I am humbled and grateful that Cindy Darrison, one of my mentors, trusted me to tell her story on this platform. I met her almost two years ago because she runs the Chesed Leadership Training program, a joint program through the UJA and the Touro School of Social Work. This program empowers orthodox women running nonprofits in the NY area to gain the skills needed to professionalize their organizations.

“I was supposed to live a storybook life.

Graduate college, get married & start a family.

Only, it didn’t happen.

I finished college and then grad school and moved up in my career without a walk down the aisle and suddenly I was in my 40s with a biological time clock ticking so loud I could barely think. No one could figure it out – least of all me.

But, I knew I wanted children. I explored different options and, after 9/11, decided on adoption. It was hard for my parents to give up on their dream of walking me down the aisle & all that. It wasn’t hard for me because there are so many babies & children in need of homes and I had the capacity to create a family.

In the end, my mother went with me to China to get my daughter from the orphanage. My father picked us up at the airport when we came back. My daughter is named Rochel Elka after my 2 grandmothers & she is incredibly connected to my family and to Yiddishkeit. I tell her that I was tempted to name her “Matana,” the Hebrew word for “gift,” because she is my gift from God.

I adopted her on her 1st birthday & today she is entering her senior year of Bais Yaakov high school. Next year, she will go to Israel for Seminary. How did time pass so quickly? I am so blessed. God clearly had different plans for me & I am so thankful.

It was painful for me to go to baby showers, kids’ birthday parties, brissim, Bar/Bas Mitzvahs and the weddings of my friends’ and cousins’ children for all those years – just as I know it’s painful for many to see back-to-school photos now. I’m posting our photo to share with you that there are options. Make your own storybook endings.”