So when one of my closest friends announced she was pregnant last month, I felt a mix of overwhelming joy with a slight tinge of hurt. You see, she and her partner had always been on the fence when it came to having children. When they decided to start trying a year ago, they did so with the intention of letting fate take charge. If they got pregnant, they got pregnant and if they didn’t, it just wasn’t meant to be. As she told me about her pregnancy journey she added, “I knew I wouldn’t be like you... I wouldn’t go to the ends of the world for a child”. It would be easy to think how unfair the universe is, that a couple who so desperately want children have to go through so much to have one... but this got me thinking. Maybe...just maybe, the world needs people like us. People who are willing to go through anything to have a child... maybe our child in Africa needs us too. The truth is; we probably wouldn’t be adopting if we could have children on our own. Now, it’s not because we would rather have biological children... absolutely not... it’s because the adoption process is so overwhelmingly challenging that it makes me want to cry on a weekly basis. If I didn’t think my child was, without a doubt, in Africa, I would have given up a dozen times already.
So maybe, life isn’t unfair after all... maybe life is just the way it’s supposed to be... and we just need to be reminded just how lucky we are.
- Danielle