My biggest fan club, the only folks on earth who never question the size of our family and the people who know me best are my 39 children. Our family is spread out from ages 5 to 34, I’ve obviously never had all of my children live with me at any one time and I’ve had the benefit of being in my fourth decade now of parenting.

Starting in the early seventies with an only child until she was 14 in 1987, now twenty years later, I’ve watched most of my children grow up. I’m home now with my last batch of darlings, ages 5-18.

I’ve explained our numbers many times. When one adopts Hispanic sibling groups, one’s family rapidly increases.

I am absolutely positive that I am done adopting yet I remain deeply sad about the millions of children who won’t find families. I cringe at horrible news stories such as the four children in DC and the four children in Alabama. Eight children are dead.

People think I’m nuts for setting myself up for the heartache and disappointment often involved in the adoption of older children, but their distaste for what I do seems to be daily reflected in society’s disdain for children. Either they’re thought of as nuisances or worse yet they are discarded, hurt, abused, neglected and abandoned.

I deeply appreciate everyone in the adoption world, all their efforts in adoption and the pure dedication to this stratum of society in which we’ve found ourselves. You wouldn’t be reading this if I weren’t talking about you.

Everyone who even smiles at an adopted child, who takes time out to help foster children, or who lovingly tend to their birth children are included in my vast admiration for all parents.

I suppose I shouldn’t have bothered looking at newspapers today, they all seemed full of terrible news and atrocities. As my own children surround me on this rainy night, finishing homework, full of a home cooked supper of penne pasta, corn and black beans in a garlic tomato sauce, topped with black skillet cornbread and Granny Smith apples for dessert, on a rare night when there seem to be no fusses or problems, I can smile with gratitude that this is the life I chose.

Photo Credit Cindy Bodie