The Mother’s Day Hope I Never Expected
Like most little girls, I imagined I’d be a mom when I grew up. My nature was to nurture, and the thought of not having kids was never an option. After all, nearly every child on Tiller Street, where I grew up in idyllic Orange, California, had a mommy.
My mom and dad met in Toronto when my father moved there for work as a plumber after growing up in Sunderland, England. My mom always wanted to live in sunny Southern California, and their journey landed them in Santa Ana, where the plumbers’ union had plenty of work.
The land of vivid sunsets, tall palm trees, and roadside fruit stands year-round was paradise for these young immigrants, but their dream of starting a family wasn’t coming true. Infertility prevented mom from conceiving.
Somehow, my dad met a lawyer who knew of a young woman who was pregnant and looking for a nice couple to adopt her baby. A deal was negotiated to cover the modest legal fees, the young woman’s medical expenses, and keep my adoption private.
Two years later, my little brother was adopted, and our family was complete. Until it wasn’t when I was eight years old and my mother passed away.
As a little girl, being adopted and then having my adopted mother die, I felt that I had lost two moms.
Thankfully, God gave me a personality that is able to handle life’s ups and downs. Many who know me well call me “emotionally healthy.” But I just knew that God would give me that connection with my own children that I didn’t get with my birth mom or my adoptive mom.
During college, I started getting involved with Olive Crest, a foster family ministry based in Santa Ana, California. My work with Olive Crest started when I was a tutor with the county school district, teaching at-risk teenage girls, and evolved to fundraising, volunteering, mentoring and prom-dress drives over the years.
Meanwhile, I graduated from college, started my career, got married, and thought that it would be easy to get pregnant. But after 10 years of a very, very bad marriage, we divorced. My heart ached for the “what if” and the empty feeling I had being alone, once again.
But two years later, I met that man at church and said “I do” the next year, and started trying to get pregnant right away. When we realized a year had gone by and I still wasn’t pregnant, I was referred to a fertility specialist, where the repeated mentions of “if we find the baby to have defects, we’ll just eliminate it” made me angry. I reminded the staff at the fertility clinic that I was adopted and pro-life, and that there was no way I was going to “eliminate” a baby because of a defect. I left the clinic in tears and vowed to adopt.
My husband and I looked into private adoptions and also signed up with Olive Crest to learn more about the foster-to-adoption program, through which we met the teenage girl we eventually adopted.
The adoption wasn’t easy, but we seemed to fit into a pattern that we all understood. We provided a safe and loving home. Took a trip to Hawaii before Easter, and went to the beach often. But because these are young human beings who have suffered beyond comprehension prior to being rescued by Child Protective Services, our teenage daughter slipped into behaviors that required extra care and services to keep her safe.
Several months went by, during which we drove an hour each way three times a week for visits at a residential treatment center. And then the unthinkable happened when my husband had an undetected AVM rupture while in a meeting. The neurologist told me he was brain-dead, and a week later, he was removed from life support. Suddenly, I was a widow and a single mom to a teenager I barely knew.
You know the story of the woman at the well who Jesus ministered to in John 4? I felt like that woman.
But while in the hospital, the Holy Spirit showed me Romans 5:1-5:
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand… God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
I had suffered, but I had hope.
Like other women who couldn’t have children or have lost their moms, Mother’s Day has always been tough for me. But this Mother’s Day, I am choosing to reflect on what I do have.
If you’re like me and not a mom in the traditional sense, know that you are still a mom to someone. God has a plan for each one of you. Just because we couldn’t conceive, or raise a child from infancy to adulthood, doesn’t mean we’re not moms.
As the CEO of a pro-life organization, Save the Storks, we celebrate Mother’s Day as a moment to recognize the strength, sacrifice and love that mothers show every day. We want every woman to know she is seen, valued and supported, no matter her path to motherhood.
Diane Ferraro is a nationally recognized pro-life leader, adoption advocate, and the CEO of Save the Storks, one of America’s most innovative life-affirming organizations. With over 30 years of experience in marketing, brand development, and nonprofit strategy, Diane has been instrumental in expanding Save the Storks’ reach — growing its Mobile Medical Clinic (Stork Bus) program, strengthening the National Partner Program, and driving outreach in communities most impacted by high preborn loss rates. Since joining Save the Storks in 2018, Diane has led strategic initiatives to equip pregnancy health clinics, forge strong church partnerships, and develop life-affirming alternatives that support women facing unplanned pregnancies.
