I’m sorry to have triggered you so badly. Truly. Who are you actually angry at? If you need me to be a sounding board for all of your pent up anger, I can do that. But I’m sure you wouldn’t like what I would tell you.

I cannot possibly go into her or my entire history here, but to clarify. We are Canadian. Education here is nowhere near the financial fiasco it is to the south. But it is still very much dependent upon a family’s educational history. i.e. kids with parents and older siblings who attended university are far more likely to attend post secondary schooling as well. My husband and I both graduated college and/or university. Such an example presents possibilities to kids who might not have considered them otherwise.

Poverty has a nasty way of breeding poverty. Breaking the cycle from within is exceptionally hard to do. By adopting these kids into our family, we offered a better chance at beating those odds.

As for the whole white thing. I will politely tell you to fuck the fuck off with that shit. Again, we are Canadian. And while I would never try to convince anybody that the racial climate is perfect here, it’s not the circus we hear about over the border. My city in particular is an incredibly diverse and supportive environment.

I know this, am aware of it, more than most of my white friends. Because my husband was black. Our children - birth and adopted - are all light-skinned. They also have zero white cousins. My entire extended family is a wonderful mix of colours, cultures, and religions. We all get along just fine.

We gave our kids their own choice of names when we finalized their legal adoption. They all chose to keep their given names, but took our surname. And yes, they benefit greatly from having made that choice. The decision to take our family name, they felt, cemented them to us. It made them one of us, we all became one. They were able to then draw on the benefits that belonging to a respected, responsible, and popular family brings.


I will be the first person to agree with you that education, nutrition, clean water, health, and safety _should_ be basic human rights. I do what I am able to help toward that end, limited as my abilities and efforts are in the face of such a monumental global problem. But in my little corner of the world, I have done my level best to improve conditions for me and the people for whom I care.

The system sucks. Badly. I have my own theories as to why and how to fix it, given my personal experience with Children’s Aid, the Canadian universal health care system, our mental health care (or lack thereof,) our education system, and our penal systems. But as I’m no ‘expert,’ I get no voice. Which is also part of the problem.

But for now, it’s the only system we have, and it’s better than no system at all.

And finally, as for questioning my love and devotion to my children? That you ask that question says far more about you than it does me.