giving a home to someone who desperately needs one. It’s about giving your love to someone who has none. It’s about each and every one of those children in orphanages, whose parents are dead, or don’t want them. Every single one of them deserves to be a part of a family, genetic or not. That’s what it’s about: being a decent human being. In fact, it’s about being more than decent. It’s about being open and loving enough to take on the extra cost, responsibility and emotional baggage that your new son or daughter may have.

I think the people who want to know why on earth I would adopt have tiny hearts. They can only give out a very small amount of love, and they think that it can only go to those who share their genes. But I know better. I know that I can love my own flesh and blood, but still have plenty of love left over for so many others. They can’t see the beauty that I do. They are blind to the intensity of the love it takes to bring an outsider into your family, to make them your own.
That is what truly makes a family, to accept each other, despite many differences; to love each other unconditionally no matter what happens in the future, or what happened in the past; and to be together because you want to be, not because your blood says you have to. Because blood isn’t everything.