Do you believe miracles still happen?
I didn’t. Not for a long time. But maybe that’s because when you’re six going on seven and living life through the lens of broken dreams, walking in perpetual darkness and carrying the burdens of deep seeded trauma that most children in my world back then couldn’t even comprehend, miracles seem like biblical stories meant for other “normal” people. My “world” was shattered into unfathomable fragments I didn’t understand—pieces scattered across time, families, school, and provinces, ripped apart by institutions, bureaucracy, and the weight of being unwanted and rejected. I wasn’t just a child in foster care. I was a ghost passing through doorways, case files passed across desks, a whisper of a name in crowded places and classrooms where no one knew who I really was. I was nothing more than just a “blip”.
See, let me tell you a small story, but don’t worry, I will leave out some of the more “deeply traumatic” details that are “too dark” and “too heavy” for many including the younger readers.
See, when I was six years old, everything I understood about the world I was living in had already been undone, unravelled and so blown apart that life itself never made sense. I had just moved from a small town in South Alberta to small city on the outskirts of Edmonton, Alberta called Sherwood Park in Scona Glen Estates—a name that meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, just another stop in a long chain of moves from, institutions, and unfamiliar houses with unfamiliar faces spanning many provinces and a few U.S. States. But, by then, I had already learned that belonging was a fast fleeting thing, that “home” was just a word adults used before disappearing again in the under-recesses of society. The system I was caught in saw my name as a number and not my soul. I was another difficult file. (Although I lived with the one foster family I adored, The Wawrykos…my second family for life)
Another placement. Another face I’d never see again. Another… failed outcome, just waiting to happen. That’s how it always was. I never stayed anywhere long enough to grow roots, let alone relationships. The truth is, I didn’t even know what a friend was. I’d see other kids with their inside jokes and after-school plans, but that world wasn’t mine. I was always the new one, the different one, the one who didn’t belong. I was just trying to survive.
And honestly… not much has changed.
Even now, all these years later, I still don’t really have friends. Not the kind who stay. Not the kind who see past the story and stay anyway. Most people don’t know what to do with someone like me. My life is heavy. My past is hard. And when people find out about it—about the trauma, the labels, the years I spent moving and surviving instead of growing up—they get uncomfortable. They pull away. Some are kind at first, but eventually, they choose distance. They choose not to try.
People fear what they don’t understand. And I’ve come to learn that I make people afraid—not because I try to—but because I remind them that pain exists. That brokenness exists. That the world isn’t fair. And instead of leaning in, they leave.
It hurts.
It hurts more than I can ever explain.
Because no matter how much I try to be kind or open or strong, it feels like people only see the shadows of who I used to be. They don’t take the time to know who I am now. And so I live a life marked by absence. I walk through days with no one to call, no one to sit with, no one who truly knows me.
That’s what loneliness does—it doesn’t just whisper that you’re alone.
It convinces you that you’re unworthy of ever being known.
But, that year moving to Sherwood Park was a precursor for something that would change many things in the future as I was placed in a new school—Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School. “OLPH”. It’s funny how certain names imprint themselves like ghostly fingerprints on the heart. For me, OLPH wasn’t just a school. It was the place where something quietly began to change, even though I didn’t yet have the words to name it.
It was in a small unknown teacher’s class, Mrs. Clare King’s Grade One classroom that the first thread of a miracle being woven by God in the background was quietly, patiently spun that would later unravel itself later.
I didn’t know it then—not really. How could I? I was a severely autistic little child, almost non-verbal, already carrying trauma so deep it felt like it lived in my bones. I was developmentally delayed, overwhelmed by learning disabilities, and lost inside social confusion that made even the simplest classroom task feel like trying to breathe in a burning building. Life didn’t just feel hard—it felt apocalyptic. Like walking through a relentless blizzard with no coat, no compass, blindfolded, while fireworks exploded around me and the ground trembled beneath my feet. Every moment was survival. Every day was a storm no one else could see. My mind worked in ways that my foster parents, social workers, psychologists or even teachers didn’t always understand. I melted down easily, couldn’t follow even the basic group instructions well, and often retreated into silence when the noise of the world overwhelmed my already-frayed senses. I wasn’t defiant—I was drowning in an ocean that was more of an abyss. But few people, if anyone even saw that.
But, Mrs. King did.
She didn’t see a burden or a problem to fix. She saw a child who just needed some room to breathe. She saw a spark worth protecting. In a sea of educators who were already overwhelmed and overburdened, Mrs. King made time—not just for lesson plans, but for me. Time to learn at my own pace. Time to process. Time to just be.
