When David was 30, he was a kindergarten teacher in a rough part of LA. He decided that, despite being a single man, there must be something he could do to relieve the suffering of a child in foster care and chose to pursue adoption for a child in need. It was the first step […]
adoption
#27: Everything Changes
Four and a half years ago, Jill stood on the sidewalk and watched as another family drove away with the little boy she had given birth to days before. While pregnant, she had been unemployed, depressed, and certain she could not care for a child the way he deserved to be cared for. But the […]
#20: Before, After, & Then After
Natalie was 19 when she got pregnant. Plans to marry her boyfriend quickly fell through and she was left with a choice to keep the baby or place the baby in a closed adoption. With her parents’ help, she chose adoption. And then she found out it was actually twins. And that there might be […]
#19: “I Could Bring Him to His Family”
I knew that it wouldn’t do me any good to say, well, I’m going to have a baby and then I’ll figure out my life because I’d already made pretty much made a solid decision that I was going to place him for adoption and I didn’t want to put my life on hold any longer.
Twenty-Three Years
by Ana Nelson I married at 19, and because I was a young Mormon woman at BYU with a very high level of buy-in to the culture, I felt a lot of pressure to start adding children to our family fairly quickly. I believed using birth control was fine … but everybody around me was […]
#9: “My Joy Is Always Tainted” (part 2 of 2)
In episode 8, Misty told us about how when she was 18, she was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that made it a really bad idea for her to have biological children, and about the first few disappointments she and her husband went through as they pursued growing their family through adoption. In this episode […]
#8: “I Don’t Want You To Bear Children” (part 1 of 2)
At 18, Misty was a college freshman enjoying the freedom of life away from home for the first time. Then she got sick, and her life changed dramatically. One result: she could no longer safely bear children. Instead she and her husband have adopted 3 children—and brought many others into their family as well.