Will I be lucky, will I not ? I’m just not so sure that ‘luck’ alone will help everyone.
“Why did my parent – the government, my children’s aid – rely on luck for me to have a permanent, stable, reliable family?”
My story is “one-of-a-kind”, nothing like it has happened in my region. People have told me that I am lucky, that I am blessed. How fortunate it was that the family that adopted my sister invited me to live with them. Invited me into their family. Adopted me by every means but maybe the legal. I used to graciously accept these sentiments.
But now, not so much, because now I find myself asking; “why did my parent – the government, my children’s aid – rely on luck for me to have a permanent, stable, reliable family?”
There are a lot of questions that I ask myself these days around this. With more than 10 years between us, I understand that my sister had a better chance at being adopted as a toddler than I did as a teen. I understand that anyone who wanted to adopt that young may not have been open to an older youth. Yet why did that have to come – potentially – at the cost of my connection with my sister? The only family in my life that I still felt truly connected to. I cared for my sister both as a sibling and as someone that I took care of.
Then one day – I was being told that they were looking for a family for her and that might mean that I may never see her again. It was one of the lowest points in my life as I could not imagine how much worse it might have have gotten without her. How I might not have the family that I do now if it weren’t for the fact that they were interested in me being a part of it.
I know that adoption, much less adoption with my sister, was not being considered for me. Likely I was considered too old by then - apparently being a teenager makes me too old to need a family. So maybe it is truly luck that brought me to my family, which in turn kept me with my sister.
I’m just not sure that ‘luck’ is enough for everyone.