She noticed the things no one else did. That I didn’t know how to tie my shoes. That I often didn’t eat because I didn’t come to school with lunches at times (as at few times I lived with my biological father as we were too poor to eat), and with some foster homes things were just as bad (except The Wawrykos). This was the 80’s Thing’s were never simple. Also, I couldn’t sit still because my body didn’t feel safe anywhere. So she brought me lunch. She taught me to tie those stubborn laces with gentle hands and infinite patience, and she even helped me to read and start to speak. She didn’t raise her voice when I flinched. She didn’t sigh in frustration when I forgot simple instructions. She sat with me. And through her quiet, steady presence, she showed me that I wasn’t invisible. That I was worth noticing. But at the same time. I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t make a single one, nor had that ability as I was always bullied, teased and sometimes I would just hide from the world at recess.
And then she did something no other teacher had dared to do.
She held me back a year.
Not as punishment. Not as failure. But as mercy.
Because she knew what most others didn’t: that I had been shuffled through too many homes, too many schools, too many broken transitions to ever have a real chance to stabilize. I was constantly playing catch-up in a game I never had the rules for. I wasn’t behind because I couldn’t learn—I was behind because life had never slowed down long enough for me to try.
Mrs. King gave me something no one else ever had… a second chance in a system that didn’t even believe in firsts. In a world where kids like me were thrown from one placement to the next like broken furniture no one had the tools to fix, she offered me something rare and almost impossible—a pause. A breath. A moment where I wasn’t being judged, labeled, or moved along. She held me back a year—not to punish, but to protect. She knew I was suffocating under the weight of everything I was never allowed to process. She knew that what I needed wasn’t to keep up—but to stop running.
She carved out space for me in a world that had only ever tried to erase me.
But now, in the world I live in today, that space keeps getting smaller—almost nonexistent. The story I carry, “this one”, the one written with the least amount of scars and survival, is often treated like it’s too much. Too dark. Too complicated. I work at a place where I once hoped I could share my testimony, to let others see the miracle behind the pain, how a hopeless situation had hope, how through resilience and endurance brought something more but also…, something else. But I was told—gently, honestly, yet firmly—that I couldn’t. That my story was again, too heavy. That it might scare others. That it wasn’t “appropriate.”
So I must now stay silenced. Censored. Erased.
Not because I want to—but because I have to. I’m not allowed to speak aloud the very thing that made me who I am. And it hurts. Deeply. Because it feels like the same erasure I once knew as a child—just quieter. More polite. But just as painful, and still, that deep sense of some sort, being rejected. Like I am most my life.
The truth is, carrying this story often keeps me on the outside of friendships too. People don’t know how to hold space for it. They keep their distance, unsure of what to say or afraid of saying the wrong thing. And so, instead of being seen, I am avoided. Instead of being invited in, I am left standing just outside the circle—watching others connect while I remain unseen, unheard.
My past is not something I chose. But it follows me like a shadow, closing doors before I even reach them. People choose not to know me—not really—because to know me would mean acknowledging a truth that makes them uncomfortable.
And so I live a kind of quiet loneliness, not because I want to—but because the world has told me, again and again, that my truth is too much.
Too much to speak.
Too much to share.
Too much to befriend.
And in that silence, I sometimes wonder if I’ve been erased all over again.
but back then…It was a small mercy wrapped in enormous sacrifice—a teacher willing to risk professional scrutiny, to stand up in a system that measured success by academic checkboxes and timelines. And all for a little girl who flinched at the sound of the bell, who sat with her hands clenched tight under the desk, who didn’t know how to ask for help in the language the world demanded. Of course, I didn’t know any of that then. I was six years old, and my life was one long sensory scream—too bright, too loud, too unpredictable. I didn’t understand politics or policies. I didn’t even understand why I had to keep moving. But somewhere deep inside me, buried beneath the survival instincts and shutdowns, I remember something more powerful than words.
I remember the feeling of being seen—and not flinched away from.
She didn’t look through me like so many others had. She didn’t send me away when I melted down. She didn’t label me “too much” and push me toward the door.
She stayed.
And in the middle of a world that had already written me off as damaged goods, that one act—that one person—became the thread I held onto in the darkness.
That feeling would carry me through the years to come.
Because I would eventually leave Mrs. King’s classroom not knowing whether our paths would ever cross again. I didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. And after that… life got worse before it got better. But her kindness, that brief flicker of light, stayed tucked inside me—like the last ember of a fire refusing to go out.
