ADOPTION STORIES : "We" Are The Lucky Ones

Submitted by : Susan & John Eisner

Hi! We’re John & Susan Eisner. We’ve been married for almost 25 years. John has 3 grown sons from a previous relationship (ages 36, 34 and 32). He is adopted and my very first best friend as a child was adopted. Adoption has always been a part of our vocabulary and something we are very passionate about and knew we wanted to do.

While we’d love to tell you the process is very quick and easy, we can’t. Everything seemed to take longer than we felt it should and the waiting was almost excruciating at times, however, I always remember my mother saying “Good things come to those who wait” and she couldn’t have been more right. We first applied to the program in 2009, attended P.R.I.D.E (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) training the same year. Our home study took place in 2010 and after a 20 month wait, we finally met our daughter in November 2011. We received the best Christmas gift ever that year when Cassaundra moved in on December 23rd. She was 11 years old at the time.

Today, it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t always part of our family and even harder to imagine that as an older child, she was at risk of aging out of the foster care system, becoming homeless, victimized or much worse. Cassaundra always knew she wanted a safe, stable and loving family that only a permanent home could provide. She wanted to be adopted and wanted more out of life than what she had been presented with.

Today, Cassaundra is 20 years old and attending her first year at University. She is a beautiful, intelligent and an articulate young woman. She’s enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program and plans to obtain a Bachelor of Social Work. She’s always had the potential to be successful, but now she has the opportunity to do it. People comment about how lucky she is to be part of our family, but we quickly correct them and tell them “we” are the lucky ones. Watching her learn and grow into the special young woman she is has been one of life’s greatest rewards.