family for a long and quiet seven years
although I enjoyed having my parents
attention all to myself
I have to admit it was pretty lonely so
when my parents told me that I would
have a sibling in hiki I was elated
company at last and I had always heard
my mom talking about how she always
wanted to have a girl and a boy and
those would be her children and so that
really stuck with me I when I think it
was born all I could stop all I could
think about was okay now it says me and
ahiki we’re all we’re always going to be
together but it’s just us so it was a
huge shock for me when two years yeah in
2015 I had a third sibling Reese weepy
and during my mom’s pregnancy we found
out that he would have Down syndrome and
although we were very excited to have
him we were very scared too we had no
idea what it would be like to have a
child with a disability and our family
and we had never come in contact with
anyone with a disability so it was very
scary but we were so excited to have him
and when he was born we realized that
it’s not even a disability to us
nowadays we just see it as something
that makes him different and he
completely shattered all of our
perspectives and all of our ideas of
what having a child with disabilities um
with one or more disabilities it’s and
nowadays he’s more commonly known as
sleeping or the happiest how would you
ever know so after that I thought okay
now we’re all done we were supposed to
have just two kids and now we already
have three we’re a pretty big family and
thankfully I was wrong again
well last year we were in Boston as I
was taking a summer school course and we
decided to take my brother to the Boston
Children’s Hospital to see how he was
doing overall to see how he was
developing compared to kids without the
condition
and we just rescheduled it with one
doctor but in the last minute we had to
be attended by another doctor little did
we know that it would be a life-changing
transition when we arrived the doctor
started talking to us and it was really
just small talk questions like how are
you why are you here were you from
what’s your family routine like and all
of a sudden she just turned around and
looked at us straight in the eye and
said you’re the family we’ve been
looking for naturally we were a little
bit creeped we had we were very confused
but decided to listen anyways and she
told us that she recently adopted a
child with special needs and decided to
advocate for the cause and so she showed
us a page for a nun for an NGO that was
for adoption and donation for kids with
special needs and more specifically Down
syndrome but also other disabilities and
she showed us the page for a little boy
under the alias of Owen and she’s the
one on the picture to the right and I we
were immediately immediately fell in
love with him he was so tiny we couldn’t
help but ache to protect him and from
there she told us that he had been
abandoned at birth because he had Down
syndrome he had never been breastfed he
had been he had lost a chance of having
a mother because he had Down syndrome
and that the idea of that completely
broke my heart because I had had I had a
brother with Down syndrome and having
known him all this time made me realize
that this is reality for many kids out
there who are abandoned because of their
disabilities and from there we decided
to adopt him we found out I think two or
three weeks after that that he was about
6,000 miles away from us he was in
Ukraine and that was minor for us
because we had already fallen in love
with him still
it wasn’t even a big detail for us and
then as if we didn’t already have enough
kids
strolling through the website one day
and I decided to look at the other kids
available and I came across a girl under
the alias of Isabella and she had been
abandoned because she has spina bifida
and what that means is for those of you
who know what scoliosis means when your
spine is Curt however its outwards so a
part of her spine is exposed and she had
also been abandoned because of her
disability and she had been abandoned at
the hospital so what the doctors decided
to do is we’re just going to sew up her
skin and send her to an orphanage and
that too broke my heart so I talked to
my mom for a few days non-stop and she
kept telling me no we already have too
many kids this is already too much your
dad is doing not going to let us do it
and I insisted anyway so she let us do
it and I have to admit I had always
loved my brothers so much but I was kind
of dying for his sister so after that it
was just a very long bureaucratic
process of my parents traveling to
Ukraine and coming back and doing
paperwork and going back to Ukraine and
visiting the kids and one day when we
finally got the call and they told us
you’re allowed to go to Ukraine and
actually pick up your kids everybody
started crying
my mom didn’t know what to do she was
shaking she was saying I had to call and
get the plane tickets and I have to pack
her bags and I have to do so many things
but overall it was that one of the
happiest days of my I think it would be
considered one of the happiest days of
my life
um so after that after we went and we
picked them up and brought them back to
Brazil I started thinking about adoption
the entire concept of it and how I had
never thought of it before we had
actually adopted kids and I thought
about how that’s actually really messed
up I thought about my life plans and I
thought about everything that I had
planned for my life and for my siblings
lives before my family’s life and I
realized that my plans were I’m going to
