“Family members don’t have to be by blood. They are those who stand by you for life,” Junior Hannah Slattery said. “Family members are those who will always love you for who you are, no matter what.”
Kim and Kevin Slattery, a physics teacher at TCHS, adopted Hannah on Dec. 15, 2000, six months after she was born. It was an event that Mr. and Ms. Slattery had been praying for two years prior to her adoption, and the match they pursued turned out to be the perfect one for their family.
Although Slattery’s adoption wasn’t kept a secret from her, it wasn’t until her bonds with her birth parents grew during her teenage years that she fully grasped how special she was as a daughter to more than just one family.
Her story is unique because her open adoption has allowed for special relationships to be made with her birth parents. On the other hand, closed adoptions mean there is no contact to be made between the birth family and adoptive family.
This past summer, she was able to visit her birth mother, her husband and kids in Chicago, whom her parents maintained a close relationship with since her adoption.
Mr. and Ms. Slattery had connected with their daughter’s birth mother after going through the adoption process together, and hold much appreciation for her after the valuable moments they shared.
Slattery’s family also had the opportunity to meet her birth father twice, and formed a special bond with him and his family in 2015 during a hiking trip in Georgia.
“I remember not fully realizing that I had a birth father because I’d had the ‘talk,’ but never considered what that meant in my case,” Slattery said. “Now we text each other occassionally to check in and just say that we’re thinking of each other.”
Slattery was even able to discover that her birth father shared the same passion for poetry and writing as she did.
“It’s wonderful the way everything turned out,” Slattery said. “I am very thankful to my whole family, all sides of it, for their love and for making me proud to share my story.”
Although the three families live in separate parts of the country, the Slatterys’ still keep in touch with them via text message and email. It is a reassurance that their lives may have taken different pathways, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that they will always be important parts of the Slatterys’ lives.
TCHS School Newspaper