The People Who Stayed

Who showed up for you when they didn't have to? I ask this because I think about my own answer more than almost anything else in my life.

Two people who took in a baby they had no legal claim to and loved her like they did anyway. A husband who sat next to me through a phone call that could have gone a dozen different ways. A mother — the one who raised me — who never once made room for jealousy when another family reentered my life; she just made more room, period. People whose names I could list, one at a time, each one a small decision to stay when leaving would have cost them nothing.

I don't think staying gets talked about enough. We tell the big stories — the placements, the reunions, the losses — but so much of what actually holds a life together is smaller than that. It's someone choosing, on an ordinary day, to keep showing up. Nobody hands out an award for that. It rarely even gets mentioned out loud.

So I'm mentioning it. If someone showed up for you when they didn't have to — a foster parent, a sibling, a friend who just kept calling — I hope you've told them. And if you haven't, it's not too late. I promise you, it's the kind of thing people want to hear, even decades later.