Hey Mom,
I wanted to take a minute to thank you for everything you have done for me and continue to do for me. You have become my best friend, and you always listen when I have a problem. You do little things for me too, like send me a card when you are thinking about me or come and take me out to go shopping and get some food. But, above all, you are voluntarily my mom.
You took my brother and I in and adopted us. You made us your kids. You took us in when it looked like you might lose your grandkids forever. You took us in and saved us from the horrors of the foster care system. But now, I am going to dive head first into the foster care system as an adult and I am going to make it my career. You helped me see that I want to help people, but that I also want to help children who also got taken away from their parents. They may not have been as lucky as I was with having another family member to take them in and love them and care for them the way a parent is supposed to.
Without you, I would not be where I am today. I would not be a college student and I would not have a plan for my life. When I told you I wanted to stay at home for college, you pushed me to go away to school. You helped me pick a school and you helped me find the one that feels like home to me. Mom, you are the one who helped me realize that I did not want to live at home for another four years; you are the one that helped me realize what I wanted to be when I was done with school and for that, I thank you.
Mom, you have learned to let me do what is best for me even when that meant that I was going to be four hours away from you for four months, instead of the 45 minutes away that I was for the first eight months that I lived away from you. You helped me make every big decision in my life and I want to thank you for helping me.
Mom, you helped me when the girl that was my best friend stopped being my best friend. You saw how much that hurt me. You knew that for years she was the one I told everything to, and when she decided that we wouldn’t be friends anymore right before graduation, I felt lost. I did not know who was going to be around for me to take pictures with after I crossed that stage and got my diploma. You did everything in your power to help me realize that sometimes it is okay to not be friends with the person that knows everything about you.
Mom, you stood by my side when my cousin told me that I would be a better person if my mom loved me. Little does she know that even though we have our arguments as every mother and daughter do, you love me to the end of time and back. You saw how hard that was for me and that it hurt me almost as much as my best friend deciding that we would not be friends any more right before graduation.
Mom, you may have voluntarily become my mom but you have been by my side through all the good and the bad for me. You have watched me grow as a woman. You have watched me go from struggling to understand what was happening in school to excelling and becoming a better student than the students around me who had a better start to life than I did. Without you, I would not have made it through high school, and I sure as hell would not be in college pursuing my dreams.
Mom, thank you for being everything I needed you to be and for being hard on me even when I thought you had no reason to be hard on me. I am sorry for telling you that I hated you that one time when I was 12 years old.
Love Always, Your Daughter
