Chance Happens

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Posts Tagged Adoption

A rejection landed me in the WNBA

Nov 16

Posted by tdomf_3594f in career, redemption | No Comments

My name is Chantel and I one of 12 adopted children in a family of 15.
When I was playing high school basketball, the only college I wanted to go to was Temple University. I had set three goals in my life…graduate from college, play professional basketball, and win an Oscar.

One of my final high school games, the Temple Assistant Coach came to watch me play. What he didn’t know is that early in the morning that day, when I was working at Hardees to get a few more hours, my birth mother showed up at my job. I had never met her. By the way…5 days earlier, she called me on the phone out of the blue and told me she was my mother. I never told her where I worked and she knew I did not want to meet her. Nevertheless, she showed up at my job at 8 in the morning with my step sisters and half sister. This meeting shook me to the core. I played a horrible game because of it. The next day, the Temple Coach called me and said they were going in another direction. The signing period was almost over and I now had nowhere to go.

My adopted mother spoke to another adoptive parent who happened to know the Head Coach at Auburn University. He sent the Coach my tape and the Coach came to watch me play in an all-star game. He offered me a scholarship which I accepted. It turned out that during my four years at Auburn, we played in 3 NCAA National Championships and had very successful seasons.

Playing in those games afforded me the opportunity to call and be noticed by the WNBA Director of Player Personnel who then offered me the chance to try out for the new league where only 80 women from around the world were going to be drafted.

There is a lot more to this story, but suffice to say, if my birthmother had not shown up at my job that day, I would have probably ended up at Temple and not had the type of college career I had. (We ended up playing Temple in the NCAA Tournament my freshman year and won…by a lot) I would have never ended up in the WNBA. What I thought was the worst day of my life turned out to probably be the biggest turning point in my life. I LOVE BEING ADOPTED!!!!!

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Now We Are a Family

Nov 11

Posted by tdomf_3594f in connection, synchronicity | No Comments

Everyone loves this story of our adopted daughter – and it is 100% true.

6 years ago my wife and I were struggling with infertility. We had tried everything and could not conceive. We instead opted to adopt. We signed up with an adoption agency one August. Several months later that same year – in December, we took a vacation to New Mexico. While visiting one of the Native American Pueblos in the gift shop I saw a figurine of a mother with children climbing all over her. Back home, at the advice of our Adoption Agency, we had already begun to put together a nursery – he said it helped to get us into “parent mode.” I took the figure to my wife and said “I want to get this and put it in the “baby’s room” – maybe it will bring a good vibe.”

So I took the figurine to the counter and asked the guy if he was the artist who made it. He said no, “but I represent the artist.” So I said oh, then can you tell me what this figure represents? He said its the “Storyteller” that each tribe has a woman that relates the tribes oral history to the children. I said “Oh – I thought when I saw all the kids on her – it was some kind of fertility figure – my wife and I can’t have children and we are trying to adopt – and I thought this might help find us a baby. Not wanting to lose the sale I suppose, he said – “Well it can do that too.” So there I was about to take out my wallet, when from behind a beaded curtain in back of him steps out this old Indian who looks like the Medicine Man straight out of “Central Casting”, long gray hair, weathered, wrinkled face, beads, etc – and he looks right at my wife and me – and says “I overheard what you were telling my Grandson, and I sense a goodness in you – I am going to pray to the Great Spirit to send you a baby.” Needless to say we thanked him and bought the figure and put it the nursery when we got home. That was December 2002.

Flash forward a few months to February 2003 – and we get a call from our adoption agency that they have a “very pregnant” Birth Mother in their office who has selected us to adopt her child – but we have to ask you and your wife one Question – “she is Native American – do you have any problem with that?”

A few days later, on February 14th, Valentines Day no less – the child that we had no doubt was destined to be our daughter was born – we were there in the delivery room – and we named her Lailee Natane Goodman – Natane is a Native American word for “daughter.”

TRUE STORY!!!

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