Between those transitory years, I was caught in a tangled storm of legal warfare—an endless tug-of-war between the Alberta government and my biological parents, bouncing from one foster home to another, group homes to an orphanage a few times and the Glenrose Children’s Rehabilitation hospital due to being severely autistic but after months later would be moved out an into another home. I became a name inked into court documents, a number in a docket, a child seen more by systems than by eyes that truly cared. There were hearings and appeals, angry voices in courtrooms, lawyers scribbling on yellow notepads while I sat quietly in the back—barely noticed, but completely affected. Adults argued over what to do with me, psychologists would give me many labels, doctors pumped my full of drugs and more, yet no one really asked me what I “needed”. My future was debated like a transaction, passed between legal hands like a complicated case file no one wanted to touch for too long.
There was yelling. Confusion. Betrayal. The aching silence after a judge’s decision that pulled me from one home to the next like a leaf in a whirlwind. I remember being shuffled through waiting rooms and interview offices, with social workers whose names changed faster than the seasons. I began to stop learning their names. What was the point? None of them stayed. None of them ever made promises they could keep.
Every time I thought something might stick—maybe this home, maybe this family—it crumbled. A foster parent would say I was “too much,” or “too sensitive,” or “too unpredictable.” It didn’t matter how hard I tried to be good. The moment I struggled, the placement would break. I was learning that love had conditions. That stability came with expiration dates. That being myself—autistic, anxious, traumatized—was something that needed to be hidden if I wanted to be safe. But hiding didn’t help either.
My autism added layers of complexity that the 1980s simply wasn’t ready—or willing—to understand. Back then, autism wasn’t discussed the way it is now. There was no public awareness, no spectrum-based understanding, and almost no compassion. Most people hadn’t even heard the word “autism,” (it was referred to as Asperger’s) and if they had, it was usually followed by words like “institution,” “mental illness,” or “uneducable.” I wasn’t seen as neurodivergent. I was seen as broken.
Instead of being supported in school or within the community, I was pathologized. Misunderstood. Misdiagnosed. And worst of all—discarded. My behaviours, which were rooted in sensory overload, anxiety, trauma, and a desperate need for routine, were interpreted as aggression, disrespect, or emotional instability. People didn’t see a child who was struggling. They saw a problem. An inconvenience.
And so I was redirected—not into therapy, not into community supports, but into institutions. I was placed in settings like the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton. Not because I was physically sick. Not because I had a medical condition. But because I had become “unplaceable” in the foster care system. I had been rejected too many times. Foster homes didn’t know what to do with me. So they sent me somewhere they thought could contain me.
But Glenrose wasn’t home. It wasn’t nurturing. It wasn’t a place of healing. It was sterile. Clinical. Cold.
I remember the smell of disinfectant and stale cafeteria trays. The hard linoleum floors that echoed too loudly when the staff walked by. I remember fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead like wasps, and the endless clicking of heels on tile. There were no bedtime stories. No goodnight kisses. No warmth. Just charts and assessments. Just being studied—watched for behaviours, documented for deficits.
In those institutional settings, I wasn’t treated like a child. I was a case. An object to be managed, subdued, restrained if necessary. The staff were not cruel, but they were trained to observe, not to comfort. I was given diagnoses and labels that followed me like a shadow: “high-risk,” “behavioural,” “oppositional,” “attachment disordered.” Each one stamped me with another reason why I couldn’t stay anywhere for long. Each one told the world I was someone to avoid.
I became a warning instead of a welcome.
And that doesn’t just go away—not even now.
That legacy still clings to me in ways most people can’t see. Especially when it comes to friendship. Because when you’ve spent your childhood being told—directly or indirectly—that you are too much, too complicated, too intense… you start to believe it. You start to see yourself as a burden before anyone else can. You start to hold back, hide parts of yourself, second-guess every conversation. You become painfully aware of how heavy your story sounds. How people flinch when they hear it. How their eyes change when they learn what you’ve lived through.
And so, even now—decades later—I still struggle to make and keep friends. Not because I don’t want connection, but because I’ve learned that not everyone can sit with the weight of a story like mine. People want lighthearted. They want “normal.” And sometimes, they don’t know how to respond when someone like me tells the truth.
They don’t know what to do with a survivor.
So they leave. Or they drift away. Or they stay quiet when I need them to reach out.
It’s not always their fault. But it still hurts.
Because at my core, I’m still that same child—longing to be known, but terrified of what will happen if I let someone close.
