Katricia is a beautiful girl inside and out! We had the privilege of taking her photo for the Heart Gallery. Not only did she have a professional photo shoot, she also had her hair professionally styled prior to the shoot! How's that for 'stylin'!
Loved Project is an outreach mission aimed at aiding youth in need. This outreach has many faces: Adoption Coalition Heart Gallery, Unfound Families adoption information service, direct service to adoptive families and community youth.
"Dia, you'll never save them all!" is a phrase that has been etched in my soul forever. Those are the last last words our adoption attorney spoke to us following our first adoption.
I had inquired about a 6 month old little boy staying in the same cradle care home as our daughter. We had flown to Florida as fast as we could to pick up our newborn daughter who had just been discharged from the hospital. I asked the foster mother about this little boy. She told me that no one had ever called or come by to check on him since Florida DCFS had brought him to her home. That had been 6 months ago when he was discharged from the hospital.
Before we came back to Arkansas I asked our attorney about proceeding with a private adoption for him. She told me that there was no way she would deal with Florida DCFS and then proceeded to laugh at me, saying the phrase that would change my life, "Dia, you'll never save them all!"
My husband, John, has since transformed the meaning of that phrase to our family. We like to think of 'saving them all' in reference to the 'Sand Dollar Story'.
"There once was a little boy walking down the beach throwing sand dollar after sand dollar into the sea. A man walking the other direction stopped and said, "Boy, why are you wasting your time throwing those sand dollars back into the sea? Can't you see there are hundreds of them? Throwing a few back won't matter, you can't save them all." The little boy looked into the man's eyes and firmly replied, "Sir, it mattered to that one."