During this time so many people on social media asked me why I was suddenly so skinny . . . They wanted to know which diet I was doing so they could try it too. It was because for weeks we had investigators from Child Protective Services sitting in our living room questioning our character, asking us if we’d ever gotten so upset we’d shaken a baby.

But are you sure, Mrs. Hollis? Maybe when you were really overwhelmed?

I barely ate. I couldn’t sleep without taking medication to help me.

All of this happened while we had newborn twins.

And then, in the midst of this nightmare of pain and confusion, we found out that the girls weren’t really available for adoption. Their biological father wanted them. Turns out, he’d always wanted them and we’d never been told. They were never actually up for adoption. They were definitively in foster care and had only needed placement until his court date. The justification for the omission of this information from the social worker when we found out was, “Well, they could be up for adoption at some point if he steps out of line.”

The reasoning was disgusting, frankly—but honestly, I can’t even blame her. I can’t fathom how many children’s files come across her desk in a given week. I can’t even imagine how many kids she’s desperately trying to find a bed for. So if she has newborn twins popping up in foster care and she can’t find a home for them (something we later found out had happened), well then, do you reach out to a good family who’s licensed to take two at once? Do you mention that they’re abandoned but leave out details about other biological family because the alternative is that they don’t have anywhere to go? Do you take advantage of a family who is strong and capable because you have three-day-old babies who are vulnerable?

Probably. And that’s exactly what happened to us.

I’m trying to think of how to explain the way this knowledge hit me, and I just don’t have the words.

We got a call for the twins after four years of waiting to adopt. That call felt like the answer to years of prayer. But soon we were living a nightmare.

When they left, I felt cheated. I felt tricked. I felt devastated to the marrow of my bones. But it feels important to tell you that it was ultimately our decision to let them go. Honesty was not always offered to us during this process, which is why it feels so important for me to speak it here: We could have agreed to keep the twins. We could have signed on for nine months or twelve months or eighteen months of foster care with the court-ordered two-hour visits, three times each week with the biological father, in the hopes that maybe it would turn into adoption.

We couldn’t do it.

Or, I suppose that’s not right. We could have done it . . . but my heart was shredded and my faith in the system was gone.

I fought with myself. Every day for weeks I fought with myself and tried to think of solutions. Maybe if we . . . But what if they . . . Maybe the dad would . . .

I fought with God too.

Him most of all.

What was all this for? Why were we here? What did we do to deserve any of this? What about the girls? The ones I named and walked the room with for hours as they worked drugs from their system? What about Atticus, with her big, bright eyes? What about Elliott, who was smaller and needed extra cuddles? What will become of her, Lord?

I cried.

I cried so much my eyes were swollen all the time. I cried when I held the girls. I cried when I hesitated to hold the girls, when I warned myself not to keep attaching to someone I would not get to hold on to. I cried when I saw other new mamas on Instagram . . . A few weeks before I had thought we were all part of a tribe.

After all this happened, Dave and I felt so alone. Who could possibly understand what we’d gone through? Would people even believe us when we told them we were being accused of something so far beyond reality for our family we didn’t even know it existed? Would anyone understand what it feels like to know that some anonymous person was so vindictive they’d pull us into this horrific scenario just for spite? Will the people who read this story shake their heads and say, “Well, that’s what you get for going through foster care”?

It’s a mess. It’s all a big, hard mess—and it wasn’t even finished. Even after the twins left, we still had to endure the investigation—because it wasn’t just about judging us for children in the system; it was judging if we were suitable to care for all children, including our own. Since we’d opened our home, our medical paperwork, our school files, access to friends and colleagues who can vouch for us as parents—no evidence existed to validate the phony claim.

Nonetheless, it was terrifying. It was ugly and traumatic, as if we were being abused. We had been attacked, and for weeks and weeks we lived in a state of shock.

I’ve been afraid to write this story. I hesitate to tell you our particular reality because I still believe that the children in foster care deserve advocates. But I think if we had been better prepared for the realities—that abuse allegations are an extremely common occurrence; that you might get inaccurate or misleading information about the children; that regardless of your best intentions, your heart might be broken in ways you can’t fathom. I think if we had been informed, I wouldn’t feel so hurt now.

Maybe I could have better prepared myself. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Maybe is the word that plagued me all day long. In the midst of all of the pain and questioning and wondering, we had something big to decide: Would we continue to try and adopt?

My gut instinct said absolutely not.

International adoption and foster-to-adopt weren’t areas we felt comfortable exploring anymore, which left us with independent adoption. Dave had preferred this option from the beginning, but I felt like there was a greater need in international or foster care. But now he was asking me to consider it again, and I needed to make a decision quickly.

One of the hardest parts about adoption is how long it takes. So even if I wasn’t sure about moving forward, I knew that in order to secure any chance for the future, we’d need to start a new path as soon as possible. Home visits, blood work, applications, hundreds of pages to fill out . . . It takes a while, and unfortunately, none of it is transferable, so we had to start from scratch. Also, we knew nothing about this world or how to even go about it. Did we go through a domestic agency? Should we get an attorney? It all felt so daunting, especially after what we’d just gone through.