This is what trauma does. It doesn’t just bruise the past—it shapes the present. It builds invisible walls around your heart and whispers that if people knew the whole truth, they’d run.
And far too often… they do. They don’t want to know, they fear me because they fear my pain, my damaged life.
But beneath all those labels, there was still a child. A child who wanted to feel safe. A child who wanted someone to look at her and see more than a problem. I wanted to be chosen. I wanted someone—anyone—to look beyond the trauma and see that I wasn’t broken beyond repair. That I was still in there. Still trying.
What the world didn’t see in those years was how deeply I wanted to believe that somewhere, somehow, things could get better. That I wasn’t doomed to live out my life behind locked doors and labels. That someone would choose me not despite who I was, but because they were willing to understand who I was.
There was a time in my life when hope felt like a fairy tale—something written for other people, in softer stories, with gentler endings. For me, life wasn’t gentle. It was jagged. And it was real. I came from a place most people don’t come back from—a place where children are shuffled like paperwork, where trust is shattered before it ever has a chance to form, and where love is a word whispered in courtrooms but rarely lived out in homes.
When I was six years old, I didn’t really understand what love was. Not real love. Not the kind you see in storybooks or hear about in church. I didn’t know what it felt like to be safe in someone’s arms or to be chosen without condition. I didn’t even understand how the world worked, because my world had been shaped by something else—something darker.
You see, I had already lived through things that most kids my age couldn’t imagine. I had been moved from home to home, school to school, never staying long enough to unpack a suitcase—if I even had one. I was hurting, confused, and afraid, though I didn’t always have the words to explain it. The pain I carried lived mostly in silence—in the way I flinched when people got too close, or how I didn’t know how to look someone in the eyes. It was the kind of darkness you don’t see with your eyes, but you feel it inside, like a storm that never stops.
Because of my autism and trauma, the adults around me didn’t always understand me. And when people don’t understand something, they often label it instead. I was called “high-risk,” “unplaceable,” “too much.” Decisions about my life were made by strangers holding clipboards, not by people who knew my heart. I didn’t have parents. I had files. And deep down, I began to believe what the world seemed to be saying: that I was broken, and maybe I didn’t belong anywhere.
I didn’t know that God loved me.
Not yet.
Not in a way I could feel or name.
But looking back now, I see He was there the whole time—in the tiny sparks of kindness, in the teacher who noticed me, in the stranger who made a phone call, in the moments when I almost gave up and somehow didn’t. I didn’t recognize it then, but God’s love was quietly moving through the cracks of my brokenness. He didn’t wait for me to be “fixed” before showing up. He came into the darkness, sat with me in it, and began gently pointing me toward the light.
By all earthly measures, I was a hopeless case. Hope wasn’t a word in my vocabulary of life at the time.
And yet—somewhere in that wilderness of abandonment and institutions, something else lived beneath the grief. A flicker. A whisper. Something stubborn. Something sacred. That something was hope. Not loud, not grand. But steady. Fragile, yes—but impossible to extinguish. It was the thing that carried me through the endless shuffle of courtrooms, group homes, and emergency placements. Through the white walls of hospitals and the cold silence of nights without family. That hope—faint as it was—became my light in a world where no one else seemed to carry one for me.
But it wasn’t just hope alone that kept me going.
It was God.
Even when I didn’t understand Him. Even when I was angry. Even when I couldn’t pray. He was there. Watching. Waiting. Guiding.
And when the time came, He placed the right people at the right crossroads—teachers, mentors, strangers with unexpected compassion. And eventually, He gave me the courage to reclaim my story. To write it not from a place of bitterness, but from a place of resurrection.
That’s what my book I wrote “Light of Winter’s Heart” became for me.
Not just a book. Not just a novel. But a testimony.
A story born from the ashes of my own. A small and bit of a semi-fictional reflection of a very real and brutal past—told through symbols and characters that carried my wounds, my prayers, my unanswered questions. It’s the voice I never had as a child. The light I wished someone had shone into my darkness. It’s the miracle of finding beauty where there was once only brokenness.
I wrote Light of Winter’s Heart to tell the truth—not just about the pain, but about the God who carried me through it. About the quiet kind of faith that doesn’t shout, but stays. About the kind of resilience that doesn’t come from within, but is gifted from above when you think you have nothing left.
The story of the book is set in 1989—the same year everything changed for me in real life. The year I nearly gave up. The year I ran. The year I was going to be sent to juvenile detention because the world had run out of places for me.
But it was also the year I was adopted. The year someone finally said, “I choose you.” The year God made a way where there was none.
