We were very lucky to become adoptive parents to my beautiful baby girl when she was a brand spanking new baby. She has grown up knowing us as her mother and father and also with the knowledge that she was adopted at birth. We have always been straight forward and open with her about the subject of her adoption; she’s even met her birth mother. But that’s where the line of differences is drawn…by EVERY other means…she IS our daughter.

I never knew I could love another person as much as I love her; I never knew I’d be willing to sacrifice everything in my world to make hers better; I never knew a smile could warm my heart like hers, nor did I know just how much every little aspect in my life would change when I became a mom…but it did, regardless of the fact that my body did not carry her.

Granted I did not have the nine months of pregnancy, my body did not grow and expand as she grew within me, but my heart grew as much as any heart could grow, knowing that I would become a mother the way life intended me to become one. Why should it matter that my body did not create her or carry her? In my mind, it doesn’t.

She looks just like a female version of her father with a little bit of me tucked in around the edges; she’s beautiful, she’s sweet and kind, and she’s a good mix of both of her father and I, which also means no one can win an argument in the house because she also has adopted our logic as her own. When we’re out in public people always comment about how much she looks like her father and how she’s the mini version of me in her mannerisms and attitude.

Like any other child I’ve ever met, she’s a mix of both her father and me. Her taste of music is much like her father’s, but she’s also artistic like me. She likes to try everything either of us are doing for herself. She loves to cook like her grandmother, she has my sense of sarcasm and her dad’s curiosity with science and math. She loves to play with her cousins, she values everyone in our extended family…we’ve raised her the way we would have raised her even if she was our biological child. In our minds we see no difference.

It matters not to us or to those who know her or our family that she was not born from my body; what matters is the fact that she’s a kind, sweet, and sensitive person, truly interested in other people with an unbelievable bond to all animals and a desire to learn, grow and excel. In every single sense of the word, she IS our daughter; plain, simple and true. The fact that she is adopted is simply not an issue. Our adoptive family is just as solid, just as loving, and just as natural as everyone else’s, adoption aside, because to us it truly isn’t any different.

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