I cannot tell you how incredible my husband was during this time period. If you ask most adoptive couples, they’ll tell you that the wife originally came up with the idea. Men statistically struggle with the concept of adoption at first. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but most of the time women are the ones who push for it. I was the one who pushed for international adoption, and later, I was the one who urged him to consider foster-to-adopt. Now I was wrung out and incapable of feeling hopeful, but Dave encouraged me to reconsider. I’ll remember that conversation for the rest of my life . . . I sobbed in the backyard where the kids couldn’t hear us, while he fought for our dream of having a daughter.

“Yes, it’s hard! But our dream didn’t go away because it got hard, Rachel. We’re going to have a daughter even if it takes longer . . . The time will pass anyway. We can’t give up!”

It was Dave who did the research on an adoption attorney. It was Dave who called friends and colleagues and doctors’ offices to get referrals on where we should go. It was Dave who sat on the floor while I typed the first draft of this chapter. He had paperwork spread out in every direction on the first day of his holiday break while he uploaded document after document to our new adoption agency.

The independent adoption process felt more daunting to me than anything we’d done before. In that process a birth mom chooses you to be the parents of her child—which means being in competition with thousands of couples all over the country. It also meant that whenever a mother came up who had criteria that matched with ours, I would get a call from our attorney, who then asked us to call a stranger and have the most surreal conversations. This happened three times in the first two months. I think the optimistic view should have been that we had three opportunities in such a short time, but the truth—because I’m trying to be totally honest with you—is that those experiences felt brutal. I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but it was impossible not to get excited when I spoke to a birth mom. I’d hear about her due date and listen to her story and start to think, Oh my gosh, what if this is the one? What if we have a baby in April?

When we weren’t the family she chose, I’d feel foolish for being hopeful. I’d wonder if this was all a big waste of time or a painful experiment that led nowhere. Were we ever going to have a daughter? Should we still even want one? I’d wonder. And my sadness . . . was it disrespectful to be sad when I had three beautiful boys and other families didn’t have any? I would sit in our bathroom and cry while my mind spun with all of these questions. I never truly found answers.

What I did cling to was faith. Sometimes that faith was tenuous, as though I could barely hang on to it. But it was still there—that small voice that urged me to keep trying. Just one more step, God would whisper. “Tomorrow will be better,” Dave would tell me. Someday I’ll hold my daughter in my arms and I’ll understand why I waited for her, I reminded myself over and over again.

During those months that we waited, I walked in faith. My steps weren’t bold or filled with the bravado I’d had at the beginning of the journey nearly five years before. My faith walk became cautious and unsure. I blindly stumbled my way down a path I could not see. I chose to move forward because, while I knew I would find pain, I also knew I would draw strength. I could look at the six months prior or five years in total and choose to be angry. Or I could look at the whole long journey and recognize all that we’d been given.

We knew about the orphan crises, both domestic and international. We donated time and money and prayers and resources to helping with something that wasn’t even on our radar before. That is why I kept walking in faith.

We got to know and love four little girls, and even if we never see them again, our lives are better because we were connected for a time. That is why I kept walking in faith.

We built a stronger marriage. If you go through that much together, it will either make you stronger or break you apart. Dave and I sat in a foxhole of paperwork and interviews and blood tests and invasive questions. Later, we learned how to care for toddlers with severe trauma and newborn twins who screamed all night. We have laughed and cried and come out the other side braver, bolder, and more connected. That is why I kept walking in faith.

I can think of so many good things that came out of all that happened, which gives me the courage to take another step. It’s why I kept calling birth moms even if it meant being disappointed when it didn’t work out. It’s why I kept praying for our daughter, not knowing who she was or how long it would take us to meet her.

It’s why I’ll stay hopeful even when I’m feeling weary. It’s why I’ll keep telling our story even when it’s painful to talk about. Because at the end of all of this, I don’t want you to see someone who went through a long, intense process to adopt a little girl. I want you to see someone who kept showing up again and again, even when it was tearing her apart. I want you to see someone who kept walking in faith because she understood that God’s plan for her life was magnificent—even if it was never easy. And even if it wasn’t easy, she was bold and courageous and honest even when the truth was hard to share.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Taking the plunge. Finding the courage to be honest about who you are or what you’re going through is like throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and fighting to swim once you hit the cold water. It won’t necessarily be pleasant, but once you’re in, it’s done. The longer you live in a state of honesty, the easier it becomes to simply exist there all the time.

2. Seeking out other truth tellers. Surround yourself with people who’ve also gone through the hardship of being honest about their feelings. They can talk to you about how it felt and how they found the courage. They can also stand as an example of someone who admitted their hardship and lived to tell about it.

3. Researching stories similar to my own. If we had done more advance research into foster care in LA, what happened wouldn’t have been so shocking to us. Having walked through it now, and knowing more people who have too, makes us realize how common our experience was. During the process we felt so alone, and seeking out a community who understood our path would have helped so much.