As many of us already know, the adoption process is a difficult one regardless of what side of the process you’re on.
For parents who are looking to adopt, there are plenty of hoops to jump through and personal sacrifices necessary to make one’s home ready for children. For the actual kids in the system, the process is even more difficult. On a daily basis, kids may wonder whether they will ever be adopted. Even more frightening is, if they have siblings, whether or not they will be able to stay together throughout the adoption process.
Those were the stakes in one recent story out of Fresno, California.
It all started when Lacey Dunkin decided that she wanted to be a mom.
Although she was only 25 years old and not married, Dunkin had made a relatively firm decision that she wanted to take care of children and raise them as her own. To get started, she did all the necessary work to became certified to adopt. Shortly after, she got an emergency call from a young mother looking for a foster home.
Still, there was a catch: Dunkin would need to take in four daughters together.
Obviously, Dunkin was shocked by the phone call—but not enough to say no.
According to Dunkin, something came over her that made her give her answer:
“I can’t tell you why I felt so compelled to say yes, but I did . . . And I didn’t even consider not keeping them together. It was all or nothing to me.”
Shortly thereafter, Lacey and the girls were all getting along famously.
There were a few more bumps in the road throughout Dunkin’s process, however.
Although the girls had been staying with Dunkin for nine months, the biological mother got her original parental rights back and intended to take the children back home again—along with a fifth daughter who had recently been born. Although Dunkin was upset, she got another call a month later from the birth mother:
“She called and asked if I would take all five. I Immediately said yes.”
As a final surprise, the birth mother was expecting one more daughter as well, who Dunkin later adopted.
Altogether, Dunkin and her daughters—Sophia; twins Natalie and Melanie; Kaylee; Lea and Cecily—are one big happy family.
Through her generosity, Dunkin was able to get her wish while keeping an enormous foster family together. Although the adoption process can definitely be rocky, stories like this one show that even the scariest of circumstances can have a happy ending.
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