A Short Story of the Event that Most Impacted my Life

Our daughter, Marina, was assigned to write about the event that has most impacted her life for freshman English her first week of school. She chose to write about her adoption into our family. She wanted to share this with the people who have been journeying alongside of us and asked me to publish it here. All the feels for this mama. All the feels. 

A guest post by Marina Worth

The event that impacted my life the most happened almost two years ago; it was my adoption.

But before that came hosting. And before that came the orphanage. But before the orphanage came my parent’s divorce, but I’m not going to talk about that just yet. 

 

Adoption is an act of giving official acceptance or an approval of something. Well, how did it change or impact my life? The first five years of my life went well, and then my parents got divorced. I stayed with my mother for six hard years, but then I went to an orphanage when I was 11. In the orphanage it was a somewhat easier life, but it still wasn't a piece of cake. It was fun in the orphanage because during the two years that I lived there I got hosted two times a year by families in America. 

During those years I was hosted by three different families and finally the third family wanted to adopt me. It took awhile for all of the paperwork to be approved and sent Latvia, which was where I lived. 

When the papers got to Latvia a counselor talked with me about adoption. She seemed very nice, and she asked me a lot of questions about being adopted. I answered that I knew what adoption was and that I wanted to be adopted. A couple of months later my new family came to Latvia, and at that time we had our first court date and the judge said that I could live with my new family in the U.S. but we still had one more court date to attend to make the adoption final. So that summer I went to the U.S. for about four months before my dad needed to travel back to Latvia for our final court date. The court ruled in favor of the adoption so my sister and I officially became a part of our family. When we went back for the third trip to get my citizenship the whole family didn't needed to come with, so my sister, my dad and me went to Latvia once again. 

After the final trip I was excited because I had a new family, and I was sick of flying back and forth across the world. Also I felt a bit sad because I was leaving my school and my good friends. After the appointments were done I said goodbye to everyone I knew, and we flew back to  the U.S.            

Today I go to a good school, I've got everything I need and most importantly, I've got a family that cares about me and that would do anything to make me feel loved and safe.