CHILDREN, NOT OF MY BLOOD BUT OF MY HEART

[Photo Notation: Photo on left is me with Ravi and Tayo as youngsters. Photo on right is Ravi and Tayo as adults. Wow - that’s my comment as I look at these pictures.]

I held them gently for a moment in time.

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Two of my six children: one who had barely survived his birth father slitting his throat, then spent years in an orphanage; the other who had been malnourished and starved.

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Children of extreme trauma. Adrift, abandoned. Children who faced limited, even dismal, futures. When Samahria and I decided to reach out to other children after helping our son Raun to fully recover from autism, we specifically wanted to go the distance - to take those children who might easily be sidelined because they weren't "perfect" or might be perceived as irreparably impaired as a result of their experiences, psychological as well as physical. We wanted to show up, hands outstretched, and choose to be there, no matter what - to include, not exclude - and to do it on the most personal level.

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Did these little guys have mountains to climb? You bet. Did we, as a growing family, have to stop, look around, look deep inside, change course, change ourselves, confirm, and reaffirm who we all were and how big we could open our hearts? Absolutely. Our family continued to expand by choice.

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Decades have now passed since that first photograph was taken. Those boys are now young men with their own families. They do love, they do caring, they do kindness. Do all stories end this way? Probably not. However, it's not the endings that matter but what each of us is willing to do and actually does. We’re talking, not about perfect outcomes or predictable conclusions, but about love. About stepping out. About expressing ourselves, as imperfectly as we might do that, because we decide we want to contribute and make a difference.

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