Letters

Hi, my name is Anita. While we’ve never met, my heart goes out to you, as I know you are in the process of making very important decisions for yourself and your child. I’m grateful that you’d like to learn a little about me and my family and consider how I might fit into your decisions.

Experiences like caring for my younger brother, looking after all of my cousins at family gatherings, and doting on my friends and their children have taught me that I truly enjoy loving the people around me. Last year, I was blessed to adopt a baby boy. Immediately welcomed by my...

Growing up on the East Coast, I’ve always had an appreciation for a fast pace and four seasons. My childhood pictures are all blurry—I could never stay still for a shot. For a long time, I was the only girl in my neighborhood and used my imagination to lead all the boys as “Wendy” from “Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.” We’d trek through the woods in the summertime and make snow forts in the winters. I’m still the same in a lot of ways: I am a ball of energy and am constantly finding new ways to introduce an infant to our community, from...

I love my home. It’s a warm, quaint cottage with plenty of windows and a small, fenced-in yard with an apple tree. My friends' kids have taught me where all the best hiding spots are in the house: the bottom of the toy closet, behind the couch in the playroom, and, of course, under all the beds. In the last six months, every flat surface—from table tops to radiator covers—has been taken over by books, toys, teethers, and blocks. During the day, we’re on the move from carpeted room to carpeted room, reading and reaching for rattles and practicing rolls. At night, you...

I am biracial. Among the many lessons I learned from my exposure to different cultures, traditions, and ways of family life was that you can never have too many people who love you. My childhood home was usually full of friends and relatives from varying backgrounds and walks of life, some of whom stayed with us for months or years at a time, and I enjoyed living and growing up with this big, chosen family.

“Family” became a word I learned to use generously. I now treat my work friends like my siblings and their children like my nieces and nephews. I now treat several of...

I am rarely a doctor outside of the hospital. I spend my free time exploring the community with my family, reading, and taking pictures.

I enjoyed Disney fairy tales when I was small and now read the original copies of these stories to a child at bedtime each night. More recently, I’ve built a library of stories that I feel aren’t told enough—novels by powerful authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, who weren’t represented in the required reading lists I remember from school. I would love to help children create libraries of their own, filled...

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn a little about me and my family as you decide the next best steps for you and your child.

Throughout my life, I've really cherished chosen family—from the friends and relatives who stayed in my childhood home, to the work friends and neighbors I spent time with now, to the baby boy I am so grateful to know and love each day. Building relationships with people of different backgrounds, with different experiences and stories, is a part of who I am. To me, choosing to form a lifelong bond with another family through adoption is the...