After a distant cousin wrote a test to pay for the adoption of a kid in Iowa, a lady took it upon herself to assist different households searching for to make their household everlasting on paper. Brittany Berrie started watching her adopted daughter, Gracie, when she was only a child for a relative in a troubled relationship.
“When they asked me to watch her for the first time I said, ‘absolutely,'” Berrie mentioned.
She was solely 20 years outdated when she began caring for toddler Gracie. Soon, the mom started leaving her in Berrie’s take care of longer intervals of time.
“It was days at a time and then weeks at a time and then months at a time. And then by the time she was about 7 months old, it was, ‘OK, I’m raising her,'” Berrie mentioned.
When Gracie was 4 years outdated, the court docket granted Berrie authorized guardianship. But as time handed, each Berrie and Gracie wished extra.
“Because she was my baby,” Berrie mentioned of why she sought to undertake Gracie. “I think that even though I didn’t birth her, she still grew in my heart… maybe not in my belly, but she was my baby.”
The solely factor stopping them was the fee. The strategy of adopting a toddler can sometimes price within the tens of hundreds of {dollars}, which made it not possible for Berrie.
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That was till she ran right into a distant cousin, Casie Baddome, at a marriage.
“I couldn’t believe that was the only thing that was keeping them from being able to adopt. I just said, ‘Well, I think I can help with that,'” Baddome mentioned. “If that’s all I needed to do was, you know, help write a check, I felt like that was the least that I could do because that was security for the whole family and for Gracie.”
Last yr, because of Baddome’s present, 11-year-old Gracie’s adoption was finalized.
“I did not know how to thank her,” Berrie mentioned of Baddome’s donation. “I spent months trying to write something down or figure out, do I get her something? Like there’s no ‘thank you’ that expresses what she did.”
Berrie found out a method to go on the blessing. With an abundance of donations, she turned her storage into the Adopted Closet thrift retailer and hatched a “secret plan” to make use of proceeds from the shop to pay the kindness ahead.
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“I want to pay for the adoptions on National Adoption Day in Scott County, Iowa. All of the remaining balances,” Berrie mentioned.
That’s precisely what she did — pay all of the balances on all adoptions within the county.
“People don’t understand how expensive adoption can be,” mentioned Jodi Siebler, an adopted kid’s mother or father. “We had to wipe out our savings to pay for everything related to this.”
The one present of kindness that made Berrie’s household entire did the identical for 9 different households.
Gracie mentioned she could not be prouder of her mom.
“It’s great knowing that other people can feel this happiness and feel safe and have all those mothers out there know that their children are their children,” she mentioned.