For many, 1989 was just another year.
But for me?
It was the year my miracle began. The year God made things happen.
I had just moved from British Columbia, transferred out of a group home setting into yet another temporary foster placement in Edmonton for the Christmas holidays. At that point, holidays held no warmth. Christmas lights were meaningless flickers in windows that weren’t mine. Trees were dressed in decorations I would never help hang. Carols played in houses that didn’t echo with my laughter. Christmas, for me, wasn’t festive. It was just another reminder of how different my life was. Another house. Another table I wasn’t really invited to. I didn’t expect to stay long—and I didn’t. I didn’t have friends, nor family. It was just me and God.
After a traumatic incident during that winter—one of the darkest moments of my life—I ran away from my foster placement, overwhelmed, panicked, and feeling completely unseen. I wandered through the freezing Alberta cold in the middle of a blizzard, lost not only in geography but in spirit. I nearly froze to death that night. And in many ways, a part of me spiritually did as well. The part that still hoped someone would come rescue me without being asked. But a spiritual encounter saved me and changed my life and path.
Following that event, I was placed in the Atonement Home in January 1989—a faith-based group care facility operated by Catholic Social Services and the Nuns of the Atonement. It was meant to be a temporary placement, a stopgap, but something shifted inside me there. I had been through too much to keep waiting for adults to fix things. For the first time, I realized that no one was coming to save me unless I fought to be saved. So I did something most twelve-year-olds would never dream of doing: I challenged the system itself.
I began the legal process of pursuing what had never been done before in Alberta—becoming the province’s first open adoption case. Open adoption, at the time, was virtually unheard of in our province’s foster care system. Everything was closed, sealed, anonymous. But I didn’t want to vanish into the system like so many others. I didn’t want to be another lost name in a government file. I wanted to know who was adopting me. I wanted to be seen. I wanted the truth.
I initiated legal proceedings against the Alberta government. Not because I was brave, but because I had run out of choices. The alternative was being sent to the Yellowhead Youth Centre (YYC)—a juvenile detention facility in Edmonton where children deemed “unplaceable” or “too high-risk” were sent. It was never supposed to be a home, yet for too many kids like me, it could have become the end of the road.
I was twelve years old. No child should ever have to fight for the right to be loved, and with all I had gone through, “love” was a foreign concept. No child should have to prove they deserve a family. But that was the reality I lived—and the fight I chose.
During this pivotal moment, my story began to spread. I was invited to appear on a television segment called Wednesday’s Child, a national initiative created in partnership with child welfare agencies to profile children awaiting adoption. The segment aired regularly, featuring vulnerable children and youth whose cases had become critical. They shared their hopes, their dreams, and in between the lines, the heartbreak of wanting to be chosen.
It was terrifying. Standing in front of a camera, trying to look brave when inside I was shaking. Speaking into a microphone about what it meant to be forgotten. I felt like I was laying bare every wound I carried. But sometimes, miracles begin in the unlikeliest places.
That broadcast became the spark.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, staff members from my old school—OLPH—saw the segment. The school secretary and librarian recognized my name, my voice, my face. And they remembered someone who had once cared about me deeply, Mrs. Clare King.
They told her about the show. About me.
And the rest? The rest was the beginning of the miracle.
As fate would have it, someone saw that episode. But not just anyone—the someone. The someone who had once held space for me when the world had none to give. It wasn’t a social worker or a government official. It wasn’t someone from a placement agency or a legal firm. It was the people who had once been on the periphery of my story—secretaries and librarians at my old school. Ordinary women with extraordinary memories. They remembered the quiet girl from Mrs. King’s classroom—the one who used to sit with her head down, fidgeting with the edge of her sleeves. The one who flinched at loud sounds and couldn’t always speak in full sentences. They remembered me.
And they remembered someone else too.
They reached out to David and Clare King, the teacher who had once been the only adult to truly see me—not just my behaviours or diagnoses, but the heart beneath all of it. The teacher who had packed me extra snacks, taught me how to tie my shoes, and gave me more than just a spot in her class—she gave me dignity. That phone call, made by people who could have easily dismissed the broadcast as someone else’s burden, changed everything.
The reconnection wasn’t instantaneous. This wasn’t a fairy tale. It was tentative, careful, full of hesitation on both sides. There were letters. Phone calls. Carefully worded conversations with social workers and legal representatives. There were doubts—about whether the system would allow it, about whether I would even let it happen. I had been through too much to trust easily. They had lives of their own, and I was a complicated child with years of trauma strapped invisibly to my back.
