Being A Good Parent Has Nothing To Do With Genetics (with Brooke Pace)
Brooke Pace has been told her kids are not really hers more than once. Sometimes it comes from a stranger on a field trip. Sometimes it comes from her own sons, testing the idea out loud.
In this episode of Voices of Adoption, host Donna Pope talks with Brooke Pace, a mother of five who built her family through both birth and adoption. After a hysterectomy in her twenties closed the door on more biological kids, Brooke and her husband adopted three sons across three very different journeys, and Brooke walks through the fear, the waiting, and the moments that convinced her love was doing all the real work.
What She Tells Her Kids
Brooke's sons are a different ethnicity than she is, so the questions come early and often. Her answer never changes: a genetic link has nothing to do with who counts as a parent. What does, she says, is showing up for someone through the good times and the bad.
The Worry That Disappeared Once She Started
Brooke admits she was not sure bonding would feel the same with a child she had not carried. She talks through the moment that fear peaked, holding her son Fordham for the first time, and how quickly it resolved once she let herself simply bond and serve.
Not Every Match Becomes A Placement
Brooke's second adoption did not go the way she expected, and she describes grieving a loss that made no sense to her at the time. She stayed in the process anyway, and her son Emmett came from an entirely different situation not long after.
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.
Hear what an adoptive mother of five wants families considering adoption to know.
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