How adopting my daughter helped me reconnect with my roots
When I was a little girl, my appendix burst during surgery and I almost died on the operating table. My recovery was slow and complicated?my parents didn?t know if I?d live. During the weeks when I was in bed at the hospital?in great pain?my mom read a story to me about an older girl who grew up in the foster care system. She was afraid to be loved, but a couple took her in, gained her trust and eventually adopted her. I loved that story and I remember thinking, If I get through this, I want to grow up to be just like the mother in that book.
I never wavered from that goal. Today, my husband and I have eight kids?a mix of biological, fostered and adopted children. Our youngest daughter, Kira, came to us at six weeks as a foster child. She is ?Omà miwininìwag,? which is Algonquin (Indigenous people of southern Quebec and eastern Ontario), and she changed the course of of our lives in ways I never could have imagined. I have Indigenous ancestry: I?m Métis and Ojibwe on my mother?s side, but I grew up Baptist because my mother and father converted when I was young. I had a happy?albeit very conservative?upbringing. Our church was independent and had strict rules: We had to dress modestly, and no dancing was allowed. My lifestyle was vastly different from that of my cousins on my mother?s side, and I believe my mom made an unspoken decision to create some distance due to problems with alcoholism in the family. But this also meant that I lost my connection to Indigenous tradit...
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