build my career
I’m going to get married I’m going to
have my kids and that’s where I caught
myself I had never told myself I’m going
to adopt someone and I had never told
myself I’m going to have adopted two
siblings at some point in my life
because and that is because we always
have this thing in the back of our head
that your kid is only your kid if it’s
your biological child and that actually
made me think of the barriers of
adoption and how they work well first
one cause even though the US has the
foster care system which is the cheapest
way to adopt it’s still very costly for
many families to be able to adopt and
second barrier the bureaucracy at the
time that it takes for all of this it’s
just insane there’s so much paperwork
involved and there’s so much time
involved we luckily only had to go
through six months of it
but for many families that ends up being
two to three years and this is although
this is worth it in the end it made me a
barrier for something for many families
and these are just two barriers out of
so many that I have considered but if
there’s a barrier that we have to face
every day and that I only actually
thought about after I adopted and that I
want to break today that I want to break
for that for everything that I want to
break every single day of my life it is
that of the preconceived notion that
your child is only your child if it’s
your biological child I only have enough
time and I only have enough experience
to tell you that your child is your
child if you give yourself enough if you
when people talk to us about adoption
and about what we did they say you have
such a big heart
you these kids are so lucky to have you
and I keep telling myself and I keep
telling them we’re so lucky to and it’s
not just us adopting them it’s them
adopting us and it’s about everybody
giving each other just enough for us to
become an actual family even though
there’s all
the cereal types of adopted kids not
being your actual kids and I want to
tell you a little bit about what it’s
been like for our family since we
adopted them Lucas what upon the
adoption on the first date when we first
changed his diaper
we stopped and looked at him and he was
skin and bone and we felt so bad because
he was so underfed and he looked like he
hadn’t eaten in days
and that’s him after just ten days with
us and he had been laughing he had been
smiling he looked just so much happier
than what he was like on the first day
and so he adapted pretty quickly I
expected our kid these kids to take so
long to actually get used to us and for
us to get used to them but turns out
that we actually looked like a family on
the first from the very first day and
for Louisa the name that we decided to
give to the girl who was initially under
the alias of Isabella she looked so
happy from the very first second when we
went to pick her up at the orphanage and
every single time she hugs us to this
day she hugs us as if she understands
how how we had ended up somehow saving
her because she I mean I assume since
she’s a very young child she doesn’t
necessarily understand yet what it means
that we picked her up there
that we brought her to a completely
different place but every time she hugs
her I really feel as if she understands
and Lipe ended up ended up getting very
attached to both of them Luke he is
absolutely in love with Lucas he doesn’t
at first he didn’t seem to understand
why we had two new kids in the family
and he was a little bit jealous I have
to admit but nowadays he is so in love
with them that I think that he has
become dependent on them and they both
always laugh long when they’re next to
each other and it’s actually really
really beautiful and last Sunday January
29th it was low
Lisa’s birthday and we decided to
celebrate Lucas’s birthday too because
we didn’t have a chance to when we were
in Ukraine and I just stopped to look at
everybody and look at what that scene
looked like and I didn’t see kids who
had been adopted I saw kids who had been
there what does since day one I saw kids
who seemed like they had been there with
us since forever and people always
talked about how it must be so hard for
kids to readjust to a new family and I
didn’t see that with them so for our
experience I can definitely tell you it
wasn’t hard at all it was one of the
best decisions we have ever made and it
was absolutely hard life-changing for
all of us to have made this decision and
so with all of that I can tell you your
child doesn’t need to be biological to
be your child if we need to love them
just as much your child doesn’t need to
have your blood in their veins for you
for the child to be yours and for you to
love them just as much and that ends up
being a huge barrier for many people who
want to adopt and feel like they’re
going to face prejudice or face people
judging them because they adopted her
because that’s how it is not theirs and
I can easily tell you right now that’s
not going to happen if you do decide to
adopt not because of this TED talk but
because you decide that you want to
adopt and because it’s going to be a
wonderful decision for your family I can
tell you it’s going to be alright and
it’s going to be one of the best
decisions you’ve ever made there are 140
million children according to UNICEF who
are out there and who want and need
parents there are millions of people out
there who want and need kids but don’t
adopt because of this barrier so let’s
break this barrier today because blood
is thicker than water
even if the blood is not the same as
yours thank you [Applause]