The journey into adoption started for my parents, as it does with so many families: my mother and father desperately wanted to have kids, but they couldn't.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn't have parents.
Adoption has been a part of my life and a part of my family, so it was how I wanted to start. It felt natural and right to me.
My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them.
I always thought I would adopt. Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt.
If it gets to the point where I actually physically cannot have a child, there's plenty of children in the world that need a stable home and loving parent. I'm so down for adoption.
My mother desperately wanted children. She had a child that was stillborn - something I learned when I was looking through her 'effects' after she had died. It was then that I discovered my original birth certificate, which indicated the previous birth.
When I was younger, I thought every kid was adopted because that's all I've known. I have everything I need, so I never felt the need to have answers for what happened.
The adoption process was not an easy one. The paperwork took nine months. It's a full-time thing!
When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was - and that my real parents were going to come get me.
I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love.