The Clarkes Adoption Experience When I was about 10 years old my mother told me I use to always say “when I grow up I am going to adopt a little girl”.  I do not remember that but I know it must have been true because I have always felt it.  Our adoption journey actually began in November of 2005.  My husband and I had recently lost our youngest son.  I went into early labor at 6 months and “baby Josh” was just too little.  He did not make it.  After picking ourselves up and working our way through our loss my yearning to adopt began burning even more.  My husband and I started our home study process with Catholic Charities in November of 2005.  On August 3rd 2006 we became “home study approved”.  That was an exciting day for us because we knew “wow, this puts us so very close to being united with our daughter”.
		As an African American, home study approved family we began to get contacts about birth situations almost immediately however we the Clarke family had to initiate the majority of those contacts.  In other words we did not wait on the adoption agencies to learn about us we began marketing ourselves to multiple adoption agencies around the country.  Around February of 2007 we were very blessed to be put in contact with who we call one of our many guardian angels during our adoption process Mrs. Betty Smith.  The day Betty took us on as clients our entire adoption “waiting” experience began to change and on May 18th 2007 as a result of our connection to Betty we were finally matched with our beautiful baby girl.  I will never ever forget that phone call from the agency we were referred to by Betty.  Our daughter had been born and was waiting on us to come and pick her up.  Her beautiful wonderful birth mother had chosen us the Clarke family to raise this precious baby girl.  This process was not easy however it definitely was not hard.  You will go through ups and downs just as you do with a biological pregnancy but in the end when you have your child in your arms you know it was all worth every second and for us we would do it all over again.  Our daughter is such a wonderful addition to our family.  Our boys (we already had 2 biological children) absolutely love their sister and she just has her daddy wrapped around her little pinky finger.  As for me (mommy), words can not describe how I feel to finally be a mother to a daughter.  For us our family circle of life was completed when our daughter arrived.  We feel the baby we lost played divine intervention and assisted his sister in being united with his family (us)    Our daughter and our entire adoption process has truly been and continues to be a celebration of life!
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