Growing up in an orphanage with Lila, I always dreamed of building the family we never had.
When she died, leaving behind five-year-old Miranda, I couldn’t let her return to the system.
I adopted her, giving her “stability, love, and a home she could rely on.”
Parenting wasn’t perfect, but all the “bedtime stories” and school events helped us heal and grow together.
Miranda became a thoughtful, confident young woman who “called me Mom without hesitation.”
On her 18th birthday, she told me she now had access to her mother’s inheritance and handed me a letter.
Instead of pulling away, she revealed she’d spent months planning a two-month trip for us — all the places I had sacrificed for her.
She said it was her turn “to choose me, just as I had chosen her.”
That journey proved that family is chosen love, not biology.
