My dad's fabulous friend

In the spirit of Evilchildlessbitch's post about her mom's awesome support of her CF lifestyle, I have a positive story to share with all of you. My dad has a close female friend that he has had for many years, and she is currently in her early 40's. I'll call her Sally. Sally has always wanted children, but never ended up marrying. Now, a couple years ago, she was getting worried that she was getting too old to have children, especially since she was still unmarried.

So she thought about it for a period of time, and decided that first, she wants children because she loves children and wants to raise them. She told me that she considered for a while if she wanted children because she truly wanted to have children, or if she wanted them because of societal expectations or to further her genes or something like that . After coming to the conclusion that she wanted children because she actually desired to raise them and do it well, she realized that she doesn't need to biologically have her own because she didn't think that people should have kids just to "make their genetic mark on the future". This is when she decided to look into adopting...the following quote is paraphrase of what she told me her rationale was behind her decision. She said, "I realized that there are so many children there without parents, and because I want to be a parent, it makes much more sense to go ahead and adopt than it does to go through all those crazy IVF and other scientific procedures. I want children because I want to provide a good life for them, so what does it matter if my genes are involved or not. If I'm not going to do this for selfish reasons, adoption makes much more sense."

Sally now, as a single mom, has adopted two children. One is from overseas, and the other is from the United States. She does not receive any government benefits at all, no welfare, no WIC, no nothing. She works full time, and paid for daycare until they were old enough for preschool. Even when she was laid off and briefly unemployed, she still took complete financial responsibility until she found a job...which she found after only a few months. Both of them are still under the age of 10, and they attend public schools. They are overall really well-behaved, and if they have had a meltdown or something, I've always seen her remove them quickly from the situation, and I've never known her to bring them to places that aren't appropriate. Every so often, Sally brings them over to my dad's house, but only when he and my stepmom invite them. I think it says something that I can't stand being around children usually, and I will happily babysit these kids. When she was looking for a job, I insisted on doing it for free.

So I guess I just wanted to post this to show that there are decent people out there...and I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed getting to know this wonderful woman.

Sally is the example of actual parenting. She has kids because she wants to raise them well. She's really removed her ego from the equation.

Classy lady.