She adopts a 17-year-old girl: "Say yes to older kids too. Everyone deserves a family."
Adopting a child is one of the greatest joys that life can give us; it is not a constraint at all, but a choice made by a person or a couple who cannot have biological children or who have a very big and very generous heart. A heart similar to that of Katie Holstein, who decided to adopt not a little girl, but a teenager aged 17, to prove to everyone that there is no age limit to giving a life full of love to a human being!
Katie Holstein shared her life-changing adoption experience in Love What Matters in her own words: "I started the process of getting licensed as a foster parent in January 2017. I wanted to be a mom and was tired of waiting. Eight months later, on August 30th 2017, I received an email saying I was finally approved so overnight, I became a first time mom to a newborn, 1 year old and another 2-year-old. It was terrifying at first imagining what could happen! "
Over the next three years, I was able to promote 16 children for adoption, as well as to help some local families. I experienced my first and (so far) only reunification three days before Christmas 2018. It was amazing and I can't wait for it to come again. In January 2019, I received a call for a new adoption. His mother, unfortunately, had a long history with the state, so when I got the call, they said right away that he would almost certainly end up in adoption. Nervous but excited, I said yes. His early days were tough. I had two other pretty rowdy guys that I loved, but they were a handful in themselves.
Tiny (as we call him) spent some time in NICU and was so small when he came to us, hence the nickname. He struggled a lot in those early days. Withdrawal, feeding problems, problems with weight gain - every day was a struggle to stay healthy. He arrived as the absolute champion he is.
At first he had a handful of visits with his mother and that was it. At times it seemed like he wasn't making any progress at all, and it seemed like it would take forever for us to finally get to the day of adoption. You think not having a family would have made the process easier, but it was actually ten times harder. There were a lot of legal issues that needed to be answered and then obviously COVID-19 hit and shut everything down for months.
On June 18 we finally got the official go ahead from the court: three months later, we made had it. Tiny was now Thomas Holstein. Akyra instead or Okra as we call her, on the other hand, was a total surprise. I got the call on March 9, 2019 from my favorite social worker.
She said, "I know you're not a teenager anymore, but I have this girl. She's great, she and her current adoptive family just need a break. And it'sjust for the weekend?" I wanted to help, so I said yes. The plan was for her to stay with me until she graduated in about a year and then pursue an independent life, which is an amazing program that runs in our state, but then ultimately she stayed with us.
A few months later, we were joking about her future and she said, "Have you ever thought about adopting a teenager?", And the rest is history, as they say. To all those who want to adopt I say: say yes to older children too;
You'll hear some terrible stories - it's not all plain sailing. But let me tell you that those roses smell best when you have to scramble through a ditch to reach them. Every child deserves a family. All of them. Even those who don't think so because they are almost grown up. Especially them. "
