I wanted to be a mother more than anything. For years, every hope and prayer led back to that one desire. I never imagined that seventeen years later, a single sentence from my adopted daughter would make me question whether she believed she truly belonged. After years of fertility treatments and miscarriages, the doctors stopped offering hope. One night, alone on the bathroom floor, I prayed out loud for the first time in my life. I promised that if I were given a child, I would also give a home to one who had none.
Ten months later, my daughter Stephanie was born—pink, loud, and gloriously alive. My joy was overwhelming, but I never forgot that promise. On Stephanie’s first birthday, my husband and I signed adoption papers. Two weeks later, we brought Ruth home. She had been abandoned on Christmas Eve, left near the city’s main Christmas tree with no note. She was quiet and watchful, the opposite of Stephanie.
We raised them the same way. Same rules. Same love. Same truth: one grew in my belly, the other in my heart. But as they grew older, their differences sharpened. Stephanie was confident and bold. Ruth learned to wait and observe. The night before prom, Ruth told me I wasn’t coming—and that she was leaving. Through tears, she said Stephanie had told her “the truth.”
Ruth believed she was only adopted to fulfill a promise, a bargain made for my “real” child. I told her everything—the prayer, the pain, the truth. That my promise didn’t create my love for her. It revealed it. She didn’t come home that night. Four days later, she stood on the porch and whispered, “I don’t want to be your promise. I just want to be your daughter.” I held her tight. She always had been.