But slowly, something began to shift. A door opened where all others had slammed shut.
Over the months that followed, paperwork was filed, background checks completed, home assessments done. It was bureaucratic and clinical—but behind all the forms and signatures, a story of profound hope was unfolding. There were fears. Honest ones. Could they take on a child so deeply bruised by the system? Would I reject them before they could embrace me? Would the courts interfere? Would the government approve an adoption so unconventional, so late in the game, and so publicly challenged?
There were tears, too. Mine. Theirs. Tears of exhaustion. Of hesitation. Of longing. Of love, aching to be real but still waiting on permission from strangers in suits.
And there was the ever-present threat of the Yellowhead Youth Centre. My clock was ticking. If things didn’t move fast enough—if just one more door slammed, one more judge could have ruled the wrong way—I would be sent away. Locked into a juvenile detention facility not because I had committed a crime, but because the world didn’t know what else to do with children like me. Children too hard to place. Too complicated. Too broken.
Time was running out. But God, in all his wisdom, like usual, made All Things possible.
And then—just when it felt like the whole world was going to fail me one final time—the miracle happened.
Mrs. King—Clare—and her husband David stepped into the chaos like a lighthouse in a storm. They didn’t just offer a home. They offered family. Real, unshakable, imperfect, healing family. Not because it was easy. Not because the system made it simple. But because they believed that love was worth the risk. That I was worth the risk.
Weeks before the government was set to send me away for good, my adoption was finalized. I remember sitting in the courtroom on the day it became official. I didn’t cry—I had used up most of my tears by then. But there was a stillness in me I’d never felt before. A kind of fragile peace. I was no longer floating. I had landed.
It wasn’t the kind of adoption people like to talk about in feel-good news stories. It was messy, raw, and complex. I didn’t suddenly become a well-behaved, easy child. I still had triggers. I still had nights where I wanted to run, where the walls closed in and the past came roaring back in nightmares and sudden flinches. But they didn’t give up on me.
There were nights when Clare sat with me in silence because I couldn’t speak. Days when David gave me space without making me feel like a burden. Times when my behaviour tested every boundary, not because I wanted to push them away—but because I needed to know if they’d stay.
And they did.
They stayed when others ran. They fought for me when I couldn’t even lift my own hands. They showed me what it meant to be claimed—not out of obligation, but out of love.
Just like the character “Clara” in “Light of Winter’s Heart“, I too carried the weight of grief and longing, packed deep into the quiet corners of my soul. That book was born from the winters of my youth, from the cold days and colder nights when I wondered if I would ever feel safe. It’s the story of a girl who didn’t believe the world would ever catch her. And then, someone did.
Through Clare’s love. Through David’s strength. Through faith that flickered even in my darkest places. Through the bravery of ordinary people who made one phone call. Through the persistence of light.
today – Clare and David are my parents. My only parents. I love them. I am blessed and I thank them for everything. With God’s plan, they saved my life. Things could have been worse, if I hadn’t taken steps and listened, had faith, hope…and followed God’s will.
Today, I look back and I see every scar as a map that led me here. Every detour, every rejection, every cold night and courtroom bench—somehow, it all led me to that moment when a teacher and her husband chose me. Not because they had to. But because they wanted to.
And although this story, is a “simplified” story of a small blip of my life that is the “easy” part I talk about (that’s right, an easy part), this isn’t the worst of what I’ve had to endure in my life…
But this is my adoption story, this is the story of how God changed my life, and how I beat the odds.
I went from a hopeless situation where I thought all would be lost, to where hope because possible because with God, All things are possible.
But sadly, this is a story I’m not allowed to share—not really. My testimony of hope, faith, and resilience in the darkest of times is something I can only speak quietly, in hidden corners like this one. I can’t share it openly with others, not at work, not in groups, not in the spaces where stories are supposed to matter. We live in a bubble-wrapped world now, where anything too real, too raw, is considered too much.
And I’ve already lost too many friends for being honest. For telling even fragments of this truth.
I know I’ll likely lose more.
Because people get scared. Scared of my pain. Scared of the damage they think I am. Scared of what they don’t understand.
But despite everything… despite the silence, the fear, the rejection… I still carry this story. I still live it. And I still believe it matters.
Because this story is mine. And it’s not just about what I’ve survived.
It’s about the light that somehow never went out.
And this was the easy part, and God saw me through it.
So, do I believe you miracles now?
I hope so, because I absolutely do. Because I didn’t just live one.
I am one.
