Coming Home to Dixie

February 26th is a very special day in our family. It’s what we call “Adoption Day”—the day the court finalized our adoption and our girls became legally ours.

This year marks five years.

Five years since we heard the judge declare what our hearts already knew to be true. Five years since the paperwork caught up with love. Five years of laughter, tears, growth, setbacks, breakthroughs, and countless ordinary days that have stitched us together into a family.

In those five years, we’ve moved across the country—from California to Mississippi. We’ve traded suburbia for 90 acres of rolling land, sheep in the pasture, and now even a mini pig rooting around the yard. My little girls are not so little anymore. One is a teenager. The other is a pre-teen. Their baby faces have given way to young women finding their voices, their style, and their independence.

Adopting them has been the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine. As a former foster child who was adopted at eight years old, I always knew I wanted to adopt. I wanted to give what I longed for. I wanted to be the steady place, the safe place, the soft place to land.

And in many ways, I feel fulfilled. Being their mother is the greatest honor of my life.

But if I am to be brutally honest, it has also been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

The girls come from traumatic beginnings. They carry stories in their bodies and nervous systems that sometimes speak louder than words. The term “special needs” is broad, and it shows up differently each day—sometimes in big emotional waves, sometimes in quiet withdrawal, sometimes in defiance that is really fear.

I often say that even though I didn’t carry them in my belly or go through labor in the traditional sense, my labor has been ongoing and constant.

It is the labor of the heart.

I tell them, “I may not be your belly mama, but I am your heart mama.”

And that labor of the heart can feel all-consuming. There are days when the pressure feels crushing—when the needs feel endless, when I question whether I am enough, when I am physically and emotionally wrung out.

But labor, by its very nature, produces something.

It produces life. It produces growth. It produces something beautiful that did not exist before.

The sweetness comes in the quiet moments—the spontaneous hugs and the laughter around the Monopoly board.  It comes when they choose to trust me with their fears. It comes when I see them begin to believe that we are permanent.

Five years later, our lives are irrevocably changed. We are bonded not just by paperwork, but by shared struggle and shared joy. By hard conversations and second chances. By forgiveness and faith.

February 26th is special.

It’s the day we celebrate not perfection, but perseverance.
Not ease, but commitment.
Not fairy tales, but something better—real love that stays.

Here’s to five years.
Here’s to labor of the heart.
Here’s to Family Ever After. 💕