Not Genetics But Love Decided Who Her Sons Would Be

A stranger on a field trip once asked Brooke Pace's son a question most parents never have to answer for their kids. If you don't look like your mom, and she didn't give birth to you, how can she really be your mom? Brooke has an answer ready every time, and it has nothing to do with genetics.

In this episode of Voices of Adoption, host Donna Pope sits down with Brooke Pace, a mother of five who has built her family through both birth and adoption. Brooke and her husband have two biological children and three adopted sons, and across three very different adoption journeys, she has learned what she believes actually makes someone a parent.

Two Children, Then A Door That Closed  

Brooke and her husband started their family the way many couples do, welcoming a son and then a daughter. Complications during her daughter's birth led to a hysterectomy in her twenties, closing the door on any more biological children. What could have felt like only a loss instead confirmed a decision she and her husband had already talked about years earlier, that they wanted a big family, and adoption was how they would get there.

The Question Every Adoptive Parent Faces  

Brooke's three sons are a different ethnicity than she is, which means strangers notice before they even ask. Kids on field trips have told her sons plainly that if they don't look like their mom and she didn't give birth to them, she can't really be their mom. Brooke's answer is simple, and it's the same one she gives herself on hard days: a genetic link has nothing to do with who counts as a parent. What makes a parent, she says, is someone who loves a child and takes care of them through the good times and the bad.

The Fear That Disappears Once You Start  

Before her first adoption, Brooke worried that bonding with a child she hadn't carried would feel different than it did with her biological kids. She admits the worry didn't fully go away until she actually had a baby in her arms, including a moment with her youngest son Fordham where she remembers thinking, this is my baby, and also, I'm not ready for this, he's not mine. That flip side didn't last. Brooke says the love came quickly once she gave herself permission to simply bond and serve, and the same has been true with each of her sons.

What It Actually Takes To Get There  

Brooke is direct about the parts of adoption nobody warns you about ahead of time, starting with the cost. She and her husband spent years saving before their first adoption, and eventually used an adoption consultant to help them navigate agencies, home studies, and background checks they had no prior experience with. She also describes learning to say yes to situations that didn't match the picture she originally had in mind, including openness to race, gender, and circumstances she once assumed she needed to rule out.

Not Every Match Becomes A Placement  

Brooke's second adoption didn't go the way she and her husband expected. After being matched with a birth parent during the early days of COVID, the match ultimately didn't move forward, and Brooke describes grieving for months the way she might grieve any loss. She stayed on her agency's list rather than stepping away, and her son Emmett came from an entirely different situation not long after. Brooke says the timing made no sense to her in the moment, only in hindsight.

A Birth Parent's Trust, Twice Over  

Brooke's oldest son Bergen and her youngest son Fordham share the same birth parent. Years after placing Bergen, she reached out again during a second pregnancy and asked for Brooke's family specifically. Brooke says trust like that, built slowly over years rather than granted all at once, has become one of the most meaningful parts of her adoption story. Today her house holds four boys and one daughter, a level of energy she jokingly calls pure chaos, and she's honest that she doesn't always feel like she has parenting figured out. What she has learned, she says, is to keep showing up, ask for help when she needs it, and trust that love outlasts any hard season.

Every conversation on Voices of Adoption shows a different piece of what building a family can look like, and Brooke's story is a reminder that being a parent has far more to do with showing up than with biology. No matter where you are in your journey, you'll find people who understand.

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