Today is Boxing Day 2011, the fourth Boxing Day after the fourth Christmas that I have been waiting for my family. On New Year's Eve I will wish once again that THIS will be the year I adopt my daughter. Almost five years ago, in January 2007, I took the first step to adopt a little girl but never did I *imagine* the odyssey that would follow. I don't know why it has been so insanely difficult, but I do know I MUST have faith that it is all leading me to my destiny, to the moment when the stars align and the universe sends me the girl who has always been waiting for me.
The past five years have been insane and emotionally exhausting, but I've come a long way and I refuse to give up on my dream. To borrow from one of my favourite movies, Slumdog Millionaire, "It is written." My story is still being written, in a courtroom in southern Ontario; in an orphanage, somewhere in Vietnam; and in my head, where I'm taking notes (and names) that will become, for this writer-at-heart, the book that I always knew was inside but didn't know what it was about. Life is giving me more material than I ever wanted, except--as yet--my happy ending.
I would not have made it this far without my family, my fur child Bebe (the Beebs), my CBSA team, my fellow adopters, Jennifer and Sue-ann and, of course, Michael Franti. His music has taken the place of therapy (which, FYI, I can't get because then I will not be allowed to adopt). I will leave you tonight with a few words from "I Got Love for You", a song Michael wrote about watching his son go out into the world to find who he is meant to be. Funny how someone watching his child leave home can feel the same thing as somebody waiting for her child to arrive: "And I know that you can't say when you're coming home, but I got faith in you and I believe in you / so I'll be waiting my dear, waiting right here / I got love you for you."
