Adoption is love and sacrifice

OPINION

SHELLEY — Today is national adoption day and I wanted to take a minute to tell you about the love and sacrifice that is adoption.

Nearly 30 years ago a young woman named Alison found out she was pregnant. She was still in high school, her parents were dealing with the aftermath of a divorce and she knew she was too young to be a mother.

I can only imagine the emotional turmoil that Alison must have been experiencing. Not to mention the social consequences a teenager faces when becoming pregnant.

Alison decided the best option for her baby was to be with a family that could give him the things she couldn’t.

Even having made her decision, she still faced pressures from her family to keep the baby. And if that wasn’t an option, her father and stepmother would adopt the baby. Her mother and father’s divorce left Alison’s relationship with her father strained. She wanted her baby to go to a new family.

While all of this was going on, Boyd and LeAnn, after a long struggle with infertility, were hoping to adopt a baby.

Adoption is a long, expensive, arduous process. It takes a toll on the families looking to adopt and mothers looking for a better life for their children.

The father of Alison’s baby had family friends who also happened to be Boyd’s aunt and Uncle. Through that connection, Boyd and LeAnn began corresponding with Alison. As Alison learned more about the couple, she decided they were the family she wanted to raise her baby.

When the day of the birth finally arrived, the hopeful adoptive parents anxiously waited at the hospital with Alison. It was a long, difficult birth. But when the baby finally arrived, the first word Boyd said was, simply, “Michael.”

Because of adoption laws when Alison gave birth, adoptive parents were not allowed to take the baby out of the hospital. Alison had to carry her baby in her arms out of the hospital and hand him over to Boyd and LeAnn.

As they left the hospital, LeAnn began to worry Alison wouldn’t go through with it. And who could blame her? She carried the baby for nine months. She gave birth to him. He was hers.

In the end, her desire for her baby to have a better life won. She handed the brand new baby to LeAnn.

I don’t know what my life would have been like if Alison had decided to keep me. I have no doubt I would have been loved, but I wouldn’t be the same man I am today. The experiences, the happiness, and the love I’ve experienced throughout my life, thanks to her decision, are second to none. I will always be grateful for her decision. She will always have a special place in my heart.

I’ve never met my birth mother, but I have met my biological grandfather, her father, and other members of my biological family. That has been a wonderful experience.

I would love to meet Alison someday so I could tell her how grateful I am, how much her sacrifice means to me and how much I love her.

I now have a family of my own: My beautiful wife, Allyson, my oldest, Izzy, my little boy, Declan, and my baby girl, GracyMeg. Someday, my wife and I hope a young mother will make the same loving sacrifice mine did and let us adopt her baby.