Welcome to Audrey Adopts

Christmas is never cold in Miami…….except the Christmas of 2022.

The Christmas I decided to take the advice of a friend and get out of dodge for the Holiday. As a single person holidays are lovely and at times hard. While siblings and friends marvel over my ability to have no responsibility and do whatever I want, I have often felt shame that no little one is pulling at my dress or begging to open just one gift before they have to go to bed.

Questions like, “why don’t I have children yet?” “Why hasn’t it worked out for me?” “Will it ever work out for me?” Once I get on the treadmill of “what ifs” I have a hard time getting off and suddenly the magic of the day is stolen and I am left counting down the hours until the day ends.

So I took a friends advice to get away for Christmas which worked with my need to go to South Africa and also the strange voice telling me I would adopt from South Africa. I would take a week of vacation in South Africa and begin to do some research on adoption before getting down to work part of the trip. As I told friends what I was doing for Christmas many asked, “will you be coming home with a kid?” I honestly had no clue on the process and assumed that I would not but did have lingering questions about this interesting question. If I were able to bring a kid home that quickly would I be ready? Could I possibly make things move faster through connections? I had no clue…

I woke up Christmas day at a friends’ house which was lovely and then went home to pack and clean and start the journey. Like many of us traveling in 2022 I was susceptible to the flight delay game. Early afternoon I decided to just get to the airport. The airport was SO cold. I had two jackets and a scarf and was still freezing. I checked in only to learn that I would not make my connecting flight. So I was rerouted to fly through Europe and have a ten hour layover in Switzerland.

Later I found myself crying and cold on Christmas in the bathroom airport regretting this decision to have this independent single Christmas all my friends with kids dreamed of.

What felt like a week and about twelve migraines later I arrived in South Africa and the sun was shinning. I rented a car and once I remembered how to drive on the left side of the road I tinkered with the radio to hear the song, “Calm Down” by Rema. I had not been to South Africa since 2018 and noticed there were now Netflix billboards. One billboard was advertising a South African drama called, “Blood and Water.”

The drama is about a child who was born to a couple in South Africa and somehow taken from a hospital by another family. In the drama the birth dad was accused of selling the child. The birth mother spent each year celebrating the girls’ birthday and searching for her child. The drama revealed the underbelly of how corrupt politics and money and child “adoption” can be.

After the first episode I was very convinced that I did not want to “try and take a child back with me”! LOL I needed to do some serious research and find the best way to move forward. So through a very special connection I was introduced to two lovely women who have devoted their marriage and life to opening a baby home.

The first few steps on their beautiful property made my cold Christmas suddenly warm.