Pieces Worth Passing On

“I want to foster and adopt. I don’t want my own biological kids.”

I have said some version of this since I was sixteen, when conversations about marriage and the future started to feel real. When I pictured adulthood, I always saw myself as a mother. I loved children. I was the person smiling at toddlers in grocery store lines or playing peek a boo with babies on airplanes. Motherhood always felt natural to me. But having my own biological children did not.

As I grew older, especially through social work training, I learned how to offer the safe, socially acceptable answer. I would say, “I have the compassion and training to support children with higher needs, and I want to give a child a chance they may not otherwise have.” This is a partial truth. A truth that lets people nod and move on. A truth that shields a deeper one.

When I met Cliff, we talked about this early. On our second date, we literally compared deal breakers over lunch. I was ready for stability. Marriage. A family. He said he wanted at least one biological child. I hesitated, but said maybe. I leaned on logical fears that are easy to understand. Pregnancy scares me. I do not tolerate pain well. Morning sickness sounds miserable. All of that is true. But it is not the full truth.

Recently, in one of those quiet, safe moments where love softens every edge, Cliff mentioned having biological children again. He said, “I am excited to see what we make together. The future. The kids we create.”

I broke open. It was like something that had been trapped in my chest for years finally exhaled. My body responded before my mind did, and I just started to cry.

When he asked what I was feeling, I finally said the truth I had never spoken aloud:

"I never wanted to have biological children because of me. Because of what I have lived, what I carry, what I have survived. I did not want to hand down pain, disorders, trauma, genetics, darkness, any of it. If an adopted child has struggles, I can hold compassion without blaming myself. But if it is my child, my choice, and they hurt, then I am the source of the hurt. I just never thought I had anything worth passing on.

I watched his face change. Shock. Sadness. Love.

He held me and said, “I cannot believe you would think that about yourself. I want children with you. Not just any children. Ours. I want to see both of us in them. I used to imagine kids because I wanted little versions of me. Now I want them because they would be little versions of us. We would make good humans.”

Growing up, my parents always said the job of a parent was to raise “good citizens who contribute to society.” People who made the world kinder than they found it. I never fully understood that idea until now. Being a parent is not about creating something that belongs to you. It is about offering the world someone who is better than you because of you.

I still want to foster and adopt. I still believe in providing loving homes based in choice and commitment, not just genetics. And I am still one year away from marriage and years away from motherhood. But now, for the first time, I do not feel fear at the idea of creating a child who carries parts of me.

Because I am finally learning that I have parts worth carrying.

Our love is a romance novel—but not the clean, predictable kind with the chiseled man on the cover. Ours is the kind where two complicated, bruised, beautifully resilient people learn to build something healthy out of their histories. The kind where love is not perfect, but it is intentional. The kind that can build something new. And maybe, one day, someone new.