Chosen Family

My friend, who is more than a friend, is my chosen neighbor. My chosen family.

A driveway and a small hill sit between us.

An easy ninety-second walk.

She was supposed to turn a large shed into an office for her counseling practice.

That was the plan.

We had it placed on my land during a time when plans still felt like something you could count on.

But life moved faster than that. The pandemic shifted everything.

She skipped right past the office and built herself a home.

Just before the pandemic, we walked.

A lot.

We’d talk about the future the way people do when the world feels uncertain—half dreaming, half reaching. She kept eyeing the sheds at the hardware store. I kept looking at RVs online.

Eventually, we both found what we had been circling.

That’s when we started to believe that daydreaming and manifesting might not be so different after all.

And then—something neither of us had ever daydreamed.

A baby.

She came into our lives when she was just a week old.

Seventeen months later, she is the light of it.

My friend—now her mama—is in the process of adopting her.

After my husband died, we used to laugh that my friend had become the female version of him.

A “get ’er done” kind of person.

See a need, meet it. No hesitation.

This though, this was something else.

And yet, not entirely unfamiliar.

Years ago, my husband and his former wife took in a baby from within their family.

A call came. A need appeared.

And just like that, their lives changed.

Some people are wired to say yes to that kind of call. Apparently… I know more than one of them.

So now I am Aunt.

Or Aunnie.

For the first year, she existed in whispers.

“Confidential.”

“A case.”

There were so many things I wanted to say out loud.

So many small, ordinary miracles I couldn’t share. I sent them quietly to my siblings instead—

photos, videos, little glimpses of her becoming.

Now things have softened. As she nears adoption, she is not a case and we don’t need to be as careful in the community to say too much.

Her mama still keeps her off social media.

But words seem allowed.

For seventeen months she has been the center of our attention. She has brought such light and love into our world.

There is something different about loving a child when you are not the one responsible for everything.

You get to see more.

Notice more.

Stay a little longer in the moment before it passes.

After six years of writing about loss,

writing it all the way through to a book,

I wondered what could possibly come next.

What else was there to say?

It turns out—

this.

So let me introduce you to my little love bug. Ri.

You’ll probably be hearing a lot about her.

But sadly—

no pictures.

At least none that are obviously her 😉