"I don't regret..." Ellen Thames, Mom

Molly Harrell

Magnify

“I don’t regret the decision to adopt my son from Guatemala,” says Ellen. “The minute I saw his photograph, he was my son.”

For her, she says, the most difficult choices for her and her husband came at the beginning of the process: deciding between a domestic or international adoption, and then choosing the country through which to adopt their child. “We just felt drawn to Guatemala,” she says.

Although adoption isn’t for everyone—there are applications, months of waiting, and lots of uncertainty—Ellen wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again. “I think the most difficult part was that we knew we wanted to be parents and we were committed to that, and we just needed to figure out how it was going to happen,” she says.

Her son, Mac, is all the proof Ellen needs to be certain that her choice was the right one. “He is three, and he is such a joy,” she says. “We have never looked back.”

-Aleigh Acerni