This Thanksgiving, people have a lot to be thankful for but for me, I have been thankful for the same thing for the past twenty years: my family. And we don’t look like your ‘normal’ family and we like it this way. Families come in many different sizes and structures. There are families that have mothers and fathers and a brother and sister. There are families that have both parents and two daughters and two sons. There are families with either both fathers or mothers. But in what seems to me as a common norm now families who have adopted children. Being that I was adopted at a year old and having friends and a younger sister that is adopted like myself, it’s a good and comforting feeling.
There are shows like Modern Family, that show different types of adoptions if it’s international like Modern Family, and Sex and the City. There are also domestic adoptions like in The Fosters, and more notably, This is Us. It is shows like these that put adoption in a positive light that shows that family does not need to share blood to be a family.
I was adopted from Guatemala, a small country under Mexico and next to Honduras. I don’t know much about my birth mother but from what I can assume from a poor country like Guatemala is that she wasn’t able to take care of a child. She didn’t think she would be able to keep a child. At that point, my family and I can only assume she had the choice to either have an abortion or to put me up for adoption.
I was put up adoption and when I was around three months old and not long after I was adopted my parents, Tom and Jeanne Rasiak adopted me. Months later on November 8th, 1997, two days before my first birthday, I meet my parents at the Guatemalan airport and from there the rest is history. Growing up I always knew that I was adopted it was never put down or a negative thing but always a positive. But sometimes growing up I’d hear comments like, “so are they really your parents”, “so what do your parents”, “do you call them mom and dad”, “what about your sister”, and my all-time favorite *insert sarcasm* “so is she or is she not your real sister”, as if any of these questions should matter, but they are my parents, I call them mom and dad, regardless if we share blood or not. My sister is my one and only sister. If anything, it means I love her all the more because it means that regardless of the arguments or disagreements that we may have we are meant to be sisters and that makes it all the more important to me.
But like myself, there are many other celebrities like myself that have been adopted and have gone so far with their lives because they were fortunate enough, like me, to find loving parents and despite being adoption we can do anything. Some of us have made it in the film or music industry, some of us have made chain restaurants or made electronic programs, and some of us have gone as far as reaching the White House.
· Dave Thomas – founder of Wendy’s as well as the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
· Marilyn Monroe – actress
· Steve Jobs – CEO of Apple
· Kristin Chenoweth – Actress, Singer
· Jamie Foxx – Actor, Singer
· Ray Liotta – Actor
· Michael Bay – director
· Eartha Kitt – singer
· President Gerald Ford – the first president that was adopted
· Ted Danson – actor (adopted and a parent who has adopted children)
· President Bill Clinton – the second president to be adopted
It’s people like me that know that our new families our forever families, wanted us in their lives. We know that someone may have brought us into the world but our forever families taught us how to live in it.